This applies to any network marketing business. I happen to be in Nikken, so that’s the one I talk about. Feel free to substitute your company or business anywhere that I mention mine.
I’ve been saying it forever, the best way to make money in Nikken is to sell the product at retail to customers. Now that Nikken is telling the distributors the same thing, and has made a few changes to the compensation plan to further emphasize it, people want to know how to retail the products to customers. One of my distributor friends has done a lot of conference calls in the past few months and he says people are always asking him how to retail products.
If you are in network marketing, you are either getting people to buy the company’s products, sign up as a distributor and then buy the company’s products, or you’re doing nothing and you need to know how to get started. If you are in the first group, already selling the product, then this post isn’t really for you because you’re already getting the job done.
Only Sign People Up to Build the Business
If you’re in the second group, getting people to sign up and then buy the products at wholesale, then you only need to make one small change. Stop getting your customers to sign up as a distributor first. It has been a common practice in the past for new customers to sign up as a distributor so that they can buy the product at wholesale. Nikken has done two things to make that less appealing. One, they dropped the prices, significantly in some cases, to make the retail prices much more appealing. There is no longer any need for a discount in most cases because the products are now very reasonably priced.
Second, they rolled up the monthly business costs into the signup fee to make it more expensive up front to become as a distributor. You now have to save at least a $100 in order to justify signing up to just be a wholesale customer. In most cases it just isn’t worth the expense unless you want to be a distributor, in which case you are actually saving a lot of money over the course of a year by paying it all up front. In short, it is more expensive to be a wholesale customer but less expensive to be a distributor actually working to build the business.
Again, if you are getting people to sign up as a distributor, or wholesale customer, you just need to skip the sign up step and go straight to getting them to order the products. The way Nikken is now, I wouldn’t even mention the business opportunity on the first meeting with a new prospect. They really should try the product first, be a customer, then you can introduce them to the business opportunity once they have had a good experience. The only time I might skip straight to the business is if I knew my prospect was a strong business person with a lot of sales experience.
How to Sell the Nikken Products to Retail Customers
Now if you are in the third group, the ones who are brand new or who so far have done little to promote your business and the product, now is the time to get started on that. There are several ways to start finding customers. If you know a lot of people in your area then you can get a handful of product and start loaning it out to people, especially those who have an issue or concern that the item can address. Hopefully they will have a good experience and decide to buy from you. I have also gone to leads meetings and other networking events to build relationships with other people and exchange potential leads with them. There are many distributors who have been very successful with these approaches, and it’s pretty much the way they all did it before the internet.
Selling Online
I prefer to use the internet to build my business. The networking skills work on social media, Facebook and Twitter for example, pretty much the same as they do in the offline world. There are many Nikken distributors who are doing very well building up their Facebook and Twitter followers, starting conversations, and suggesting the product when they see someone talking about an issue that they can address. The friend I mentioned back in the first paragraph above has built a portion of his business this way and it works. The benefit of the internet and social media over offline networking is that you can reach a much larger audience. You aren’t limited by geography. Right now, from the US we can sell to all of the US and Canada. I’m hoping that eventually expands out to other parts of the world as well. Still, all of the US and Canada is a HUGE market.
I use a website with a blog. It does take more effort to get set up properly than just using Facebook or Twitter but the benefits far outweigh the additional cost and effort. What are those benefits? Your content stays around a lot longer, permanently actually, where your content on Facebook and Twitter is effectively gone after a few days, or maybe sooner. Any conversations that you get going in the comments on a blog become permanent as well, so people can learn from your old conversations as well.
The biggest benefit of a website and blog is the traffic that it can potentially bring if done right. Google and the other search engines can send you a lot of traffic. When your website is set up and you create content on it regularly, which is one of the things that a blog is good for, you will begin to show up in Google search results and people will come to your website. That isn’t as likely to happen with Facebook or Twitter.
There is one thing that I do have to caution you on though. People often ask me about how to build their Nikken business online because they think it’s easier. It isn’t easier, it’s just different. Building any business takes effort no matter how you decide to go about it, online or offline. You still have to be out there where you can be seen, whether in the real world or in the online world, and work on building relationships and trust with other real people.
It’s Time to Get Started
So there you have it, that’s my advice for how to retail the Nikken products. You can do it online or offline, it doesn’t really matter which way you choose as long as you do it. Once your customers are having experiences with the product there will be a few who are open to hearing about the business opportunity. Talk only to those people about the benefits of becoming a distributor and earning an income by sharing the products that they already use.
Have you had an experience with the products and would like to know more about becoming a distributor yourself? You can leave me a comment below, my email address and phone number are at the top-right corner of this page, or you can go ahead and sign up as a distributor right now. My next post, if I can find it, will be more about how to build an online presence.
Disclaimer
I have been a Nikken distributor for almost 10 years and have been building my business online for about 8 years or so. There is never any guarantee that you will make money with Nikken, in network marketing, or any other business venture. I do not make any claims about how much money you may make.
