If you’re asking yourself, “Why am I failing in network marketing?” my answer is probably simpler than most: you may not have enough interested people to talk to. After more than 24 years online, I’ve learned that a lack of consistent, targeted leads can make nearly every other challenge in this business harder.
They don’t have enough people to talk to.
In other words, they don’t have enough leads.
There are certainly other reasons people struggle. They don’t follow up. They expect results too quickly. They jump from opportunity to opportunity. They never develop the skills necessary to build relationships and recruit people.
But after more than 24 years online, I believe a lot of those problems become much bigger when you don’t have a consistent flow of new people to talk to.
If you’re trying to build a network marketing business and only have a handful of prospects, every rejection feels important.
When you have new targeted leads coming in consistently, everything changes.
Why Relying on Friends and Family Can Hold You Back
Long before the Internet, network marketing was largely built around personal relationships.
Someone who wanted to make an extra $50, $100 or a couple hundred dollars per month could recommend products to friends and family. A recommendation from someone you knew and trusted could be a very effective way to gain customers.
That approach carried forward even as network marketing became much larger and the Internet completely changed how businesses find customers.
Friends-and-family recruiting is still commonly taught because it’s simple.
You don’t need to understand autoresponders. You don’t need a website or capture page. You don’t need to understand online marketing or lead generation.
And from the perspective of a leader with a large organization, it makes sense.
If you have 1,000 distributors and each person brings in one new person, you’ve potentially grown from 1,000 people to 2,000 without having to teach 1,000 people a complicated marketing strategy.
But there’s a big difference between referring a few friends to products you like and trying to build a sizable organization that could potentially produce thousands of dollars per month.
Eventually, you need more people to talk to.
You Have to Start Thinking Like a Real Business
This is one of the biggest mindset shifts I believe a network marketer needs to make.
If you’re treating network marketing as a small hobby and hoping to make an extra $50 to $150 per month, your existing circle of contacts may be enough.
But if your goal is to build something significantly larger, you have to start looking at it like a real business.
Think about almost any traditional business.
Would a restaurant expect the owner’s friends and family to fill every table indefinitely?
Would a roofing company expect relatives to provide enough jobs to keep the company growing?
Of course not.
Real businesses advertise and market themselves because they constantly need new customers.
I believe network marketing should be viewed the same way.
You can certainly tell friends and family about products you genuinely believe they might like. You may gain some great customers that way.
But if you’re trying to find serious business builders, eventually you need a way to reach people who are already interested in things like making money from home, entrepreneurship or network marketing.
That’s where lead generation comes in.
If finding enough interested people is the part of network marketing that has you stuck, it may help to see how the right marketing tools, training and a simple follow-up system can work together. You don’t have to figure out every piece on your own.
Lead Generation Is a Skill, Not a Magic Button
There’s another mindset shift that has to happen here.
Once someone realizes they need leads, it’s easy to start looking for a magic lead source.
I’ve been around long enough to tell you that lead generation doesn’t really work that way.
There is a learning curve.
You have to learn how to create the right messaging. You have to learn how to attract the right people. You have to choose a traffic strategy and get better at it.
That might be social media.
It might be YouTube.
It could be another strategy entirely.
And it may take time before you’ve built that strategy to the point where it’s producing a significant number of leads.
That’s why I think training is important, but I also think coaching and support can be even more important.
A training course can teach you the fundamentals. It can’t anticipate every question you’re going to have when you actually start applying what you’ve learned.
Sometimes you simply need somebody who can look at what you’re doing and help you get unstuck.
Why Am I Failing in Network Marketing Even When I Get Leads?
Once you have people to talk to, the next major issue is follow-up.
This is where people sometimes start wondering whether they need to become great salespeople.
That was never really my approach.
I was never into memorizing phone scripts or trying to become some slick closer.
I preferred building relationships naturally, looking for people who were genuinely interested, following up with them and inviting them to take the next step.
That next step might have been watching a video.
It might have been attending a webinar.
It might simply have been having another conversation.
Today that follow-up could happen over the phone, through social media, by email or through some combination of all three.
The important thing is that it happens.
And while you’re getting better at those skills, there’s an old lesson that has served me extremely well:
You can make up in numbers what you lack in skill.
If you’re talking to five targeted prospects and none of them joins, that can feel devastating.
If you’re consistently generating enough targeted leads that another 5, 10 or 15 people are coming into your world tomorrow, those five no’s don’t have nearly the same power over you.
You continue learning. You continue improving your communication and relationship-building skills.
But the law of averages begins working in your favor.
Unrealistic Expectations Cause People to Quit Too Soon
This may be one of the biggest mindset problems in network marketing.
People see income claims and success stories and get excited.
They join believing they’ve finally found the thing that’s going to change everything.
Then 30, 60 or 90 days go by.
They realize building a business actually takes work.
They haven’t generated enough leads. They haven’t developed their skills yet. Maybe they haven’t recruited many people.
And suddenly the opportunity doesn’t look as exciting anymore.
