On my blog my aim is to constantly bring value to Network Marketers and Entrepreneurs looking to build their business faster using the Internet. I have a policy of publishing articles from authors I value and respect. Today’s guest blog post is from my good friend Ferny Ceballos talking about What IS and IS NOT Duplicatable About Online and Offline Network Marketing.

If you are in network marketing, you’ve probably heard this line; it’s basically a rule of thumb in traditional network marketing…

“If it’s not duplicatable, don’t teach it to your team!”

Sounds logical, sure.

But, are you aware that most of the things you are taught are actually NOT duplicatable?

Yup, that’s right!

A lot of what you are taught when you start in network marketing, by most uplines or team leaders, is not really duplicatable.

Don’t believe me?

Well, that’s okay, because I am here to prove it to you.

Starting from the top…

What “duplicatable” means

First, I want to make it crystal clear what duplicatable means.

Because that word in the network marketing space is thrown around a lot, it’s part of the everyday language, and if you are starting out you might not fully get all its implications.

“Duplicatable,” by definition, means the capacity of being duplicated.

And “duplicated” is a copy, exactly like the original, as you probably already know.

Now in this profession, when something is said to be “duplicatable” it means that anyone can do it, exactly the same way as it was taught and with relative ease.

It can be replicated, with the exact same level of success, or with very similar results as it was achieved previously.

And, by extension, it means that when you teach it to your team, they will accomplish the exact results as you, as your upline, and as your upline’s upline, and so on.

Okay, to be fair: maybe not at the exact same level of success as seasoned network marketers, but it is assumed it will work in a very similar, positive way for you and your team.

Now…

In real life, does this actually happen?

Honestly, can you, or anyone else, say that everything you’ve been taught in traditional network marketing can be duplicated?

Let me take a wild guess…

Probably not.

Regardless of the significant disagreements you and I might have as to what people should be taught, or at least exposed to, you and I both know that most of the staples taught in network marketing are not truly duplicatable.

Sorry, but they just aren’t.

So, in that case, what should you do?

What should you teach your team so they can duplicate it with relative ease?

I am glad you asked…

I’m a big believer in giving people options, and showing them all the different ways of building their network marketing business.

And that is what I want to give to you today, options.

Since the title of this post is, what is and is not duplicatable in online and offline network marketing.

I want to start first with some traditional ways of building a network marketing business that are—surprise surprise—not duplicatable.

Starting with…

Online and Offline Network Marketing

After all…

“There are LOTS of people to talk to out there…don’t forget your friendly waiter!”

Have you heard that one before?

Sure you have, and it’s called “cold market prospecting.”

Cold market prospecting means going out into the world and talking to strangers…

And trying to not only generate a lead or prospect, but actually trying to convert that prospect into a member of your team.

Guess what?

That is NOT duplicatable!

And furthermore, it’s actually a very difficult skill to learn.

If you don’t believe me, check my free 10-day online recruiting bootcamp.

On day 5 there’s a story of what my friend James tried to do at a mall (true story!)

I guarantee you’ll, at the very least, get a good laugh.

So, can cold market prospecting work?

Sure, I know some people that are very good at it.

My friend, and former client, Cesar Rodriguez is extremely good at cold market prospecting.

In fact, he has courses on how to do it effectively.

But it’s still not duplicatable.

I’ll explain why…

In order to be able to make cold market prospecting work for you, and be successful at it, you need to basically commit yourself at a very high level.

You need to completely overcome the fear of talking to strangers.

And you also need to develop professional sales skills, in order to know how to approach and start conversations; how to break the ice.

There’s a great deal of strategy that goes into going into public, such as a mall, and starting a conversation out of thin air, even if that stranger is your very friendly waiter.

It’s not easy and doesn’t come naturally to the vast majority of folks, period.

Next up…

Online and Offline Network Marketing

…can you guess what the next non-duplicatable skill is?

Yup, you guessed correctly.

