Mistakes in Network Marketing: Unopened Markets
One of the biggest mistakes in network marketing I have made is focus too much time on unopened markets. The reason for that is that I heard of all the big stories were from people going through crazy challenges to open up a market and being there at the beginning and therefore making a ton of money. I have many stories I could share about making mistakes in unopened markets but I will go into three and hope that you find something you can learn from each. Switzerland When I first started in network marketing I was working with nutrition products and a technology that measures antioxidants. Naturally I would look for other nutrition companies who can see the impact a technology like that would have on the market. I would use all types of search engines online. One of them was a small directory called Alibaba - not so small anymore!! On there, I found a guy selling nutritional products based in Geneva. We were not open there but I finally found someone who was interested in hearing more. After months of back and forth communication I finally drove 5 hours from Luxembourg to Geneva to meet Jason and also to scan his connections. We did this several times as he built up a solid customer base and qualified for his own scanner. We only had one issue: Switzerland was not an open market. In order to grow things, we had to operate out of France. Jason would use family members to sign up distributors and ship products to France and then drive them across the border. He would always be super nervous every time he crossed that border. After many months of working together Jason finally decided that this was too much trouble for so little return. He did not understand the potential for long term leveraged income. However, I learned my lesson too. Working in an unopened market opens up to another 100 challenges on top of how difficult it already is to build the business. One of the biggest mistakes in network marketing! Another common mistake in network marketing I made was to not keep in touch with all of the people who had started to work with us because about 3 years later Switzerland finally opened up officially. What if I would have kept in touch with these people? What if I would have kept on working with Jason? Who knows what would have happened but the lesson was not to work in unopen markets. Estonia A few years later I was living in London and had built up a solid team and one of the girls in the team, Moonika, was from Estonia. Moonika was doing quite well but decided to move back to Estonia. She continued to build the business there even if we were not open there. Moonika was doing so well that I decided to fly over to help with a few more meetings. It was a wonderful chance to see the country and take local transport all over for our meetings. It reminded me of Sweden as they had so many beautiful parts to the country. I remember taking the local Krooni as payment for quite a few products I had brought over. I still have those today and as they have adopted the Euro I am not sure I could ever get anything for them. A few months later we decided to reward Moonika with a free flight to London to see our chief scientific officer speak. She never showed up for this event and we have still not heard from her since. The learning lesson here is to be very careful with your time when again working in unopened markets. Also, make sure you change the currency if there is any chance you will never be back. Saudi Arabia
This last story is about hope and getting your expectations up high so they can come crashing down. This time there were no trips involved but there was still a lot of time sending information and communicating. I met Maz at a dental show in London while exhibiting there. He loved our nutrition concept as well. He wanted to bring it to the dentists in the UK. He never ended up doing much in the UK however he did move to Dubai a few years later. One day Maz got in touch saying he had some big hospital groups in the Middle East very interested in our galvanic technology. This is always exciting as there is quite a lot of money there. So a few hundred emails and phone calls later it was not surprising that he had a hospital group that wanted to start with a small order worth $200,000. Maz had told them that he was the official distributor in Saudi Arabia. A day before the hospital group was going to send the money for the order they made a call to our company headquarters. When they then found out that there was not an official distributor in Saudi Arabia they of course called off the deal. This time I had not traveled there and it was not me working directly so I cannot say that I was too upset about it all. However, I did get caught up in the big talk and how this could lead to crazy sales and loads of income. Never ever get your hopes up for big deals in this industry. If they happen it is just a bonus. Focus on the every day grind of working with people who have massive desire to change their own life. A lot of people ask me about India and Dubai in our company. I have no idea if any of those will ever open up. The best way is to build within the Indian community in an open market like the UK. Then if you have a lot of successful people in your team from that country then you can take advatange if the company one day says they will open it up.
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AUTHOR: Daniel Norell
Daniel Norell teaches people how to make money with Instagram and Facebook. He teaches ways in which you can grow your following by 50-250 followers per day and then monetize your following. If you love to have fun and work with like-minded people, then talk to this chatbot: http://tinyurl.com/DanielBot or have a browse around the website: www.thenorells.com.
