how to create leads

I had to start this four times.

I just keep getting too worked up.  This really ends my semi-annual 3 day rant, and it just pisses me off on so many levels it’s astounding.

It’s personal responsibility.

When we close the door on personal responsibility, common sense vanishes.  The absence of these 2 things, personal responsibility and common sense, is the friendly harbour for every blood-sucking bottom feeder in the networking industry.

You know who and what I am talking about?

Two Major Groups

Group 1: The magic systems

Automated Systems? Gimme a Break

All those ‘magic system’ peddling, lead promoting sites and gurus who are going to tell you how to have an endless supply of ‘ready to buy’ prospects and how they got rich.  With this ‘magic system’ and ‘attraction marketing’, people line up.  Mostly well intentioned but inexperienced and fearful folks. and plop down $20, $30 bucks a month or more.

Once they log in, it’s one upsell after another.

And all these clowns have deals with ‘coaches’ who work at $200-$400 a more per hour, 5-10 hours minimum.

Let’s think this through.

Let’s just say you had really discovered an online marketing system that created a wonderful downline for you.  Would you put your team and yourself in competition with every other line in your company and with every company and every rep in the world?  Of course not.  Your team?  Want to put your team in competition with everyone in the world?

These self serving, greedy, lying thieves are not about helping you.  They are about making money on your inexperience and fear.  And the ‘deal’…like 3 and yours is free…quickly gets you and a few keep people on your team promoting for them, and no one seems to notice they are no longer building their business.

Where’s the common sense?   Why in the world would someone offer this amazing system?  And offer you a ‘deal’ to promote it?   It disappeared with personal responsibility.

Group 2: Personal coaching

Why would brilliant  MLMers, allegedly masters of the ‘time leverage business’ swap their time for money?

Why Would Time Leverage Expert’s Swap Time for Money?

These blood suckers pull upwards of $4000+ out of people.

Starts with a ‘free conference call’ to help your team…CDs, events and eventually personal coaching.  If they are that good, why wouldn’t they just take that time and build another line and get paid over and over and over again?  Gee, I’ll take a stab here.  They find it easier to make money on MLMers instead of doing it themselves.  Truth is, I know several of these folks and deep down inside, they don’t really believe in network marketing…and their full time job is making money on MLMers.

Neither group bothers me

Now, don’t think for a minute that I am pissed either of  these groups.

Now make no mistake about it, my beef is not with them, I’m not pissed at either group.

The lack of personal responsibility with network marketing companies and with the leaders is where my final rant is aimed.

Let’s face it…a lot of people are looking for help who don’t know much about the industry are easy targets for these over-promising dream weavers.

They shouldn’t be easy targets.

Why are they?  Why do people urinate away more money and time on tools than they do on their businesses?

The companies don’t understand the industry, relying on leaders to take care of the small stuff and creating a doubly harmful environment for the most important people to a new company, the brand new reps.

Want proof?

A Very Sad Trend

To generate volume faster, to make a ‘big’ splash and get, ahem, momentum, companies allow leaders to put up sites, replicated sites and promote tools.

Big Picture? Hardly. It’s Short Term Volume

It’s not long before leaders are competing for monthly website fees, bodies for the ‘event after the event’ and fighting with each other.

Look, there is some very cool technology out there…but there was 10 years ago too.  It comes and goes.  What does not change, is, in the end…we need to talk to people and learn how to run our business.

In the absence of this from a company, a single standardized system…the door opens to the bottom-feeders I mentioned above.  When the company actually allows reps to peddle these systems that they get ‘branded’ to the field, it creates the worst possible scenario. – leaders who are actually allowed to build a business within the business.

This is not entrepreneurship.  It is a recipe for bleeding volume in the USA market within 2-4 years of the company putting itself on the map.   It’s worse than you think because it allows leaders peddling sites and systems to gather information on downlines under you…and they are not your upline!  Preposterous.

Two of the most wonderful success stories in the last 7 years finds both companies virtually hemorrhaging volume in the states…and all their real efforts are in foreign markets.   You can look it up.  Most MLM companies have grown in bell-shaped curve over the last 10 years.

Volume Tumbles In US Markets Because of Lack of Training

Why?

