Charles Orlik's Home Business Blog
Network Marketing Home Business, and more!

Think long and hard about it.  We are in a recession.  The stock markets are bouncing around wildly, while our country’s debts spin out of control.   People are losing their jobs left and right, are unemployed, underemployed, and collecting unemployment.

I was in “Health and Wellness” type network marketing and home based opportunities for years.  They attracted a tremendous amount of attention in the beginning, did good for awhile, and then some of them went down as fast as they went up.  My downline dropped out like flies, my sponsor and upline disappeared, was anyone home?  The product that my company was selling for $30 – $40 showed up in Walmart and Target in a similar fashion for $10!!  Heck, how do you compete with that?

Now take all of that and add the recession to it.  How do you expect to keep people on high autoships for something they can get at Walmart for the fraction of the cost?  Not to mention there are literally hundreds if not thousands of these types of companies competing for distributors.

My wife worked at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (now merged with Pfizer).  A few years ago, she got cut in one of their layoffs.  We had to pay $1200 a month on Cobra to keep all the benefits that we had.

In New York State, Mario Cuomo in the 1990′s put in effect “health care reform” into effect in New York State, forcing “pre-existing condition” coverage and other red-tape.  While in most other states if you want to buy health care there are a multitude of choices and plans can be had for as little as $300 per month, in New York you can be spending $1000.00 per month and have 7 or 8 choices.  This is what is very likely to happen with health care costs in the entire country when the Obama plan takes effect.  Kansas and some other states are already protesting what the Obama plan will do for health care costs nationwide when it is put into effect.

After 3 months of paying Cobra, I remembered about Ameriplan, and decided to join them, not only as a member, but also decided to give network marketing one last try.  The services were great and saved me a lot of money.  I am in a New York City suburb and could not find 1 active doctor in my county that took the plan.  I had to go over the border into New Jersey and I found a great doctor.  I was also getting a prescription for $9.97 on the plan (Ramapril) that I was paying a $20.00 co-pay for plus $125.00 a month for the Cobra Prescription plan.  What a joke!!

Opportunity wise, I found it great enrolling members, and very difficult to enroll IBOs.  During my 2 years in the company I successfully enrolled 1 IBO, that left after 2 weeks.  But I still had plenty of members, although many had cancelled.  My commissions substantially wrong a few times, and I had to go to everyone in the upline including Janie Jones, and Linda Rowden, and Joe Kerr in corporate, and keep on them to get them corrected.  I wanted to save the teeth pulling for the dentist, not trying to get the commissions I earned with Ameriplan.

February 14th of 2011, Ameriplan sent out 900 letters and terminated 900 people “without cause” and for no reason at all.  There was no official corporate statement about the terminations.  If they were truly a professional company, they would have issued a statement.  900 people that had worked so hard to make a great living from Ameriplan, suddenly had their income stripped away from them for good, and diverted to the company’s coffers.  Once of those terminated, was my upline ESD.  At this point, I could no longer work for this company.

I began looking at other discount health companies to see what was out there.  I found the one that looked the best in all aspects: pay plan, services, providers, and tools.  The company was Xpress Healthcare. They had it all: capture pages to build your business, membership sales pages, detailed tracking system, back office training and marketing training videos, autoresponder system that delivers and more – all INCLUDED with the business!!  They had 1 million providers in ALL 50 STATES including the Aetna Dental Access Network!  They even had an ALTERNATIVE CARE NETWORK which gave 25% discount on a network of alternative practitioners such as: Acupunture, Herbalists, Raiki, Cupping, and more!!  Best of all the pay plan enabled you to earn on all 3 levels from the day you joined without having to hit pins or levels!!

I told my terminated ESD about it and she ended up joining.  I joined under her 3 days later!!I began advertising my capture pages for ABOs and started enrolling like mad!!  I could not believe how well the system worked, as I could not enroll an IBO to save my life in Ameriplan!!  I enrolled enough to pay my monthly fee in only 3 weeks with the company!!  Things kept going really well and I enrolled about 25 ABOs over the next several months!  Our team has been duplicating and working the business, and we are even starting to work on group sales!  Best of all a new ABO can take a “test drive” of our company for only $7.70/2 weeks even before they commit to the company, and a member can try us for $4.95/2 weeks.  Now that is what I call a NO BRAINER!

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Network  marketing, or MLM, relies very heavily on the team of people you are working with. MLM by its very nature is dependent on quality relationships between a group, and as a manager of others it falls to you to build and maintain a powerful and effective group of retailers in order to maximize everyone’s profits.

Good Team Players
A good team player is many things including responsible, open to suggestion and flexible. Of course you don’t want a team consisting of those easily led, so a team player must also be able to pull his own weight and help motivate those around him.

When looking to recruit teammates, look first as personality. Is the person offensive to you or would he be offensive to others? Do you enjoy being around the individual? Working with a group has just as much to do with overall personality as it does with work ethic and abilities.

If you find yourself comfortable around a potential team member, take a look at his work background and ethics. MLM is the kind of business that works best for self-starters and those with dedication and initiative. Traditionally good employees might not make the best MLM team members as they might not have the go-to to get the job done without prodding. You don’t want to be constantly offering suggestions and pulling someone along who prefers to be given a menial task rather than finding his own way.

Your MLM team should consist of mature, dedicated individuals who aren’t afraid to work a little harder than everyone else in exchange for the kind of financial rewards that work will bring.

Motivating Your Team
Once the team is assembled, it will be your task as the manager or leader to keep everyone focused and moving forward. MLM relies heavily on bringing in new accounts and representatives, just as any sales format does, so you must keep your team fired up and working hard.

To motivate your team, you should focus on the positive goal rather than potential failure. Everyone responds better to reward than punishment. Avoid statements such as, “If we don’t make our quote this month, we’ll lose money.” Instead bring excitement to the group but relay the same message, “We’re getting close to our goal. As soon as we reach it, we’ll be looking at a huge profit!” Don’t lie, but always focus on the positive.

A strong leader always leads by example. MLM businesses often develop into passive revenue streams, but a good leader doesn’t allow his own efforts to diminish simply because his income has increased. While goals are terrific and should be set together as a team, they do not represent an ending. New goals should constantly be set, and avoid making a goal “maintaining.” It is far harder to get excited about maintaining a level than it is to fire up the team to make it to the next level.

The nature of a MLM business means that many are working to sell similar or the same products. As the leader, you should make every effort to unite your team and share strategies and incentives rather than allowing the team to compete with each other. If possible, gather together for casual activities to develop personal relationships. Discuss things other than work so that the team feels united.

You are the leader and you set the standard for your team. Be excited about the business. Share your ideas and enthusiasm with others and always look forward. Listen to what the others have to say and be fair when making decisions, but always remain the motivating force and guiding light. They look to you and your efforts will not be in vain.

Get a head start in your MLM business by using the proven Dream Team Formula.
Take a free tour at my website now to experience maximum retention and strong leverage from vertical spill over.

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