The FTC is watching your word

News stories have recently noted that the Federal Trade Commission is on the verge of implementing new guidelines to it’s marketing rules to include more contemporary forms of electronic and viral marketing, such as blogs, message boards and street teams.

FTC Post

As a professional networker, I could honestly say that we have no reason to hype up our opportunity or product with crazy off the wall claims. All this will do is hurt good distributors and destroy our entire profession.

If you’re a network marketer please think before you speak or write anything online.

Remember the “Goverment” is always watching.

Falling in Love with Network Marketing….Again!

We’ve always talked about what you can do to make your MLM experience more successful. Today we’ll be discussing what Network Marketing can do for you. Think back to the person you were before you got into MLM and compare that to the person you are now. There’s a very good chance that most of you feel more confident and in control of your professional lives than before. This is because, as a MLM professional, you choose to define the level of success you wish to achieve. You’re not driven by company goals set by management who are probably not directly thinking about your benefit. Rather, you’re setting goals that are important to you and your team.

There are a number of skills required to be a successful MLM professional, none of which are rocket science; in fact most of us already possess all of these skills in one form or another. As an MLM professional, you are holding the position of CEO, Marketing Lead, HR Head amongst other positions all at one time. Any goals and objectives you wish to achieve all require a certain mix of skills to acquire. You can use MLM to avail the opportunity to hone these skills into assets that can be used in wide array of MLM activities to achieve your goals.

Through the process of self improvement you can identify all the skills that you feel are important to your field of MLM and decide which ones you would like to improve on and to what level. You may want to bifurcate technical skills such as blogging, presentation and business writing from soft skills such as leadership, management, and organization skills. With all the learning material available on the internet, management books, and other forms of knowledge sharing, improving both soft and technical skills is relatively easy task to accomplish. That said, it’s probably a good idea to start with your soft skills since these will develop the core of your personal talent portfolio.

Once you make a list of the soft skills you feel are most important in your MLM career, rate each of them on a scale of one to five. Be as honest as possible; remember no one except you has any access to this list and it will benefit you only to the extent of your truthfulness. Then, next to each skill write down as many ways as possible that you could improve yourself in these skills. This will enable you to make the conscious decision to start the ‘improvement process’. The actions can be hardcore such as ‘Attend a workshop’ or more business oriented such as ‘Send out tips to the team every week’. Guiding your team in improving their MLM skills is a very good way to work on your own.

The list below gives you a starting point of some MLM related skills that we professionals sometimes forget about. Use it as your base to develop your own specific set:

• Critical Thinking
• Persuasion
• Social Perceptiveness
• Coordination

Embrace your passion for MLM – this will allow you to embrace your hidden potential. You are in a position to grow yourself as a professional at your own pace. Don’t be lazy, go forward with all the energy and passion you have!

List of the Top Network Marketing Companies

Here’s a snapshot of 65 direct selling companies with annual global wholesale revenue of $100 million or more.

Review the complete list here!

Dr. Oz and Oprah Sue Utah Based MLM Company for False Endorsements

Oprah sues Utah companies over false endorsements

Courts » Illinois A.G. also targets Crush of Sandy for deceptive business practices.

Updated: 08/21/2009 05:40:34 PM MDT

By Tom Harvey
The Salt Lake Tribune

Oprah Winfrey has sued three Utah companies over unauthorized use of the TV talk-show hostess’ name and image to promote nutritional supplements, and the Illinois attorney general also is suing one of them alleging fraudulent business practices.

The lawsuits involving about 50 entities are a frontal assault by Winfrey on those that have been using her name and that of Mehmet Oz, a doctor who appears frequently on her show, without permission to promote products for colon cleansing and combat aging.

“We know that thousands of people have been misled by these marketing practices,” said Marc Rachman, the attorney for Oz and Winfrey and companies that manage their images and trademarks, on Friday. “Oprah.com has received e-mail in the thousands from people who believe Oprah and Dr. Oz are affiliated with these products and have endorsed them when they haven’t.”

Named in the Winfrey lawsuit are Monavie, the high flying South Jordan company selling a drink based on the açai berry of Brazil; Crush LLC of Sandy; and 456 Vital Health Systems LLC of Spanish Fork.

