Leg 2 - Finding Retailers
Posted by andrew on January 1, 2010
What do I mean by a retailer and how does that differ from a business builder?
I define a retailer here as someone that will retail your product or service to their customer base. They are not to be considered business builders as network marketing is NOT what they do on a daily basis.
Let’s say your network marketed opportunity is in skin care products. A great retailer for you might be a beauty salon owner. Clients already trust the person and salon with their skin care so this person recommending a product should be well-received.
A retailer could be found for just about any product or service. It is a great source of income and a well-spent use of your time to find such retailers provided that you do not try to shoe-horn them in to something that they are not.
95% of such retailers are experienced in traditional retailing and not in network marketing. In other words, they know how to buy stock and put it on a shelf, or exchange a service for income and repeat. This leads to some positives and negatives of them retailing your product or service.
On the positive side, making them aware that they can make continuing income from one sale is very appealing. Virtually all network marketed products or services have ongoing renewals or autoships. This means that just for having a conversation with people they would be conversing with anyway about similar topics, they can gain long-term income. In other words, make much more money, doing what they do anyway.
Typically, they would not be involved with distribution - either that is done by Head Office, or by you if you value the worth of your retailer.
On the negative side, retailers tend to be too passive. They don’t naturally engage their clients in conversations about your product or service, as their retailing is typically passive. Investing time in training the retailer how to engage their clients, and/or doing something pro-active like your performing a table-top expo in their place of business (if possible) certainly will help.
Retailers tend to be the “low-hanging fruit” for us in network marketing - the logical choices to represent our product or service. However, the overwhelming majority of that low-hanging fruit goes un-harvested or rots. The reason for this is that we are trying to rip these retailers out of their comfort zones. We spend hours telling them about our compensation plans “knowing” that they would be the very best network marketers.
Instead of spending the hours trying to make them into something they are not, spend that time showing them how to simply engage their customers and gain the long-term residual income from retailing your product or service. You will be surprised how quickly this leg of income grows if you keep that focus and how much more effective your retailers are individually.
My only concession to this is that if they become effective, you can say to them something along the lines of “if you know others who do what you do and got them to retail the product too, you’d make a piece of the business they did too. If you want to know more about that, ask me”. Leave it at that unless asked for more.
This Leg 2 income stream can be a very powerful stream of leveraged income for you then if done right. Playing to the strengths of your retailers, instead of projecting on them what you think they could be, could be very lucrative as there is a ton of “low-hanging fruit” out there.