A Seller Sells or A Buyer Buys ??? - A Network Marketing Perspective

In every transaction that occurs on earth there is a product or a service and a seller and a buyer. Now the transaction can be again in 2 ways.

1. A seller sells a product
2. A Buyer buys a product

Both look essentially same….. but look carefully.

In the first instance the seller sells his product irrespective whether the buyer really needs it or not. For example a seller comes to your door step and sells educational books. You don’t really need it, but then he coaxes, pleads, and somehow sells it to you. Now you are not a really happy customer. You will just keep the books inside and forget it.

Second instance you want to buy car of a particular brand and model, you go to showroom to know that the price has increased suddenly and waiting period is 6 months. But still you make the down payment and eagerly await 6 months for the car.

So what is the difference in the above 2? Both were business transactions. In the first instance the seller wants to PUSH or SELL his product irrespective of your need to buy it and hence the value exchange does not happen. The buyer does not see value in the purchase but in the second instance even after waiting for 6 months the buyer is happy coz he PERCEIVES THE VALUE in his product. All transactions are essentially value exchanges where product and money change hands and value is perceived to have received at both ends to their fullest gratification. If this value perception fails at any end, we have an unhappy person there.

In MLM biz, not always but most of the time the buyer does NOT NEED the product such as an overseas vacation for Rs 7 Lakh or an expensive watch costing Rs. 40K as he is not seeking it nor does he perceive any value in the purchase, but with the persistence or perhaps the trust factor, he still goes ahead and buys a product which does not mean much to him and he comes in the 1st category above. This is where the problem starts.

Now, we should note that the product, say a vacation or an expensive watch (unlike the car above) is not his inherent desire to acquire and hence the value is not perceived. But the silver lining is the business opportunity which apparently makes you financially Free.  If this business was as easy and simple as sweet talk and a beautiful presentation, then you would have financially free persons, dime a dozen and BMW’s and Mercedes companies would go into overdrive to satisfy the customer demand.. If you know what I mean

Now that is not how the industry works and our little buyer over a few failed feeble attempts quits the lofty  dream of financial freedom and then starts feeling cheated and product over priced etc.. and over that when he is unable to pursue his friends / relatives to buy the products that they do not actually need ( again he becomes the seller of the 1st type above) and desperation grows and then every person you come across becomes a biz target and eventually the biz fails and so does one looses the money (losing money means he does not see value in the product – for example a man who does never wear a watch buys an expensive watch for Rs. 40k just to get into MLM business, surely he does not see value in that watch right).

THINK…. you buy stuff coz you like it or you need it or you want it, not because somebody else wants you to buy it .

Now what did I say in my earlier post. Network Marketing is basically direct selling a product from manufacturing to end user so that some of the cost saving benefits could be transferred to the end user / customer and one of the basic tenets of this assumption is that the CUSTOMER NEEDS / WANTS the product and he wants it cheaper or more cost effective.

But with a product which one really is NOT looking out for, how can any Network Marketing company claim to be actually saving any cost on product purchase by its customer?  The answer or rather the bonus lies in the business opportunity as the seasoned Network Marketing representative harps more incessantly. More on that some other day.

So this is not direct sales per-se….