The attorney general of Illinois also has sued Crush and its parent company, TMP Nevada, alleging violations of that state’s consumer fraud and deceptive business practices act.

The Winfrey suit alleges that after Oz, who practices at the Columbia University Medical Center, appeared several times on the show discussing health issues, the defendant companies began to market products falsely using their names as endorsements.

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To read more of this article and to find out more about this law suit. CLICK HERE

WHAT MAKES EARNINGS CLAIMS ILLEGAL?

MLM LAW AND HOW TO SPOT A SCAM. If it sounds Too Good to be true – it is!

Scams are a 100X worse the bigger the claim the more likely you are to lose your money – not make money!

Read all about FTC & Earnings Claims here.

Use your common sense.

The Magic of Brand Loyalty

We all know how difficult it is to achieve brand loyalty. A perfect example of how complex brand loyalty is to think about a watch. It would be a fair assumption to say that when thinking of watch brands, 40% of you thought of Rolex, 40% thought of Tag Heuer and the rest thought of other brands like Seiko, Omega, Citizen, Swatch and a few of the others that are well known. All these brands have had years and years to develop the name and associated meaning of their brands. As a player in a fast moving market, your company will be required to achieve brand loyalty in a far shorter amount of time.

Let’s go back to the basics. The steps a consumer takes to achieve loyalty is Brand Recognition, followed by brand preference and then finally brand loyalty. The first milestone you need to achieve with your consumers is making sure they know that your brand exists, i.e. Brand Recognition. You can get to this point through basic advertising but make sure that your product or service name, logo, and tagline are clearly visible and memorable. Once you’ve achieved brand recognition, you need to work on making sure the consumers prefer your brand over others. Keep in mind that at this stage there is still a good chance that they may select your competitor’s product or service. However, with the right factors such as price and availability the customer should be picking your brand. And finally, once yours is the preferred and trusted brand or service you will be able to work towards brand loyalty.

• Differentiate your product with the price – Simple and sometimes a little painful to the bank account but definitely has its plus points. Especially with the economy being the way it is and people becoming more conscious about where they spend their money, providing the best price in the market could ensure you capture the customer.
• Be a quality champion – There usually is a tradeoff between price and quality. Regardless of whether you bring your price down or not make sure that the quality of your product or service does not drop. If you’re not able to reduce your price make quality your number one selling point and remind the customers why your product is better than the rest and selling at a premium.
• Make your product or service easy to purchase – Don’t make your customers’ life difficult by having a long process for purchasing. The easier the purchasing process is the more likely you are to have repeat purchases by the same customer.
• Obtain users’ feedback – By making consumers feel your company is listening to their feedback they’ll be more likely to value your product or service over others. In case someone leaves negative feedback take that as an opportunity to explain or possibly even better your services.
• Take care of your customers – Follow up with your regular purchasers and know that eventually they’ll become a walking, talking advertisement for your company – your brand ambassadors. A little bit of kindness goes a long way in the world of marketing.

Network Marketers, are you branding yourself to win?

What ideas or examples do you have of achieving brand loyalty? Let’s open this up for discussion and share some unique strategies amongst each other!

Why Would a Full-time Dedicated Networker Leave XanGo After Five Years?

In life often times we are faced with decisions to shrink back, stay in the same place, or grow beyond our comfort zone. Five years ago, I was faced a with a decision to choose one of those options. I chose the pursuit of growing beyond my comfort zone and subsequently joined a company by the name of XanGo. I was determined and committed to leveraging the business model, compensation plan and product offering which XanGo had skillfully put in place. The first few years proved to be a great experience in that I was able to contribute to the growth of the distributor base by working diligently to build an organization of thousands of distributors with thousands of dollars in monthly sales. Also, I was able to meet and collaborate with some of the best leaders in our industry, needless to say I enjoyed the path I was on and thought it would be my home forever.

As the economic trends were forced to change due to the financial climate in our markets, XanGo was not left unscathed by these events and ultimately they began to experience retention problems. It quickly became obvious that there were major challenges for leaders to maintain a stable business and continue to produce new growth.