They are not teaching the reps, in conjunction with the leaders, what to say and what to do.

Everybody knows duplication is a total myth in and of itself.  I can no more duplicate a group than I can duplicate the mango sitting on my desk right now.  Duplication is a by-product of education…and while all the ‘newest, best-est, next billion dollar companies’ claim they care about reps, they have zero training and compound the problem by allowing reps to build businesses within the business.

And I am shocked and dismayed at how many companies keep talking about being a billion dollar deal but don’t do the things the billion dollar companies do.

Can you imagine someone saying they have a better way than the Mary Kay Way…and offering a website for 50 bucks a month?   Think MK would say, OK?  Or Art Williams?  OMG!

I’m really sad, not mad

A top earner I had a ton of respect for is now offering a $50.00 a month website…so sad…instead of rolling up her sleeves and teaching her people what she knows.

And, get this.  Has not used it yet nor sponsored anyone with it.   As leaders, you must test before testimony.  Period.  No exceptions.  And she once told me she agreed with that…and it was unethical to do it any way except the way I suggested…test before testimony.   I guess I was talking ethics and evidently, she was talking money.

Network marketing is a skill based business, we bring people in, teach them what to do, do it with them, then do it with their people.  Good old fashioned personal responsibility.  When we recruit someone we are doing so, in essence, by stimulating their ‘dream chamber’ and we are telling them we are going to help them.  Since no one can teach what they do not know, this means we need to learn what to do.

The company policies we find in the last 10 years in MLM is, “don’t tell us how to run our company and we won’t tell you how to run your business.”  Sorry guys, we are dependent on one another in many ways.

Yakking Big Picture But Offering No Training is Lying

This is not only devoid of personal responsibility.  It is irresponsible.  And where there is no personal responsibility, there is no common sense, and the companies and leaders might as well be feeding new people to the sharks.  And…as you know, there are a lot of sharks out there happy to take newbies money.

What’s Needed

A collaboration between companies and leaders, all teaching from the same material, all honor the educational system they agree on.  It’s the pathway for authentic success and  sustained success.

There is, of course, a handful of leaders who won’t agree.  They’ll say, “that crushes the creative spirit” and every single one who has said that to me is – you guessed it – selling subscriptions and has a business in the business they paid someone else to build.   Just like there is a handful of new reps who, even if a standardized system was available for company AAAAA would look for a short cut so s/he didn’t have to talk to anyone or do anything.

Someone needs to stand up to the companies with me…not to take them down…but to help them understand this insanity of letting leaders build businesses inside the business and reps hearing about 40 different systems does not work.  Make sense?  Are you with me here?

It’s called leadership and no one has a right (ethically) to get on stage and say they care about the field and love the reps and that it is now OK to dream again.  You know, all the ‘big picture’ bullshit, if they don’t have a plan for the reps success…which is teaching people, step by step, what to do, what to say and how to run a business.

What are they doing instead?  Instead of leading they are doing the worst possible thing – creating an environment where by reps are encouraged to build businesses within the business, compete with other leaders instead of working in harmony and tragically, crushing the one thing they claim to be promoting.

Personal Responsibility.

Billion dollar company?

How?

Stop Letting Reps build businesses inside the business, eh?

Leveraging the US market to build a world wide story, allowing whatever  so volume will build faster and you can leverage the US story of success to open dozens of countries?   I’ve had enough of this crap and the leaders who know better and do nothing about it.

Why am I so pissed?  Do these ‘big picture’ thinkers realize how close they really are to doing something special?  How wonderful this would be if they would take the time to do it right instead of taking shortcuts at the expense of people’s dreams to do it fast?

What can you do?  Take responsibility from you down.  Learn the skills that will help people get a yes, work in depth with them and teach them to teach others what to do.

OK, I’m done…I am ranted out.

believe

mark januszewski

world’s laziest networker

About the Author

  • Hi Mark,
    there’s only one word to say: “Amen!”

    Nobody likes hearing the truth, but most MLMers are only looking for the EASY way of building a business.
    “Setup a site and all people will join your business!” –
    “No talking neede!” –
    The Internet makes it so easy for these thieves to steel your dreams and money too. Just follow the “blueprint” to make 10K within days!
    Well actually I never met anybody who really had success with these “systems”.

