Are You Being Poisoned Slowly?
I am sure that all of you reading this have heard the descriptive terms "double edged sword", "stepping stone or stumbling block", and a few more...and in this case I am bringing them up to describe the liability that having an upline represents. Depending on who introduces you to the business, you will have an upline sponsor. The concept of this is that your upline is going to help you build your business, grow your skills, and that their goal is to see you successful, however almost 100% of the time the concept doesn't work in reality.
Let's talk for a moment about the law of diminishing retention, which is a really fancy way of saying how much we remember from the last conversation we had with someone. Research has shown that we typically remember less than 5% of what we are taught in any specific subject, but let's just say that we're all majorly gifted and we retain five times that amount, so 25% is remembered. Let's start at the company level and the first distributor in the downline knows 25% of what the company does. Their first recruit now know's 25% of their uplines knowledge, so they now know...aw heck, let's look at a chart, I hate math.
Company 100%
1st level 25%
2nd level 6.25%
3rd level 1.563%
4th level 0.391%
As you can see by the time we get to the 4th level away from the company, that person you are now learning from knows less than 1% from the company, and in addition we are assuming that the people that started this crazy game of telephone were all people that had 100% good information to start with (anyone who has been in MLM knows that this is a BIG assumption). So I am sure you are asking yourself, "Why is Jon showing me this stupid math stuff?" and my reply is of course, Because it can make or break your business!
Remember when I told you about my first foray and eventual failure in MLM, when I followed my upline like a diligent soldier, and my upline basically lead me into massive oncoming fire with no bullet proof vest or gun! But now looking back I can't blame him because he was just duplicating what he was taught, and of course teaching me as much of it as his ability would allow him. We're all human and we can't remember everything we're taught. So what is being done to counteract this massive problem? NOTHING...or at least what is being done is pretty much nothing.
The solution that everyone sells is going to a company convention, or going to a convention of the top performer in the company, and that will allow you to get the information straight from the horses mouth so to speak. So you either go to a company event and leave excited and inspired from the RA RA and no further in developing support systems to counteract this upline dependence. Or perhaps you go to a training event done by a top performer, and they tell you all about how they built their business, and by the time the event is over you're now retaining your 25% (actually 5%) of what they taught you and you're back on your own to try and make it work.
I don't know about you but both of those options strike me as really dismal and not very empowering. It is for both of those reasons that I have been driving home, almost to the point of annoying the heck out of you (I figured I might be bugging you) is because your business must be based on systems for duplication to take place.
Systems allow your upline to say, use x y and z and you'll grow your business, and it allows duplication to happen for the entire organization. Can you see how that is different from the current "list" culture. When your upline tells you to build your list and you'll grow your business, they don't know who your list is made up of, or what your skills are for presentation or sales, or EVEN WORSE, they do all the 3 way calls for you and now you don't have any control over the outcome. As I am sure you're arriving at the same conclusion I did, this is all just plain silly.
When Ray Kroc blew the doors off of the fast food world with McDonalds, he didn't go to mom and pop burgers r us and ask them to teach him their business, when Sam Walton ripped through retail with Wal-Mart, he didn't rely on Marshall Fields to show him the ropes, so why do we all believe that the best route to success is an upline that may, quite frankly, be horrible for our business.
I decided long ago that for me to have success, I needed to build a duplicatable system that would allow everyone I discussed my opportunity with the same chance at success. Whether they were young or old, black or white or any color, smart or dumb, fast or slow, salespeople or not, they could push the same buttons that I push and begin to build their future. I knew that for real duplication to happen, and for more than 3% of my group to succeed this was a necessity. And I even found out that the easier the system was, the less people I had to recruit because the success each experienced was greater. So when I was able to raise the percentage of success, and couple that with bringing more people through the system, talk about a recipe for big bucks!!!
So to conclude this lesson my dear friends, MLM is a business, and a glorious and wonderful business. But in business nobody relies solely on somebody else to get them there, much less do it for them. And one thing is for sure, relying on an upline for your success will leave you massively disappointed and jumping from opportunity to opportunity to find a better upline. I am here to help you, and give you the tools to create these systems around whatever opportunity you are most passionate about, that is the formula for success...
Jonathan Cronstedt, The MLM Millionaire Maker, is a serial entrepreneur, MLM Mega Success, and expert coach. Making Millionaires International, provides cutting edge tools, training, and mentoring. MMI is the premier resource for MLM success.Claim Your FREE 9 Part Mini-Course
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Are You Being Poisoned Slowly?