By ALVIN TAY
Better compensation planning can help achieve marketing goals
SALES compensation in network marketing would seem to be a relatively straightforward proposition: Dangle a few carrots, give the best sales distributors a trip to Bali, stand back and reap the rewards. But according to author of Why You're Dumb, Sick & Broke...And How to Get Smart, Healthy & Rich! (John Wiley & Sons) Randy Gage, it’s much more complicated than that.
An appropriately constructed sales compensation programme, says Gage, a marketing guru and distributor with Agel, can help eliminate that most divisive issue for distributors: Why am I receiving what I’m receiving?
Moreover, he says, better strategic compensation planning can help achieve strategic marketing goals as well. But it’s seldom used that way, Gage says.
“While most companies think they’re paying adequately, 67% of all sales distributors think their current commission system does nothing to drive behaviour,” he says.
And here is the bottom line, Gage says 95% of the people in network marketing simply have no idea what kind of business they’re in.
“I say this because you can drive around most cities and see ridiculous-looking signs on fences and telephone poles that say, “Lose Weight in 30 Days” with a phone number.
“And most of these people think they’re in network marketing, but they are practicing plain old sales. They’re selling product one person at a time.
Gage says one should view it as a business of teaching and training people.
“What I suggest they do if they want to be successful is model themselves on somebody who’s genuinely successful and who’s developed residual, walk-away income on the basis of relationships with his people. Those are the people you want to emulate”.
And Gage’s advice is to go for the big-business model.
“That’s where you go out and sponsor people into the business with the opportunity. You’re going to train them and teach them with the goal of building a network of tens or ultimately hundreds of thousands of distributors”.
Gage says one has to ask: “What kind of business do you want to have?
“Suppose I sponsored you into my business, and I’ve gone with you to 10 of your friends and did two-on-one presentations with you. I came into your living room and did meetings there for two months one night a week and then I counselled with you on a monthly basis and provided a big quarterly event that you could plug into and bring your people to. And say I worked with you and developed the relationship all that time.
“Now when the hot new fibre-cookie deal comes out, you’re going to say, “I love the company I’m with, they’ve got great support, I’m making progress, my group gets bigger every month, my check gets bigger every month, and I don’t have time to be looking at other distractions. Nnetwork marketing is really about relationships, that’s what it is.
Gage has been called a “Jedi Knight of Prosperity.” He takes that role seriously, working to save the inhabitants of the universe from their worst enemy - themselves.
Of course, Gage has also been called arrogant, judgmental, and evil. But one thing is certain: his brash, outspoken, and straight-shooting advice produces solid results.
A former high school dropout, Gage rose from a dishwasher in a pancake house to become a multimillionaire. Today, he is recognised as one of the world's preeminent experts on prosperity. For more than fifteen years, he has been helping other people transform self-limiting beliefs into business and personal success.
Gage takes the conventional beliefs that money is bad, rich people are evil, and it's spiritual to be poor and positively detonates them in a flurry of opposing evidence. His own compelling journey of triumph over poverty, fear, and self-doubt demonstrates the true power of your mind to attract and maintain prosperity in your life.