  • What can you do about a company with a huge potential that teaches all the old ways as though they were the only way, the “proven” system?

    BTW, I used the chicken script with a salesman who called yesterday and I didn’t even finish the first paragraph before he said “Sure I like to help people. What is it?”

    You are so right when you say nothing feels better than a YES!

  • Bravo Mark…. interestingly I think a few too many folks are looking at the changing landscape of the workforce and realize that today more people than ever before “want what we have” to offer but don’t believe that they can “have what they want”!! So the “siren call of systems” with the promise of a turnkey business based on the familiar “Point and Click” with a spokesperson/owner with the Million Dollar story is impossible to resist by…well you know the type…they would rather Watch Dancing With The Stars and Surf the Internet For The Latest Gossip and just complain, instead of learning the real skills that would permit them to Dance under the stars on their favorite beaches and build a real story about how fortunate their life and that of their family is!!

    Skill Building in the science/art of effective communication when Entering The Marketplace of Ideas mandates PPPPP and must be the mantra of any serious Leader and messaged from on high from the corporate offices of those companies that “Really Are The Next Billion Dollar Companies”!! And indeed, North America field forces must lead the way!!

    Short Cut Systems Lead to Short Time Paychecks (except perhaps the system owner)

  • Oh, the Magic Systems, don’t you just love them? NOT!

    I couldn’t agree more, these so called systems only tell people what they want to hear, not need to hear, they put money in one person’s pocket at the expense of their team, and on top of that don’t teach their group what they need to be successful…

    WOWZERS,

    thanks Mark.

  • You know Mark I have fallen into this trap myself.
    Purchasing info and ideas about how to use the internet to expand my business. Spam has made this a very slippery way to do business though if not done correctly.
    One can destroy a large market by using the old fire hose or vomit approach instead of properly communicating on a personal level with those that show interest.

    Thanks for the info and in sites that you provide.
    God Bless America and you to.

  • As we all read this “RANT” and post it on Twitter and Face Book it should open the eyes of a lot of Net Work Marketers that what they really need is to learn a few skills to be successful.
    Thanks for the opportunity Mark and Davene for the skills you have provided.

  • Mark, WOWww!!
    I’ve paid for some of these businesses within the business and had no success. Nothing beats the skills I’ve learned for free from your site.
    Keep ranting, you make a lot of sense.
    Robyn

  • OBVIOUSLY you have been through the wringer for over A DECADE…Mark
    …looked at over FIFTY+ ‘GURU’S’…FIRSTLY i was turned off by your
    name…The Laziest NMer…but one last one…what the heck…NEVER
    regretted it…SUPER GOLD NUGGETS…i picked up…let me THANK YOU and
    SALUTE YOU!!!!!! GREETINGS from DOWNUNDER Auckland NZ

  • I’ve noticed the company I’ve been with for 5 years has “systems” sprouting like grass from the major distributors—and all since there was a MAJOR PUSH for 1 central system 3-4 years ago. My last convention really highlighted the many “new” “do it my way” systems available.—–And yes, the US growth has tanked, while Europe, Asia and Russia have exploded.

  • Thanks Dennis……obviously…..people need to understand part of most company’s plans is leveraging success in the states to finance and open other countries……and they let this stuff run amock …and do whatever it takes to create a volume story instead of success stories…..hang in there and be the voice of reason

  • It took me a long time to realize that my last mlm deal mastered the art of “SELLING THE DREAM” and not teaching the skills. Spent money I didn’t have and took time away from my kids traveling to major conventions because I was told if I wasn’t there then I wasn’t serious about building my business. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? NOT SERIOUS!!! Never came home from a major convention with any more skills than I had before. Should have taken my time and money and taken the kids to Disney world.
    Frustration about the way a company uses your dreams against you and tells you to tie a rope and HOLD ON can break your heart. UNLESS, you WAKE UP and have the courage to cut the rope and move on. Take your dreams with you and find a company or a leader that doesn’t hold you hostage to your dreams, but will teach you the skills to succeed. Mark J. is that leader

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