Online Business Myth 2 "These products are so incredible and life changing, they virtually sell themselves…"

So we have arrived at Online Business Myth 2

And this one is a beauty. In fact, I think this is the most dangerous myth of them all. It ties in perfectly with Myth 3 (which I will get to next).

If you have been involved in MLM before, or if you have made inquiries into a company, you are highly likely to have been told something like this. “These products change people’s lives. Imagine how many people will want to buy these products from you when they see what they can do for them“.

I’ll never forget the ‘sales training’ I received in my last MLM. It was never actually called ‘sales training’. For some reason (that is now fairly obvious to me), the truth of what the business involves is skirted around, and never called what it really is. Companies seem to think that if they dress the sales training up as something less ‘offensive’ consultants will be happy to do it. Read more

So the primary sales strategy that most people are taught is to make a list of your family, friends and work colleagues. And then “take massive action” and “share” the products with as many of these people as you can. Our trainers actually used to say lame things like “How would the people who are important to you feel if they knew you had these life changing products/ business opportunity, and you didn’t “share” with them?”

And this is how the Amway style home meetings started. Desperate new consultants who didn’t know any better (and some that definitely did) roping in everyone who was unfortunate enough to make eye contact with them to attend “opportunity meetings”, and “share” the products and opportunity, whether they were in the market for either of these things or not.

The fact of this matter is that products do not sell themselves. Ever. Strategic and targeted marketing sells products.

MLM companies will not tell you this, because the top earners in most of them do not know how to use focused and leveraged marketing techniques to promote their products or opportunity to an appropriate niche. In fact, most of them would not know what this means.

You see, instead of targeting the people who are actually looking for what they have to sell, they pitch to everyone they come into contact with, and hope that if they churn through enough numbers, someone will eventually buy from them.

In all fairness, twenty five years ago, a small handful of people made a lot of money doing this very thing. But in the age of technology and information marketing, this ‘business strategy’ will not fly. And even back then, it was not a professional or leveraged strategy to build a business on.

So remember this. If you are looking at a business opportunity, and you are told that the products “virtually sell themselves”, keep looking. This is an indication of how you will be taught to market your business.
And trust me, you will not have a hope of even getting your business off the ground if you proceed this way.

If it sounds too good to be true… it is.