Building A Growing Downline Is Like Burning Ants

Organizations come and go, but there is seldom a readily visible trail of 'Why' left behind. As a result, many people fail in network marketing without a clue as to the 'Why'. Unfortunately, either the industry or the company often gets the blame but that's usually just a cop-out for not placing the blame on ourselves.

Building a network of customers and business partners that perpetuates itself is not difficult to do. The hard part, like in most aspects of business building, is doing the right things and NOT doing the WRONG ones. In other words, it's not the DOING that's hard, it's knowing WHAT to do that is difficult.

For example, the wide variety of business systems in networking marketing require that we first address the fact that no generalized strategy can strictly be applied to all of them. Each system has it's points of strengths and weaknesses, so keep this in mind as you read this topic about building your network.

Many payout plans are so complex that few people can understand them. It's another topic for another day, but that is not by accident but rather by design. Most have a cut-off beyond which you are no longer paid on. A good plan should pay you for ALL of the volume you create, not just certain levels.

Generally speaking, if the plan is complex it's probably because there are bad features that the company doesn't want the new member to understand until well after they are so deep that they overlook the failings. The focus here though is on how to make even the bad plan work by focusing our efforts in the right place for long term growth rather than in the short-term failure path so many wind up on.

That said, there are common human tendencies which do prevail across the human spectrum that will appear in any model that allows the natural, instinctive incentives that each of us have as our basis of behavior, specifically when it comes to the very human trait we each have. i.e. we want to better our financial status.

Network marketing allows us to work from home to build an ongoing residual income but it doesn't guarantee us that an ongoing residual income will be created. The chances for success greatly increase - greatly - when there is a business mentor present and available, and most importantly, frequently communicated with, which by the way, is the downline's responsibility to pursue, not that of the upline.

Team mentorship is not required to build an income, but it IS required if that income is to last.

Without the attitude of teachability sufficient to both support and encourage that proper business team mentorship, the student or new business builder misses the valuable lessons which are readily available from their upline business team mentorship.

Success is much more likely if we follow a proven 'business recipe' as I like to call it, than if we head out on our own, which is what most people do. I know because I'm guilty of that too, but I overcame that failure disease a few years ago.

Most payouts are structured to reward width but an increasing number of them are being setup to encourage members to build downline deep, too, so the concept is gaining some attention. Few understand it and most criticize it, but none the less, it does work in building long term income stability, which is my preference over short term income.

Those of us who have already been putting the focus on depth have discovered that much more powerful human traits are being tapped into and are being brought into action.

Each of us wants to build an ongoing residual income in a referral based marketing business yet the short term goal of making money "RIGHT NOW" tends to cause us to put too much focus on building width and this is at the root of why most people fail.

Width does not last unless depth follows rather quickly. After that first big bonus check comes in and the 'residual income' bonus money starts in later months, the disappointments set in and the people at the bottom of each line start to lose belief, if they ever had it, and they quit.

This spreads up to their sponsor and so on until it arrives in the lap of someone who doesn't quit. These non-quitters are the backbone of any organization. I call them 'firewalls'. They stop the loss.

The key to building a downline smart is to focus on the newest person at the very bottom of the line. If that person's belief remains intact, then everyone above them is much more - very much more - likely to remain in place and, if not be a 'Firewall' or be active, at least be around for a possible later date when they will become active.

A note here - these people who go on to build their business because of what they see develop under them, they never become a 'Firewall'. These 'Firewall' people were that way before they entered the business and they are who all networkers look for.

This article is NOT about trying to turn non-firewall people into firewall people. That doesn't happen. Again, different topic and different life lesson required to understand that complex issue, but I did want to clarify.

Think about it. People who quit cannot be active, right? People who at least hang around at least have the possibility to become active, right? Absolutely, so the goal here is to raise AND keep belief at the newest level. The best way to do that is be leading, not pushing.

One of the best ways I know of to lead is to lead by example. This means that the leader brings on new members and traditionally this means they add on more width. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

When that leader instead focuses on the bottom of a growing line, the results of that effort can be multiplied so that it brings the maximum results, IF it's focused on the bottom member. Why? Because this is the very one who needs to have something tangible that they can believe in. The ones above him/her do too and placing that one unit of work at the bottom impacts MANY people, not just the leader who did the work.

What eventually happens is dynamic as more and more people are placed under a line of members. The ones toward the top start seeing some positive FACTS, not just hearing positive words. They see that 'Yes' someone can sponsor people into this business, so they start wondering what they would need to do this too. That's when they start to consider learning from obvious success, their mentor team.

And they see that volume is building and they start to look a bit closer at the details of the comp plan to see if and how much money they are going to be making.

This is a generalized statement, but I've typically seen network building reach levels of 200 people before a couple of 'real' people appear and start acting like leaders. Some of those are people who would have stayed anyway, the 'Firewall' people, but some of them are either new born believers or they are born again believers who would not have stayed in the business EXCEPT FOR the depth that they have seen below them.

The power of loss is a strong motivator!

Business building is a science and it cannot nor never will be learned AND understood by reading about it, such as what you are reading here. The reading can at best lead you to BEGIN to open your mind to the possibility that these dynamics are there and that they work.

The real understanding and acceptance comes from having a business mentor and a mentorship team of people who have actually lived through the actual process.

The best analogy I can leave you with is this. Did you ever use a magnifying glass to burn leaves, start a fire or burn ants? That's the same dynamic here. A group of normal amounts of energy focused into a single point to generate dynamic energy.

As a business network of people grows deeper, it raises belief for the upline. We know that for a fact. Beyond that, when the upline form a team mentorship where everyone in that line focuses all of their cumulative efforts on one point, i.e. the very bottom of the same line, the newest member, there is an explosion of growth that occurs.

That builds belief which brings on more action which intensifies the focus and the process quickly becomes dynamic with growth becoming explosive.

There are other human traits which tend to prevent this from happening and there are even more powerful greedy human traits which work to stop this from continuuing, but those must be addressed at another time, preferrably with a mentor who has lived through all of the pluses and minuses of this powerful way to build a downline that perpetuates itself.

Teaching and showing in real life are required for the mass of people to believe in these tactics enough to create the time of application required to start seeing it work. When that happens, light bulbs come on in the new people's minds and those bulbs need guidance then even more so in order to keep the focus in the right place and by enough of the team.

The human tendency for people to break rank too early and start another line is destructive and can unravel the whole thing. It often does just that, and not only does the line stop growing, but most unfortunately what happens is the team gets robbed of seeing the process reach growth momentum and thus they miss the lesson.

The lesson of these dynamics are wherein the riches lie, not in the money it makes. Don't get me wrong, I like the money, but it's the knowledge that makes us wise and wealthy, not the money.

Knowledge leads to income, not gold or downlines or winning the lottery. Many have found those things and were rich for just a short time. It's those with the knowledge who get rich and remain that way.

Kurt Gross

http://www.GrossInternational.com