So they start looking for another one.
I call this shiny object syndrome.
The new opportunity creates excitement again. There are new possibilities, new compensation-plan numbers and new success stories.
Then reality sets in again.
And the cycle repeats.
The problem is that switching companies every 90 days doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
If you couldn’t consistently find people to talk to in the last company, you’re eventually going to have the same problem in the next company.
If you recognize this cycle in your own business, I’d encourage you to look at building a dependable way to attract leads before chasing another opportunity. There are practical tools and training that can help you start putting that system together.
I Fell Into This Trap Myself
This isn’t something I’m criticizing other network marketers for from the sidelines.
I’ve done it myself.
Around 2011 and 2012, a lead source that had worked extremely well for me started drying up as social media exploded and bulk email became more difficult.
Around the same period, my health issues began getting significantly worse. Over the following five or six years, I reached a point where I wasn’t working very much.
As a result, I never really transitioned into learning another major lead-generation strategy.
Instead, I relied heavily on the email list I had already built.
That worked for a while.
But an email list naturally becomes less responsive over time if you aren’t continually adding new people.
Eventually, I wasn’t recruiting anywhere near the number of people I had before.
And here’s the ironic part.
The sponsor who brought me into this industry had taught me from the beginning that lead generation and consistently contacting new people were among the most important parts of building the business.
I knew better.
Yet I still found myself looking for the next program or offer that might convert better with my existing list.
I had fallen into my own version of shiny object syndrome.
Eventually I realized I wasn’t solving the real problem.
I needed to rebuild my lead flow.
Sometimes the Opportunity Really Can Be the Problem
I don’t think you should blindly assume your company is always perfect.
There are legitimate reasons to reconsider an opportunity.
You should believe in what you’re building. You should feel good about the products. The business should make sense to you.
But there’s a question I think can help separate an opportunity problem from a marketing problem:
Are other people succeeding with the program you’re in?
If the answer is yes, and you still believe in the company and products, constantly searching for another opportunity may not solve anything.
Instead, look at the part of the equation you can control.
How many targeted people are seeing your product or business?
How consistently are you following up?
Are you improving your skills?
And are you generating enough activity to give yourself a realistic chance of producing results?
Stop Comparing Yourself to the Top Leaders
This is another thing I would tell someone who’s struggling.
Stop obsessing over what everybody else in your company is doing.
Leaders will talk about how big their teams are, how many people they’re recruiting and how much money they’re making.
For a brand-new or struggling distributor, constantly comparing yourself with those results can be incredibly frustrating.
You’re looking at someone with an established organization and wondering why you’re not producing the same results.
Set that aside.
Focus on what you can control.
Build your contact list.
Build your email list.
Generate targeted leads.
Work toward getting to the point where you have enough new people coming in that someone saying no doesn’t bother you.
You don’t need every prospect.
You need enough prospects.
How to Stop Struggling in Network Marketing: My 90-Day Focus
If you’ve been struggling in network marketing, I wouldn’t spend the next 90 days searching for another opportunity or endlessly studying your compensation plan.
Obviously, you should understand your products. You should know enough about the compensation plan to explain the basics and structure your business properly.
But those things don’t put new people in front of your offer.
I would put darn near all of my attention into learning how to consistently generate targeted leads.
Choose a strategy.
Learn it.
Get help when you’re stuck.
Build your email list and contact list.
Follow up with the people who show interest.
Then keep doing it long enough to get better at it.
Don’t Assume Someone Else’s Lead Strategy Has to Be Yours
One final mistake I see is putting everyone into the same box.
Maybe the person who sponsored you is amazing on Instagram.
They’re dynamic on camera. They love creating social content. They’ve built their entire organization that way.
Great.
That doesn’t automatically mean Instagram is the right strategy for you.
Someone else may be much better suited to YouTube, email marketing or another form of lead generation.
That’s why, if you’re looking for lead-generation training, I prefer an environment that teaches multiple strategies rather than insisting there’s only one way to build.
Look for the tools and training you need, but also look for live help and coaching.
I can’t stress that last part enough.
No prerecorded training program can anticipate 100% of the questions you’ll encounter while learning a new skill.
When you’re stuck, sometimes being able to ask a real person a question and get help in real time can be the difference between figuring it out and giving up.
The Problem May Be Simpler Than You Think
After more than two decades in this industry, I’ve seen strategies come and go.
I’ve seen lead sources work extremely well and eventually dry up.
I’ve seen people jump from one opportunity to another looking for the missing piece.
And I’ve made some of those mistakes myself.
But I keep coming back to the same basic principle I was taught when I first entered this industry:
You need people to talk to.
If you’re struggling in network marketing, before assuming you need a different company, compensation plan or product, take a serious look at your lead flow.
How many targeted new people are you actually getting your business and products in front of every week?
The answer to that question may tell you a lot about why you’re struggling.
If you want to explore practical tools and training for getting more targeted people in front of your offer, there’s a way to go deeper without starting over with a different company.
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