What Dan Kennedy taught me about a MLM….

What Dan Kennedy taught me about a MLM….No Business is Different!

Multi-Level Marketing companies like YTB Travel, World Ventures

Travel, AMWAY, Avon, BareFoot Parties, Pre-paid Legal  are a

“real business” and what can you learn from them?

I will start out by saying that when I say I own a telephone

company people would say oh, like Excel- the Giant MLM?  And I

would get kinda angry and say NO , I put 100 thousand dollars

worth of surety bonds with the Public Utility Commission.  I am

not just a MLM.

But Dan, taught ma a little nugget of info about his early days

at AMWAY, that changed my business and changed my mind about

MLMs altogether…

My father was a top distributor for Jafra and several of my

relatives sell Avon so the concept was not foreign to me BUT, I

just wanted people to know that I originally invested more than

$147.

But what I also learned from Dan about MLMs is that we are crazy

not to use their training opportunity meetings, reward system

in our regular business daily and other ways to recruiting and

keeping a member.  This proving the point once again that no

business is different.

First the one big breakthrough I learned was when Dan described

his early years at AMWAY and the spin off vitamin business.

1, 3,7,13,24,40,62,90

What in the world are these numbers?

They represent follow up steps.  AMWAY did tons of research and

concluded that if the salesman followed up with their buyer on

the days above, they would keep the customer 82% more of the

time.

1.      They would stop by to see the customer on day 3 and leave a

       plastic container with days written on it to make sure that

       they were taking their vitamins

2.      In a week, they would check back with another vitamin related

       gift.

3.      this went on until the 90 days were complete and by that time

       the buyer was feeling better from the continuous vitamins and

       saw how easy it was

Voila – they were ready to reorder their next set.

So after I heard Dan tell this story, I changed my welcome

letter and follow up sequence to my customer.  Dan reminds us

that the marketing should increase AFTER the sale not before.

So I changed how I contacted my customers.

Instead of just one welcome letter with the customer’s account

number and telephone number, I created a sequence up to the

date that they were historically leaving my service  But the

magic happened when I put a customer contact sequence or i.e.

phone call, postcard, email, and letters at the same intervals

that AMWAY told Dan to contact his customers and my retention

rate increased from 3 months of service to 11.5 months.

Let me give you the real numbers – at 3 months my customer value

was $185.50 and at 11.5 months my customer value was $800.00

Do you see the difference?  It increased 400%

What to takeaway from this information?

1.      No business is different – what works in other industries,

       companies will work in yours

2.      Think about how you can use traditional MLM techniques like

       to recruit to find an extended sales force on straight

       commission

3.      Use the “party” concept like Barefoot Parties or Mary Kay

       free facial concept.  For example, get your other business

       owner friends to invite their clients to a party – paid by you,

       then, it allows you to give a short pitch.  He gets a free way

       to tell his clients that he cares, and you get access to his

       clients…WIN WIN situation

Of course there are hundreds of different MLM techniques that

you can adapt into your business.  You just need to pay

attention and by all means, realize that no business is

different.