MLM Myth #3: You Need to Pester Friends & Family to Buy
“There is only one success … to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins
One of the oldest pieces of network marketing advice is to make a list of everyone you know and start calling them.
Friends. Family. Coworkers. Former coworkers. Neighbors. People you went to school with twenty years ago. If they have a pulse and their phone number is still in your contacts, somebody somewhere has probably told an MLM distributor to put them on a prospect list.
I understand why the idea exists. People you already know are easier to talk to than strangers, and some of them may genuinely be interested in what you are offering.
But there is a huge difference between telling someone about something that may help them and pestering them until they buy.
Your friends and family can become customers. They are not obligated to become customers, and they do not have to be the foundation of your business.
Your Warm Market Is a Starting Point, Not a Business Model
In network marketing, your “warm market” usually means the people who already know you. There is nothing automatically wrong with starting there.
If your sister has a problem your product actually solves, tell her about it. If a friend asks what you are doing, explain it. If somebody at work says they are looking for exactly the kind of product or service you represent, there is no reason to pretend you do not have an answer.
The problem comes when your warm market becomes your entire marketing plan.
A real business eventually needs to reach people beyond the names already stored in your phone. If your only path to customers is repeatedly working the same circle of relatives, coworkers and old classmates, you do not really have a customer-acquisition system yet.
That is one reason I like looking at network marketing as part of a larger online-business strategy. The internet gives you access to people who may actually be searching for the thing you offer.
And if you are still trying to build that business around limited time, the previous article in this series, MLM Myth #2, is about using your available hours more intelligently instead of working every spare minute.
One Invitation Is Not Pestering
There is nothing wrong with making an invitation.
You can say, “I started working with something I think you might like. If you ever want information, let me know.”
Then let them decide.
A clear “no” should not become the beginning of a six-week follow-up sequence. You do not need to remind them every time a promotion appears. You do not need to imply that buying from you is how a real friend supports your business. You do not need to turn every family gathering into another opportunity to reopen the conversation.
If they change their mind later, they know where to find you.
Sometimes Strangers Will Support You Before Your Family Does
One of the strange things about building a business online is that somebody you have never met may become one of your biggest supporters, while someone in your own family keeps telling you why it will never work.
I have seen marketers say they received more support from strangers online than from their own family, and there is some truth in that.
Your family knows your history. They remember the things you tried that did not work, the ideas you abandoned, your mistakes, and probably a few embarrassing stories you would rather they forget. Sometimes they are so familiar with the version of you they have always known that it is hard for them to see you doing something different.
Someone who discovers you online does not have that baggage. They may first know you as the person who wrote a useful article, answered their question, explained a product clearly, or helped them solve a problem.
That person can become a loyal customer, reader, referral source or supporter even though you have never shaken their hand.
That does not mean every skeptical family member is just being negative. Sometimes the people closest to you are trying to protect you. Sometimes they may notice a problem you are too excited to see.
Listen to what they are saying. Decide whether it has merit. Then make your own decision.
You do not have to win an argument with your family to prove your business creates value. Let the market decide.
Be a Connector, Not a Pushy Salesperson
I have always preferred to think of myself as a connector rather than a salesperson.
That does not mean I never sell anything. Obviously, I do.
What I try not to do is decide what somebody needs before I have listened to them. I want to know what they are trying to accomplish, what problem they are trying to solve, and what matters to them. Then, if I know of a product or service that fits, I connect them with it.
I may also tell them about something else I think could benefit them. There is nothing wrong with that. The difference is that I am informing them, not trying to wear them down until they finally say yes.
Especially online, you do not have to hard-sell people. Give them useful information. Show them what the product does. Explain why you use it. Answer their questions. Then let them look around, compare, think about it and make their own decision.
The internet makes it possible to connect people with information instead of trapping them in a sales presentation.
Build an Audience Bigger Than Your Address Book
Once you stop treating your personal contact list as the whole market, you can start doing actual marketing.
- Write useful articles that answer questions people are already asking.
- Create Facebook, Instagram or other social content around real problems and solutions.
- Make short videos that explain what you know.
- Build search traffic around topics related to your products or niche.
- Participate in relevant communities without turning every conversation into a pitch.
- Build an email list of people who actually asked to hear from you.
- Ask satisfied customers for referrals.
- Create educational content people would find useful even if they never buy.
This takes longer than blasting the same message to a hundred contacts, but it also gives you something much more valuable: people who found you because they were interested in the subject.
Permission-Based Marketing Beats Ambush Marketing
Someone who subscribes to your email list, asks for information, clicks through to learn more, or sends you a question has raised their hand.
That is fundamentally different from digging through your contacts and messaging everyone from your third-grade teacher to the guy who fixed your refrigerator in 2017.
Email is especially useful because people can choose whether they want to hear from you, and you can continue providing useful information without having to chase them individually. My guide to email marketing for affiliate marketers goes deeper into using email as part of an online marketing system.
Social Media Should Attract Interest, Not Become a Billboard
Social media gives you access to far more people than your personal contact list, but only if you give people a reason to pay attention.
If every post is “AMAZING OPPORTUNITY!!! WHO WANTS TO MAKE MONEY FROM THEIR PHONE?” people learn very quickly to scroll past you.
Teach something. Answer questions. Explain how you use a product. Talk about what you like and what you do not. Tell stories. Show people how something works. Create content worth following even if the reader never buys.
And remember that social media does not make normal advertising rules disappear. The FTC’s business guidance for multi-level marketing says earnings and other representations need to be truthful and substantiated. If you have a financial relationship with a company while endorsing its products, the FTC’s endorsement guidance explains when that relationship needs to be disclosed clearly.
You do not need to turn every post into a legal disclaimer. You do need to avoid making claims you cannot support and be honest about your relationship with what you are promoting.
Friends and Family Do Not Owe You Their Money
People can love you, support you and hope you succeed without buying your product.
Your friendship is not a subscription plan.
If someone says no, treat them the same way you treated them before you started the business. They are still your friend, brother, cousin, coworker or neighbor.
One of the common problems with MLM and network marketing is what happens when recruiting or selling pressure becomes more important than the relationship. You do not have to build that way.
What If Your Upline Tells You to Make a List of 100 People?
Making a list of people you know can be a useful brainstorming exercise. It can help you think about who might genuinely be interested in a product, service or business idea.
The problem begins when the list becomes a quota and you are expected to contact every person regardless of whether the offer makes sense for them.
Ask yourself one simple question:
Am I contacting this person because I genuinely think this could help them, or because their name happens to be in my phone?
That question can save you a lot of awkward conversations.
And if a company’s entire marketing system seems to depend on endlessly cycling through personal contacts, include that in your evaluation of the MLM opportunity before joining.
Let Customers Create More Customers
A good business should eventually produce referrals.
If customers genuinely like what they bought and feel that you treated them well, some of them will tell other people. Repeat customers and referrals are much healthier signs than repeatedly returning to the same circle of relatives looking for another sale.
This also leads naturally into the next myth in this series: MLM Myth #4: MLM Is All About Recruiting. A network marketing business should have more going on than simply adding names to a downline.
Your Relationships Are Worth More Than a Sale
Your friends and family are relationships, not a prospect list.
If they are interested, great. Treat them like any other interested customer. If they are not, let them be your friend, your brother, your cousin or your coworker without making every conversation about your business.
Build an audience. Learn marketing. Create value. Let interested people raise their hands.
And remember that sometimes the person who becomes your biggest customer or strongest supporter may be someone you have never met.
If you want to evaluate an opportunity with that kind of marketing approach in mind, there is one featured below.
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