How ordinary Joes (and Freds and Marys) develop AUDACITY

Consider what you’re attempting to undertake when you recruit your friend Joe into an MLM program:

  • You have to convince him to trust that YOU and your new friends have found the path to success
  • You have to convince him to start investing hundreds of dollars a month in tools that you recommend
  • You have to convince him to do things that friggin’ scare him to death, like call his friends on the phone or give presentations
  • You have to convince him to (hopefully) try to recruit people who have more social status than he does
  • You have to convince him to endure the ridicule and criticism of his brother-in-law
  • You have to convince him to drive hundreds of miles to no-show meetings, and feel like a hero for doing so
  • You have to convince him to stop watching TV and spend most nights of the week working for pennies
  • You have to convince him to change his shopping habits
  • You have to convince him to put pictures of cruise ships and Maseratis on his refrigerator and tell himself every morning in the mirror that he’s going to have all that stuff
  • You have to convince him to think he’s going to win even though he’s been a loser most of his life
  • He spent six years in school getting his accounting degree and his CPA certificate, but now you’re attempting to convince him to trash all that and be a Diamond and “walk the beaches of the world.”

Now…..

IS THAT AUDACIOUS OR WHAT?

(You bet it is!)

It takes a touch of insanity to believe any of that. It’s huge, it’s gigantic. Frankly it’s preposterous.

Yet some people – even if only a precious few – accomplish every single thing on that list and more. The big MLM systems take hundreds of average Joes and Freds and Marys and teach them how to do just that.

(Did you notice… when Fred puts on a suit and Mary puts on a dress and they’re both really excited and they have decent tools in their hands, they can be *really* persuasive?  They are! Even though he’s just a welder and she’s just a nurse and they barely have two nickels to rub together.)

It’s amazing what human beings can do when they focus on something.

And here’s something else to consider:

Surely you’re familiar with typical direct marketing response rates, i.e. 0.5%-2% for direct mail letters, 0.5%-2% for click-to-sale on e-commerce websites. Like, 1% is normal. Average.

And that’s just getting somebody to part with some money. Switch long distance or buy a digital camera or subscribe to a magazine. It’s not like some sort of lifetime commitment.

Even a financial planner (hey, that’s a TOUGH job) is only asking you to invest a certain amount of money every month and maybe meet once or twice a year to monitor your financial progress.

An MLMer is selling VASTLY more than that. But even a mediocre one can probably sponsor at least one person in 20. (My numbers were considerably worse and I do think I was below average. I showed the plan 118 times in a row and got NO every single time. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO….)

1% response on email or direct mail – “OK, I’ll buy something from you.” 5% response after meeting you for coffee, on getting rich beyond somebody’s wildest dreams. “Yeah, let’s get rich together!”

And….

Sometimes the guy showing you the plan can’t even afford the coffee!

Here’s the big Take-Away lesson I want to share with you:

THE REASON MLM WORKS IS BECAUSE IT’S AUDACIOUS.

People are bored with predictable, safe, “reasonable”, “believable” things. People want more than that out of life.

And in my opinion, the most successful entrepreneurs of all are the ones that take ordinary things and MAKE them audacious. The thing Fred and Mary love about Amway is it teaches THEM to be audacious. (Fred shows the plan to a room full of people even though he’s so scared he has to wear brown pants…. and Mary’s slidin’ right up to him, sayin’, what a MAN!)

Starbucks did that to coffee. Apple did that to MP3 players. ASEPCO did that with pharmaceutical tank valves – they added an outrageous, unbelievable replacement guarantee. I did that with my Google AdWords coaching programs – teaching people how to turn one simple click into a customer relationship that goes on for years.

At a seminar recently, I met a guy who made “wildlife remediation” (i.e. getting skunks and raccoons out of your house) audacious.

And: I believe that if YOU can do MLM successfully – or even if you only achieve a partial level of success – then you can do ANYTHING. Compared to recruiting thousands of people, every other kind of marketing I know is a cakewalk.

It just needs to be AUDACIOUS.

Be audacious and make people wake from their stupor and take notice.

Tomorrow:

“How did they come up with all those ingenious psychological hooks, anyway?”

Perry Marshall