It’s cold calling.

Cold calling is another skill in traditional network marketing that is not duplicatable.

Does it work?

Yes, of course it does!

But answer me this…

Do you actually listen to your average telemarketer pitch, or do you usually just hang up the phone?

Well, most people hang up their phones

And most telemarketers don’t have the skills needed to convert those people.

They would need proper training, instead of just getting a script and some random numbers and being told to, “go for it.”

Suitable training would take lots of time and practice.

So, it’s something that not everyone can do; certainly doesn’t happen overnight.

Believe it or not, there are still people in network marketing, not only teaching people how to cold call, but charging thousands of dollars to teach them how to get good at it.

Mastering cold calling is a great skill to have, sure.

But if you have to pay somebody $5,000 to learn that skill, then clearly that skill is not duplicatable.

So, if that’s what you want to do, know that it’s going to require a great deal of dedication and commitment in order to be effective for your business.

It’s not something that you’re going to learn overnight.

You can’t simply give someone a script and tell him or her to start calling people they have never met, and expect them to start recruiting those people into their opportunity straight away.

It doesn’t work that way; it takes time.

It’s a powerful, but tough skill to learn.

Could you do it?

Yes, you can do anything you set your mind to, of course.

But the point is…

Do you want to spend the time and the money required to succeed?

Are you fully committed to it?

That’s something you need to answer for yourself.

Next up…

Online and Offline Network Marketing

“…and start telling them all about your new opportunity.”

Sound familiar?

Well, here’s the thing…

Did you know that one of the greatest skills in life is maintaining good relationships with your family and friends?

Most network marketers, when they are just starting out, fumble with this one.

They fumble big time; it’s painful to watch.

Most newbies damage their relationships with friends and family

Keeping good relationships is not duplicatable.

Screwing up those relationships, on the other hand…

Well, that is very duplicatable.

It happens all the time, and clearly that’s something people have to work on and improve upon as an industry.

Newbies need to know the right way to approach their warm market in order to be effective not only in business, but also in preserving those close relationships.

Which reminds me of the next skill…

Online and Offline Network Marketing

…“not right now.”

Well, sorry to tell you, but NO means NO.

You’ve no doubt heard that before in another context, but it’s also the case for network marketing.

Merely being able to take a “no” is a great skill to have and should be duplicatable.

Unfortunately, most companies teach that “no” doesn’t really mean “no,” that it means, as I mentioned before, “not right now.”

But I’m here to tell you that if somebody says “no,” and they are pretty adamant about it, you should take their word for it, and move on.

Now, should they ever bring it up again, and ask about your business, then you obviously can start asking questions as to why they had a change of heart.

You can do a lot to preserve your personal relationships by simply accepting a “no.”

Next up…

Online and Offline Network Marketing

Look…

Leaving your family with a nanny is going to cost you hundreds of dollars a week, if not thousands of dollars a month.

And coming home late at night is not something I would call duplicatable.

Have people built massive businesses doing home or hotel meetings?

Absolutely!

But is it duplicatable?

Does everybody have the commitment and the drive in order to do that in order to achieve their dreams?

Heck no!

That’s a tough thing to do!

It’s a tough thing to do night after night, over and over again.

It’s absolutely not duplicatable.

Not everyone is willing to make that sacrifice, so clearly everyone in your team can’t duplicate that skill.

No should anyone expect them to.

Now, let’s talk about…

Two leadership skills we all want, but are not duplicatable

Switching gears right quick…

Let’s discuss actual skills you need to be successful in network marketing, which you’re typically not told you need to learn.

Starting with…

Online and Offline Network Marketing

Whether you’re doing one-on-ones, home or hotel meetings, or even online presentations through webinars…

Doing sales presentations is not something you can duplicate straight away, because you need to learn and be trained on how to do them properly and effectively.

You can’t simply sit down with someone for 15 minutes and teach them how to do it and expect that all of the sudden they’re going to be really good at it.

