Everybody in network marketing has heard the cliche “this is a business of duplication.” Personally, I think this catchphrase has been taken way out of contest and evolved into a culture, a mindset that limits the creativity of the individuals who are working to build themselves a profitable business. In other words, I think “duplication” is a bunch of crap!
In a large, traditional network marketing company I used to be with, I was on the “tape of the week” program. I remember listening to a CD titled “Duplication” by a well known leader in that company. I remember hearing him say something along the lines of “if it doesn’t work for everybody, it doesn’t work for anybody!”
Well, in this company, the method of doing the business was make a list of friends and family, invite them to a meeting (but sshh… don’t tell them what it is, leave them hanging), give them a few CD’s to listen to and hopefully, they’ll get a warm fuzzy feeling about the business and want to sign up.
They had step by step process of doing the whole thing. It was all put together in an owners manual. They had the sequence of CD’s that you should lend out. They had all the scripts and all the answers to all sorts of objections in there.
Everybody was to do the business by the book. Being creative and doing your own thing was a big no-no. You had to follow the system or you wouldn’t get any support.
And uh… this company has a 95% attrition rate. So I guess it didn’t work for almost everybody!
What they had was highly inflexible approach that just didn’t work because they were so concerned on being duplicatable. Any monkey could do the step by step process, but hardly anybody could get results with it.
There are four fundamental personality types. Every person is a mixture of the four, but one dominates the other three and that’s that persons primary personality. Each of the four personalities participates in network marketing. There is no one method of doing this business that will suit them all. It’s just not possible.
That company’s “by the book” method of doing business could only suit one personality type: the Red, director, domineering, “get out of my way” personality type. And they are only 15% of the population. Eight-five percent of the people couldn’t build the business this way, unless they also became a Red.
And that’s what the leaders were telling people to do with their rhetoric of “You’ve gotta have the right attitude”, “You need a bigger dream”, “Get some posture and be a jackass like me”, blah, blah, blah…
Well, my opinion is being somebody you aren’t is not much fun. There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t be successful being yourself. In fact, you’ll have a lot more success and a lot more fun being yourself.
Say you’re using the social media site Facebook to connect and build relationships with potential prospects. Say you’ve been doing it consistently over time, you’re having fun and you’ve mastered the art of building relationships on Facebook.
Through that activity you have sponsored some keen, sharp people into your business.
But the people you sponsor are nowhere near as Facebook literate as you are. Are you doomed to failure because they can’t duplicate what you do?
The herd will cry “YES! You’re doomed because nobody will be able to duplicate your system! You can’t build this business alone!”
No, you can’t be successful in this business on your own, because it’s not about you! Your people will never be able to duplicate you. It’s about you and your people working as a team to build something that’s bigger than every individual can do on their own.
Just because someone came into your business through the internet, it doesn’t mean they have to build their business the same way.
Every significant leader in this industry has built their business in their own unique way. No two leaders have used exactly the same methodology.
It’s not about duplicating other people. It’s about duplicating RESULTS.
A training system should contain a set of tools that everybody can use, (such as regular training, business cards, capture pages, etc). A toolbox, if you like. But not everybody will use each tool in the same way. Don’t be afraid to use the tools in a way that works for you.
To your MLM success,
Wayne Wu
P.S. I would love your input! If you have an opinion that would contribute to this discussion, please leave me a comment below.
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