Those who can't - - become Network Marketers

As the saying goes, “Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.” Given the state of the economy and the unemployment rate, the business world could adopt a more appropo phrase: “ Those who can find work – will. Those who can’t –become network marketers.”

In December 2008, in the midst of the great recession, I voluntarily left my senior level job at Dell, where among other things, I led the marketing campaign for Dell's new retail point-of-sale product, or as my fellow marketers liked to joke - a cash register. It was the right decision for me, but that is a discussion for another day. I am enjoying my time off. For one thing, I am able to spend more time with two five year olds. I get them ready for school, make the sandwiches, fill their little lunch boxes with goodies, and 3 days a week I get to drive them to pre-school and listen to their favorite book series on CD about a successful businessmouse named Geronimo Stilton, which I highly recommend - but only if you have kids.

The day after I left, I walked into a Starbucks and booted up my personal laptop. The woman next to me said, “Vince, what do you do for a living?" Hey, what’s going on here? Do I know you? How did you know my… oh, you got my name from the coffee cup.

“I’m a free agent” I told her, smiling at my lame attempt at being witty. “Just left Dell.”

“Well good for you – welcome to the first day of the rest of your life!” she said somewhat triumphantly. Boy, was this comforting to hear.

The woman knew quite a few people in that Starbucks. I later found out that she is a representative of a company that promotes and distributes health and well-being products. That’s cool, I thought. Her job is to promote the company and sign up new distributors, to further promote and sell the product.

Several weeks later, at a different coffee house, I sat across from a young, well-dressed woman. As she got up to leave she glanced over and smiled. About an hour later she returned and sat down at my table. (At this point, I still had not come to appreciate the value of a good set of earphones.) The conversation began innocently enough. However, I became increasingly uncomfortable as she began to describe who she was and what she did for a living. Yes, she was promoting an anti-aging cream and a super duper machine to go with it. No, she was not looking for clients – although she did offer to perform a demo on my wife. Instead, she was looking to grow her network of distributors. Hmmm.

“MLM – multi- level marketing” my buddy said. “It’s where you get paid based on how many people you can get to join your network. Lets say you sign up four people, then each of those four sign up four people. Now you have 20 people in your network. Each person 'pays' to get the demo stock of that particular company’s product, and you get a percentage from each demo purchased by the new distributor.” Wikipedia defines multi-level marketing this way: The structure is designed to create a marketing and sales force by compensating promoters of company products not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of other promoters they introduced to the company, creating a down line of distributors and a hierarchy of multiple levels of compensation.

Not interested.

Within the last couple of weeks, two neighbors asked me over for coffee. “Wonder if you wouldn’t mind coming over to review something I’ve been working on….” was the message left on my voice mail. “Hey, I heard you were out of work. How would you like to have a cup of coffee, say tomorrow at 10? I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.” read the email from another neighbor. In both cases, they wanted me to sign up to become the newest “distributor”. All it would take was $159.

Now here’s the kicker.

I entertained every one of the conversations because as an unemployed marketer I believe in the power of networking. In every case, I thanked them for thinking of me, and politely declined. And, in each case the result was the same: crickets. As in silence, no response whatsoever. No, “thank you for time”. No, “I understand”. Not even a “…do you know of anyone else who may be interested.” If nothing else, wouldn’t this be an appropriate next question? Isn’t the goal to get new people to sign up? Don’t they teach these folks the definition of networking? Why had I been dismissed – or as my wife says – “you’ve been written off.”

At 40-something, I just completed my first full season of adult league baseball. I can still hit a fastball, leg out infield hit, and steal a base or two. Maybe MLM just isn’t my game. Maybe I’m not cut out for the whole pyramid scheme business. So if you must, go ahead and write me off. I just prefer to play a game that makes sense.

For additional discussions about mulit-level marketing, click here.