Direct Sales Is Just Like Greekdom!
When people hear of any direct sales company, they often feel they suddenly have a PhD on the industry, company, or representative regardless of their personal education, experience, or a direct relationship to both a direct sales company or someone who is involved within a direct sales business!
The terms multilevel marketing (MLM), network marketing, or attraction marketing have a varying impact (positive or negative) on each listener but I am using direct sales today to describe any opportunity that ONLY compensates an individual whenever a product is sold and does not pay a person for simply recruiting another person into a business just like most fraternities and sororities do not compensate their members for recruiting someone to join their organization. I have yet to hear of a fraternity or sorority that is the legitimate exception.
Name or create any fraternity or sorority and you will soon find that its members regardless of their years of membership, financial membership, and local activity, influence, or office will know that there are a small set of known reasons, excuses, and qualification issues that people will become a member (direct sales representative in our case) or not.
Some people simply do not currently have the money to get started (which simply means they need the opportunity more than ever), others are unable to make the grade (possibly due a past criminal infraction at a younger age or unable to pass a credit check without raising too many red flags), or the widely known excuse for disliking or not having a warm fuzzy relationship with a current member or organization (direct sales representative or direct sales company). All of these situations may be simply temporary conditions just like the weather, so patience is required by all alike. Anyone that continues a lifestyle to extend their unqualified status is not a worthy prospect anyway.
Many potential direct sales representatives (recruiting prospects) have a very unique way of comically saying the same things before an interview that undoubtedly signal that they are going to be trouble down the road. For example, the person who by act, word, or deed that feels they need to know the meaning of every word or sentence found on every page of the pledge process, initiation, or ritual before becoming a company recognized representative is undoubtedly going to be an unproductive representative or ultimately quit for it is simply inevitable. Either the prospects' mindset must indeed change or time spent training them will be wasted.
The often heard adult lifestyle excuse "I don't have the time" simply means "I am not interested or passionate enough about the opportunity" as the same individuals will soon call you clearly within days or next week to attend a sports event, food or entertainment venue, or other place requiring your time, energy, effort, and money as if the two opportunities never appear on the same timeline of someone's life experience.
It is surreal to finally realize that most of our friends and family members will always call us to spend money but never really seek to provide productive opportunities for us to save or make money legitimately in a way that can be passed onto our descendants or people we know and trust throughout our circle of influence regardless of where this third person lives (geographically or within our future).
The most shocking excuse that I have ever heard to date is that a person who was initially extremely negative about a direct sales opportunity and later became involved within the same opportunity confessed that their initial negativity was based upon feeling "I didn't want my friend to do better than me".
There are people who will also foolishly listen to the opinions of others who are unqualified or unmotivated themselves. This is what prevents most people from seeking membership within any Greek letter organization. Misery indeed loves company and broke people will apply the crab theory in any way possible to clip the wings of anyone who seeks to do better than themselves within any opportunity outside of a W-2 environment.
Judge organizations by controllable organizational factors and not based upon specific individuals for each one may be an exception to the rule.
Even spouses have been known to spew venom on the dreams and possibilities of their supposedly loved one's hopes and potential because they are simply coasting in life itself or hopefully do not want to outed as skating on their spouse's rib or coattails or finally discovered by their spouse as being always and forever unable to survive on their own. But if one spouse or partner is selfishly controlling another or manipulating their spouse by commission or omission, the relationship is ultimately not sustainable and always will exist below its potential.
It is often as if the W-2 environment is only acceptable to the resident haters within all of our lives because there are a variety of multivariable calculus factors that they will only justify in their minds that they themselves may not have been able to get through as a W-2 job such as having the right resume that reaches the right HR personnel on the right day at the right time while the right person is in the right mood and they had to have the right interview at the right distance away from the right home in the right neighborhood after graduating from the right schools with the right degrees with the right memberships and right amount of dues paid in full while answering the right questions in the right way and getting in full, righteous sync with the right recruiter to receive the green lights of being hired at the right pay. But let there exist a process where a simple form has to be completed and reasonable, initial start up fees paid without any of the hiring process shenanigans of corporate America and now the hater must shank a death blow to either the value of the direct sales opportunity itself or the direct sales representative's credibility as if their child or spouse is pending death at the hands of terrorist kidnappers.
