The company that I currently work for has an upside down pyramid for their corporate structure.  The customers are at the top because a company cannot exist without customers.  The next layer down has the regular employees who support the customers by taking orders, providing technical support, and handling accounting issues.  The next level are the team leads whose job is to support the regular employees.  They provide the employees with everything they need to get their jobs done.  Below them are a handful of team captains who support the team leads.  Then at the bottom is the company captain.  As you can probably guess by now, his job is to support the team captains.  The company is doing well even in this recession because they have very loyal customers and extremely low turnover in the workforce.  The company exists to provide good service to the customers and give the employees a great place to work.

Imagine what the world would be like if all companies were like this.  Every where you went you would see smiling faces offering excellent customer service.

This inverted pyramid is also how the successful groups in network marketing work.  They don’t describe this structure exactly but this is the way Nikken, the network marketing company I joined, encourages the teams to work.  For my upline to be successful they need to support their downline, me, and I need to support my downline.  For me to make a lot of money with Nikken I need to support a lot of partners who can make a lot of money.

So maybe instead of calling my sponsor an “upline” I should call him my “downline”.

Wayne Woodworth
You future network marketing downline?

It is much cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.  With that in mind, you need to create a process to keep your customers interested in your products and repeatedly draw them back.  One method is to create a sales funnel.

You create a sales funnel by introducing yourself and your products to your prospective customers through something inexpensive, or even free.  Introductory offerings such as ebooks or other inexpensive items work very well.  Your goal is to give your customer a taste of what you have with only a small commitment from them so that you can build their trust.  Through successful delivery of a quality product it is easier to get your customer to come back for more expensive items because you have already established a relationship.  Once a customer has tried your entry-level product you work on upselling your interested customers to your next tier product and so on up to your high-end products.

The personal growth industry does this very well.  I will pick on James Ray because he does this very well and has excellent products and programs.  Currently he spends most of the year traveling around doing FREE 2-hour seminars.  Once you are there you get quality content for 2 full hours.  Near the end he will introduce his books and learning systems and offer them at special event pricing, taking you from the free level to the $20 level for books and the $100 level for learning systems.  Then he will tell you about his 2-day programs at the $1000 level and so on up to 5-day programs.  For the first two hours he has been building your trust in his quality, for free, so that you will be more likely to buy into his products and events.  They really are quality.  Check James Ray out if you are interested in personal growth.

The same thing will work in your business.  I’m in network marketing with a wellness company that sells magnets.  Not many people know what magnets can do, so I will create a sales funnel for the magnetic products.  To get prospects started in my funnel I sell, or sometimes give away, a small button magnet to help people with their aches and pains.  Most people are curious enough that at $2 a piece people are willing to try them out.  Once they feel the benefits it is easy to upsell them to a pair of magnetic insoles, then massage tools, and finally a complete magnetic sleep system.

As a network marketer, I can do the same thing to get people interested in the business side as well.  I can start with a free report about the potential tax benefits of having your own business or a book about starting your own business by someone like Loral Langemeier.  Once they see that they really should have their own business I introduce them to the different levels at which they can start their business with me.

As you can see, a sales funnel is easy to set up and makes it easy for your prospective customers to get to know your product and through that process they get to know you so that you can build that all-important relationship and have customers who return to you again and again.

Wayne Woodworth
Home-Based Business Owner
Internet Network Marketer