By DITA DE BONI marketing writer
A New Zealander gunning for the lucrative American self-help book market says that contrary to popular opinion the network marketing industry is full of "happy, outgoing, confident and self-assured people".
Mary Christensen, who hopes to sell 100,000 copies of her book Make Your First Million in Network Marketing in the US through retail channels including Amazon.com, is full of beans about the possibilities that network marketing offers the self-employed.
For the uninitiated, network marketing (otherwise known as multi-level marketing, direct selling and relationship marketing) involves direct selling and recruiting others to make sales on which the original person earns commissions or bonuses.
A typical example is when someone sells cosmetics from home and then recruits others to sell the same product, earning an additional income from their sales.
To many this way of selling conjures up images of relatives and friends with the subtlety of sledgehammers attempting to hawk items ranging from sink unblockers to vacuum cleaners to innocent associates too polite to rebuff them.
But Christensen rejects those stereotypes, claiming an estimated 12 million people are involved with direct selling in North America and more than 30 million worldwide.
Last year, they achieved sales of $100 billion. In New Zealand last year, 100,000 people made sales of $80 million.
An estimated 73 per cent of those working in network selling are women.
Christensen started selling cosmetics for a network marketing company at night in the mid-70s, after she had her second child, when "childcare was practically non-existent".
"I was hooked when I discovered that in two hours I was earning what it took me two days to earn as a teacher.
"Many women are in jobs below their skills, experience and ability.
"Network marketing allows a woman to go straight to the top of her own business, without prior training and with only minimal capital.
"The corporate head offices take care of everything, from marketing to product development, packaging, pricing promotions, training and the myriad other details that otherwise make it difficult to get started in the business."
She wrote her book to explain the fundamentals of network marketing to those wanting to be their own boss.
It is also a means of marketing herself as an international speaker on network marketing and as the chief executive of local direct selling network Esteem Jewellery.
"Surprisingly, for such a major industry, there are not 'millions' [of books] written about network marketing.
"Because sales is an ego business, many of the books that have been written are life stories of their authors' successes [while] others are more academic overviews of the industry, written by people outside it," Christensen says.
The book, which will be available in New Zealand shortly, goes into intimate detail about motivation, assessing the personality of recruits, developing action plans, and cold calling.
Christensen says common sense is not always so common and that her book allows people to fast track over common mistakes.
For example, not using their own products, talking too much while pitching the goods, putting product before building a relationship with the customer, and not following through.
She says the right personality for the job is someone who has developed self-confidence from his or her own success.
She says the fostering of good relationships with clients is a lesson that also applies to those in corporate marketing.
"If you are sincere and genuinely interested in what you're selling, you'll find selling comes naturally."
Summing up, Christensen says: "It's not about motivating [sellers] to approach and sponsor large numbers of total strangers or encouraging you to pester friends and family to the extent that they cross the street to avoid you."
Direct approach to making millions
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