I’ve posed the question here previously: is it love or money that’s your big motivator for doing the networking (or any other) business?
In favor of the love motivator, if you love what you’re doing and are challenged by it, you’ll stick with it more, and give off better vibes to others. Always a good thing, yes?
Second, really loving the thing you are selling makes you a genuine and authentic marketer. That’s something longed for by people who want to buy stuff today.
Third, you will always know you never sold out by selling average or less than average stuff to others – just to make a buck. (stuff = products or business)
Seth Godin adds another reason to care about what you sell, via Ramit’s financial advice blog. The gist:
In 10 years, will you be embarrassed that you sold this? Or sold for this company?
“…what I say to marketers who are stuck selling third-rate widgets in shrinking markets is that they should leave. Because when 10 years from now you’re no longer at the company, no one’s going to want your explanation that the stuff you marketed for all those years wasn’t worth marketing.”
While Godin is referring to big companies in this interview, the same principles apply to us. In the end, we all have to live with ourselves and you may be be asked to account for what you did today.
Look honestly at what you are selling others. Will you be embarrassed 10 years from now?
Good post… with [hint begins] more good stuff just a click away in the links therein [hint ends].
Objectively… my query to the purveyors of most NM products is: ‘why aren’t you embarassed now?’.
Sure that’s a harsh critique… and perhaps likely to draw howls of outrage from ‘true believers’. [Bring ’em on… personal email is better if you want a response; or phone – leave a number and I’ll return the call.]
Is it valid? Of course not – when viewed from the prevailing NM viewpoint.
And when considered from the perspective of someone outside of the business (which, let’s face it, is where the new customers are to be found)… well, let’s just say things begin to take on a whole other appearance.
Perhaps a development of K’s point ‘look honestly at what you are selling others’ is ‘look at what you’re buying’. There’s a kind of ‘NM blindness’ (like that brought on by snow-skiing without the dark glasses) which causes otherwise sane folk to suspend rational belief. Hell, you’ve all seen ’em… trapped like stalled rabbits in the headlight glare of ‘the opportunity’. [And, haven’t we all been ’em’ at some point?]
>a genuine and authentic marketer… that’s something longed for by people who want to buy stuff today.
Aaahhh… the ‘a’ word – authentic. [It’s good to see that being mentioned in an… er… ‘authentic’ context rather than the ‘your new shoes are worn at the heel’ debased currency in which it’s being traded elsewhere in some parts of NM.]
‘Cloud forming, storm brewing’… allow me (albeit melodramatically) to suggest there’s a war coming – for the heart, soul and mind of NM – in which the weapon is ‘information’… triggering a revised awareness based on fact rather than the current too-common fantasy in which the Emperor has no clothes (and, by a variety of other aberrant behavior, the entire kingdom clearly exhibits a delusional detatchment from any objective reality).
Undertaken appropriately, this revolution will have the ‘happy’ air of a Havanna street cafe rather than the dark aura of a Kosovo killing field… and we’ll all be winners. [‘All’=those prepared to remove head from butt and take a good look around at what’s really going on and question their part in it.]
With radically revised principle & practice, this ‘Network Marketing Outside The Box’ will be characterised by Authenticity [‘conforming to fact, meeting stated claims and therefore worthy of trust, reliance, or belief’].
It won’t be about ‘abundance, leadership, overcoming adversity, cold/warm markets, nor even ‘ordinary people earning extraordinary income’. [And, thankfully, there’ll be no more interupting the flow of peoples’ lives with dumb tele-canvassing.] So let’s forget all that sh*t now – before it further rots our brain. Instead, it’ll simply be about ‘supplying willing customers with good quality & value stuff’.
‘Authenticity’ is the ground upon which much of the good development is to be done… with each of us objectively questioning ‘our stuff’ and rejecting that which really is inappropriate.
This of course takes courage… to innovate, differentiate and communicate – genuinely rare qualities in this business where most NM-ers are mundane, lacking the courage to try new things and unwilling to invest the time it takes to master a new approach.
Slightly paraphrasing Godin: …there are two kinds of marketers…those who sell a product that’s really great and work hard to tell an authentic story about it… and those who don’t.
Choose sides now.
Either act in a genuine, authentic way, treating people the way they’d [you’d?] like to be treated… or ‘more of the same’ keep up the diet of horsecrap which has gotten this business to where it is today… largely a failed experiment which benefits a few at the expense of many – almost universally reviled and ridiculed outside its own house.
As Walt Kelly said: ‘We have seen the enemy and they are us’.