The more tragic as well as funny excuse is when a person (that also is the same as found on the undergraduate and graduate levels of membership) is so self-centered that they believe they can achieve a successful lifestyle on their own without the assistance or efforts of anyone else or that they have already made it to the top of their profession while leaving their own children to start from the valley of life's mountain all over again because their personal success is not transferable (in whole or part) to their next generation. No cubicle or corner office is ever found within a will unless there is ownership!
Is there a solution or workaround? Yes, there is!
One must simply begin any direct sales opportunity with the same mindset of anyone that seeks membership within any Greek letter organization: to first of all improve their own personal lives through faith and not fear in ways known and potentially NOT FOUND ON ANY BROCHURE, FLYER, INTEREST MEETING, SMOKER, RUSH PERIOD, STEP SHOW, SOCIAL SERVICE PROJECT, PRESS, PAST PERSONAL INTERACTIONS, or CAMPUS PR, fully complete the pledge process in spite of any potential negativity expressed or seen before, during, or after the initial process is completed (such as those who will leave your life for both justifiable differences and fearful excuses), understand that there will no skating or paper membership gained just because your relative or friend is a member, be genuinely interested within the company's products and services not just because you have the grades or money (or even desperately really needing the money or multiple lifestyle options), or seeking the appearance of visible success while your personal life remains in shambles. But the best solution of all is found by simply being a professional at all times which includes going on a lifetime quest of self-improvement and leadership development that never ends!
Begin the lifetime quest and the entire Maslow's hierarchy of needs will be obtained (Matthew 6:33).
Every direct sales opportunity and a person's success or failure fully depends upon the amount of consistent effort to increase their achievement or personal success IQ in spite of the presence or absence of financial compensation, accolades, or feedback from friends and family alike.
A personal transformation must begin and continue within the mind that radiates throughout a person's life or else gravity will eventually return the people back to living the same old 40 year lifestyle that pop culture and formal education indoctrinates youth into accepting. Our legacies are cemented when we are able to transfer our personal philosophies of success to our children and other adults with ears to hear!
Achieving Greek letter organization membership was always meant to represent only the starting point of brotherhood or sisterhood and not just represent planting a flag at the top of the mountain only to descend and permanently dwell within the pits below the valley below and never return back up the mountain! We were given membership as a gift and recognition of found worthy to bring others to the top of the mountain as someone once brought us!
Each of us was given a set of measurable leadership skills, an accepted formula of leadership and means of accomplishing a task or goal, and organizational culture! One single day in a gym does not make one a fitness bodybuilder! The endeavor must simply become a lifestyle!
Our own personal success and legacies are not fully secured until we have become a part of the tide to lift all boats to ensure that our sons and daughters will have a better world to live in themselves. Therefore I say that those who at best were or still are GDIs, pull yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps-while-not-founding-any-organization-or-chapter, resume-only enhancing sociopaths willing to steal anything at any point in time from their fraternity brothers or sorority sisters including character, reputation, and/or goodwill, jealous wannabes, or the types that believe and act as if "I'll close the door now that I have gained access" are not the type of people any direct sales company should have as representatives!
It is up to each direct sales representative to become professional enough to not recruit unqualified or unworthy people out of desperation or financial need as well as refrain from regularly interacting with such people for they are the ones who are your best and productive backstabbers!
Stop creating and maintaining high quality, self-inflicted wounds!
Do we live in perfect world? No. But are we able to make it better than the way we found it? Absolutely yes!
I hope my words and thoughts have made a positive difference within your life today and forever, so be sure to let me know how you feel one way or another!
Be sure to stay tuned for a continuation as well.
Peace!
Roney Smith
p.s. My words are not an endorsement, critique, or review of any direct sales companies and their respective trademarks or service marks such as Herbalife, MCA, It Works, ACN, Shaklee, Numis, or Amway.
Do your own homework (due diligence) and make up your own mind!
Yours in the Bond
en-usJune 05, 2013