Protecting Your Credibility as a Network Marketer

In any business, or life in general, credibility and reputation can take years to establish.  Yet, one mistake, or lapse in judgement, and your credibility and the respect of your peers, can be gone faster than you can say "MLM."

That is why, like a credit rating, you must work to protect it.  In Network Marketing, you must do your due diligence, to ensure what your offer others is not only a legal opportunity, but the chance for your prospect to have real success, must be present.

What are some things that could potentially send up a red flag to my business partners and new prospects?  Some things to consider.  Often times we are tempted to create additional streams of income piggybacked on our MLM opportunity.

Recently some great information was passed on to our group by Bob and Anna Basset.  Some of the tidbits are as follows.

Things such as autoresponders, expensive training, conferencing, websites, contact managers, lead systems, etc. can be a temptation, and sound good in theory, but could things be harmful to your business success?

In fact, there are several good reasons to steer clear of such temptations.

1.  It distracts you and splits your efforts. It has been proven, if you have too many irons in the fire, you can do no justice to any of them.  Also, you have no true duplication thereby, setting you up for failure.  Your prospect thinks, ( RED FLAG #1) "Their MLM opportunity must not pay enough, so you have to add other proposals to be successful." 

2. 

You irritate your fellow networkers.  Instead of training your new ones on duplication of a proven system, you are focusing on getting them to recruit not only for the opportunity itself, but all the additional stuff that you feel they must add as well.  (RED FLAG #2)  This can be very confusing to the new distributor, lacks pure duplication, and says "Their MLM opportunity must not pay enough, so you have to add other proposals to be successful." 

3. 

You Ethics will be questioned.  Practices such as cross-line recruiting to other networkers uplines and downlines will get you blacklisted very quickly, as I have seen this happen first hand, and it is frowned upon.

This business is built on relationships of trust.  Working two businesses and making money from tools is a surefire way of destroying that trust.

4.  You not only hurt YOUR reputation, you WILL hurt the credibility of your MLM Company.  You can never become a true leader within your company.  Your downline will wonder why you are promoting other companies, further confusing and muddying the water of true duplication.

5.  Your Credibility suffers ijn the industry.  Other industry leaders will see you not promoting your company.  This will send the message again,  Your company is not paying you enough, and the strength of your company will be called into question. 

This hurts your chances of sponsoring other leaders when their company puts the screws to them. Do you think they would consider getting into business with you if you come across wishy washy. 

  6. Your credibility suffers with the public.  There again, if people see you working several businesses, they wonder if your company is paying enough, putting your company in a bad light.

Bottom line is this.  To be successful in network marketing, you must protect your reputation.  It is stressed time and time again that you must educate yourself on what a 5 Pillar Company is, and why is it important to be affiliated with one.

Again, the old addage is, "You don't get a second chance, to make a first impression."