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If you are looking to start your own home business, researching network marketing, and currently researching Herbalife International, I have information to help you. I did some research and found four dos and don’ts to help you make the right decision before investing your time, money and energy in the business. I settled on four to give you enough of an idea of what the business is like. Business Pros: Easy start-up system, high-quality products, high earning potential from the compensation plan, and interactive training. Business Cons: High inventory costs, marketing plan, franchise site, and live trainings.
First professional in the business, Herbalife has an easy start-up system. It is designed as a “turnkey” step-by-step system; you literally follow their instructions, click and fill out a few forms and in a matter of minutes you have a business and website of your own. Next, Herbalife has numerous lines of quality products for internal and external nutrition. The products are developed and tested by a group of scientists and nutritionists along with multiple independent third party companies whose sole duty is to conduct clinical trials and verify product testing for the various regulatory bodies. Herbalife also has rewards with great potential for substantial income. Because it is designed from a multi-level marketing framework, you grow your business by teaching other business owners within your downline how to run a successful business. Using a known principal in mirroring, you receive a percentage of their productivity. That continues up to 6 levels or one level of distributors, that is the vertical chain of your downline, the horizontal lines of distributors are unlimited within each level. The final pro is interactive training; Once you start with Herbalife, you gain influence from your mentor’s ability to close sales with your customers and sales calls from distributors. Once you are more comfortable with the process and confident in your ability, you can update your calls with your mentor on the line by listening and providing feedback to increase your skills and understanding with each call, sometimes you can phone multiple uplines . leaders call and hear how it’s done.
Cons of the business, Herbalife has high start-up costs due to inventory. To get started with Herbalife, you need to get into the company by purchasing inventory. The amount of inventory you buy indicates your level with the company. The level in the company governs your commission percentage with each sale and leaves you with the responsibility of selling the corresponding amount of inventory. The initial cost of inventory can run into the thousands of dollars and many find the task daunting when dozens of boxes are shipped to their home. Below I describe the marketing structure as a scam for a couple of reasons. The marketing plan is highly dependent on your local market and the problem is that no one’s local market is the same. You may not have the clout to sell things like a business opportunity or nutrition products in your market. Also, your warm market may not be a qualified market, which means that you’re not interested in or don’t have the money to spend on the product or opportunity. Those two factors are highly variable and incredibly important because starting a home business is an uphill battle without adding those struggles to your plate. Another disadvantage of the marketing plan is that you are dependent on others for your income. Many refer to this as the constant recruiting problem every month. I’m going to back up a second, multi-level marketing uses a simple but hard to swallow law, the law of large numbers. You need to see so many people, say 100 people for 1 to be interested and you need to see 50 interested people before you find a solid lead. A strong leader is someone who is interested but has the necessary work ethic and character to make the business a success; they will treat it as a full-time job rather than a part-time hobby. When you end up recruiting a lot of part-time workers, you need to consistently recruit each month to earn the income you’re looking for, and recruiting takes time, money, and energy.
Next, the downside is the design of the website. Websites are set up as franchise sites and website franchise sites are much like physical franchises, they all look and function the same way. Great for bricks and mortar like the subway, but bad for the internet. When everything else looks the same, there’s no single consumer value that separates you from the competition and if you advertise on Google, your competition does too, and let’s just say they pay more for the ad. They will get the customer because they don’t care so they buy from the first site they see and you lose the customers because you lost the bidding war. Franchise sites are online cash registers, they work when you guide people to them and do all the work to get the money, but you need to be in control of all aspects of the sale. The final con is the live trainings, like many home based businesses extensive training and support is a must and the trainings are great, you gain more understanding, more confidence and generally feel good about your success. The reason you’re against it is because you need to see things over and over again in order to understand them, absorb the information, and internalize the trainings. Let’s take an example in this case, you finish your day job and rush to the local internet cafe with your laptop and since you are a home business owner you now have 15 things to do. Learn the criteria, learn the operations, improve sales, meet enough people to make it work, and go on the training call. Herein lies the problem, you need the information to get better at this and fast. So you can do income generating activities and earn money to pay bills and put food on the table. The meeting takes place and you have some good information, but you don’t get all the information from the note taking and then they move on to 30 minutes of announcements and promotions for your business. You have 10 valuable minutes for your business and realize you could have been doing something to generate sales instead of going to the meeting. My point here is that live trainings make you rush to the meeting and wait for the information you expect to be good, and when the meeting is over, the information is gone.
When I saw the opportunity, I passed and here’s why. I wasn’t looking for high inventory start-up and inventory management costs, which means I’ll have a lot of administrative tasks to do every day and time is of the essence when you’re a home-based business entrepreneur. I didn’t like the franchise site, I don’t want a site that is pre-maid and can’t control and update its design and be stuck with a digital cash register. Finally, I didn’t like being confined to my local market, I live in a small town and I don’t want to be branded as the person promoting a business or a product, people don’t like to be featured or care. Will be sold.
I was looking for a service, without unnecessary amounts of inventory for my garage or basement, I wanted the opportunity to market myself and promote myself and most importantly leverage my time by marketing over the internet. The internet is an amazing tool and I wanted to market in various places to masses of people looking for what I had to offer.
To see the company that fits my criteria, please go to my blog and for your own research, furthering your knowledge and convenience, I have provided you with the report that I used for my Herbalife research.