Is the MLM Distributor a Happy Loser???

I’ve heard many a top MLM distributor discuss the “secrets” of their success and many times they are anything  but secrets. You get the general picture that their climb to the top was not a walk in the park. It required hard work, determination, belief, and a positive attitude, among other well-known characteristics that make good business men and woman and enterpreneurs what they are.

Nowadays with the internet being the main source of customers, leads, and information for the MLM distributor, you hear the term marketing a lot: online marketing, internet marketing, etc. What you don’t see a lot of is talk about sales. Lots of people that first enter into a network marketing company are told that they really don’t have to sell anything. They are told that the products sell themselves, or that someone else (maybe their upline or downline) does the work for them. MLM leaders often say this because they know that the majority of people do not like sales. While it’s true that there are plenty of MLM companies that offer very reputable products and services, not one of these products sells itself. Someone has to do the selling. And that is the you,  the MLM distributor. The good news is that the whole hard-sell approach of sales has taken a backseat to more of an infomercial type of sales. Your sales process starts with having a top-notch product. You make sure that
you get that product in front of the people who want it (this is where your market research comes in), and then you are there to answer any questions or concerns, and offer whatever support you can until your potential customer or prospect makes the decision to buy your products or join you in your team. Easier said then done, right?

I just read an interesting article in Inc. magazine entitled Salespeople: The secret of Their Success. There it is again–that word secret. I learned some things about myself and I hope you will too from this brief summary of the article.

Are You a Happy Loser?
If you like being an MLM distributor, you fit into the category of what G. Clotaire Rapaille, a psychoanalyst and ethnographer who has done extensive research on salespeople, calls “happy losers”. But don’t take it personally. All he is referring to is the fact that a good salesperson, or MLM distributor, sees rejection as a challenge, or doesn’t really see it at all, but just accepts it and moves on. According to Rapaille, the happy loser likes being a salesperson because in general, he or she sees the 95% rejection rate as being a 5% accepting rate — a glass half-full kind of thing.  And the more no’s he or she gets, the closer he or she is to the yeses.

But being a good salesperson is not just about being optimistic. We need the right kind of training to acquire successful MLM distributor status. Rapaille goes on to say, “If the manager (upline in our case) keeps saying, ‘You’re going to win; you’re going to win; you’re going to win,” and then the guy goes to the potential guy and gets rejected, it’s a disaster. A sad loser goes down and never comes back. A happy loser comes back.’”

So it’s important to talk about rejection when we are training our teams. That 95% rate rejection rate is just there. No matter what. No matter what you sell. A successful MLM distributor will just accept it and move on, and he or she will train his team members to do the same. And this ability to do so yourself and train others to do the same is one of the keys to making the sales and recruiting members.

Are you building the “accept rejection” approach into your MLM distributor training?