The company turned to strategies that only made things worse, they also decided to employ trainers and product developers that only heightened the negative results. For example, their product formulator for their new product launch was previously sued by the FTC for $4 million (see link: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/09/windowrock.shtm).

Leaders within the company slowly but surely began to appreciate what was unfolding right before their eyes and thus they began to pursue alternate revenue streams. In their collection of bad decisions XanGo took things further and proceeded to implement changes in their policies and procedures which prohibited distributors from even consulting for another company. Typically it is acceptable to prohibit distributors from cross recruiting persons who are in the front line of their existing business, yet XanGo has choked the very definition of what it means to be an “independent” distributor and has forced their distributors to become employees without the benefits. They have become a dictatorship and are attempting to hurt anyone who gets in their path while forgetting the very essence of what it means to be a free spirited entrepreneur in this great Country where everyone is allowed to pursue their dreams.

I beg to ask the question again: Why Would a Full-time Dedicated Networker Leave XanGo After Five Years? Well…the road that XanGo created was great in the beginning yet the path which they have turned into is no longer a vehicle where I (and many others) can grow. It has become blatantly obvious that the persons currently in charge do not possess the skills, experience and foresight to steer the ship in the right direction.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”- R.F. Kennedy

Network Marketing Training – If at First You Don’t Succeed, You’re Probably Doing it Wrong

Network marketing training isn’t difficult. I know at first it seems scary, and it feels like there is SO much to learn that you’re never going to figure it all out. Stop. Take a deep breath, and refocus. Figure out what your goal is by doing network marketing training in the first place, and you’ll be more successful in the end. Let me point out a very important fact about network marketing training: the process is different for everyone. No two people learn the same way, and there isn’t one exact model for training that is best.

You might be wondering, if there isn’t a method, how you could be doing it wrong at all. Well, if you aren’t taking on the method of training that is most effective for your business, employees, or even for you, then that’s going to be ‘wrong’ in a sense. Wrong for you doesn’t mean wrong for others. Am I confusing you yet?

Let me digress. Network marketing training is essential to the success of a person, business, or group of people. That exact training needs to be customized to the standards and goals of each different entity that is seeking it. Take a look at kids if you want a clearer example. Kids all learn differently. Let’s say you have three kids, and one sign that says ‘Caution: Hot’ in front of a stove, for example. Assuming that the kids are of reading age, they’ll all learn this lesson differently. One kid might walk up to the sign, read it, and accept it for what it is. The other two, however, might actually have to touch the stove in order to figure out that the sign actually means something. Their reasons will probably be different, but it all relates to their ability to understand things.

When you are getting into network marketing training, what approach are you taking? I want you to think long and hard about your own learning style, or the style of learning of your trainees if you are the leader. Which types of people are being trained here? I, personally, prefer to learn from my own experiences. Others might be more accepting of training just by hearing things and accepting them for fact with no questions asked.

In conclusion, I want to ask you one final question: Can you accept the fact that the stove is hot, or do you need to touch it to figure out what that means, or find out exactly how hot it is?

How to get new-targeted leads for your business.

This is a good question to ask before you spend any money on MLM lead generation choices needed in building your MLM business.

Why would you want to go about MLM lead generation in the first place?

Over the years the MLM Industry has gotten a black eye because of the over hyped promises of money and freedom. Very few people have ever achieved a high level of success in any MLM business. And even fewer have ever been able to maintain the level of achievements over a period of time.

That does not make MLM companies bad. Nor does it make the opportunities they afford the average person as ways to make extra money or even as a way to drastically change your lifestyle.

MLM lead generation is the way to do it.

There are 2 big benefits of MLM lead generation:

1. It gets you away from approaching your friends and relatives. If you have been in more than one MLM business over the years you may have already approached them and used up your credibility when you were unsuccessful.

2. MLM lead generation is a duplicable way to build your business that you can pass on to your downline. Any successful network marketing business will tell you that one of the main components of success is duplication. Anyone can generate leads with a capture page and work them over the phone or through the internet with the use of an autoresponder.

Check out my Easy Capture Page tutorial video and learn how to capture leads instantly.

Network Marketers Ride The Sheikra Roller Coaster at Busch Gardens in Tampa Bay FL