Just like any other high-value skill…

To be good you have to practice, practice, practice.

You need to learn by watching and then by doing it multiple times.

You’re going to do a lot of meetings and you’re going to screw up a lot of presentations, where no one joins your team.

And hey…

That’s part of life; it’s how the cookie crumbles.

This is a skill that leaders commit to and are not what everyone in your team or yourself should want to do.

Next up…

Online and Offline Network Marketing

Okay, so here’s what it comes down to…

Anything that requires you to learn processes, anything that requires practice, and commitment to learning, are all considered to be leadership skills.

And you guessed it, these are not duplicatable.

Make no mistake, they’re essential for being successful in network marketing, but not everyone can be or wants to become a team leader.

Okay, if you’re still with me and have not abandoned ship…

Hang on, because I will now tell you the skills that can be duplicatable for you and all of your team, right now.

Drum roll please…

What’s actually duplicatable about building online (and learning attraction marketing)

First off, I believe there are lots of ways to build your network marketing business online.

And the best part is this..

Not only can you preserve your relationships, but you can also structure your business so you have people asking you about your opportunity or products, instead of you having to chase after them.

In fact, the reason I came online when I started in network marketing was because of the idea of…

Creating a website to captures leads
Building sales funnels
Having automated messages go out to all my prospects that visited my website
Running ads and crunching the numbers

Those ideas were more duplicatable, in my head, than what was being asked of me in traditional network marketing.

Back in 2006, when I first started, we didn’t have social media, like Facebook, in order to be able to build our business online.

We had to learn difficult skills like coding to build our websites, and there weren’t many resources out there to help us shorten the learning curve.

Nowadays we have killer resources…

…such as the Social Media Recruiting Frenzy guide, created by our friend Julie Burke, a multiple six-figure earner in network marketing.

Julie personally sponsored 270+ reps and grew a team of 8,300 distributors using Facebook from the comfort of her own home.

Now, do you think that is duplicatable?

Well the proof’s in the pudding, because Julie has trained thousands of people to do the same thing, with great success.

In fact, you can read more about how she built her business using social media in this blog post:

How This Stay-at-Home Mom of Two Built a Network Marketing Downline of Over 9,000 People With Social Media

Thanks to social media, we all have an infinite amount of prospects we can connect with and add to our friend’s list.

And, the best part is that this strategy only requires you to learn simple skills, such as how to do some posts, and also learn how to actively prospect people.

That, to me, is MUCH more duplicatable than cold market prospecting.

Now, just to confuse you a little, both of these strategies are technically “cold market prospecting.”

Traditional cold market prospecting is were you leave your home and talk to strangers face-to-face at the mall.

And social media cold market prospecting can be done in the comfort of your own home.

Which would you prefer?

Going beyond social media prospecting…

There are other methods which are also easily duplicatable.

And we prove how duplicatable they are inside of Elite Marketing Pro every single day.

Case in point…

We teach people how to run Facebook ads to generate leads.

Now, if we have—right now, today—hundreds of people generating thousands of leads using our training and our system, is that duplicatable?

Absolutely!

And the different ways of doing it are very interesting.

Now, for the sake of argument…

Say you’re a bit skeptical, and you DO NOT believe that building online, and creating funnels and websites, and all that stuff, is duplicatable.

Let’s say that’s true for a moment.

Okay, so let’s say I can easily teach somebody how to create a Facebook ad that goes to a one page website, which offers a prospect something of value in exchange of their contact information.

Now, keep in mind the ad could be about anything.

The ad could tell the story of a positive result somebody has produced in their life, which is also desired by whoever is receiving the message.

It could be about a particular product or how to effectively build a business online.

And you can simply link that ad back to a one page website to generate leads.

Sounds pretty easy, right?

But, hold on…

We said you didn’t believe that online prospecting was duplicatable, remember?

So let’s make the process even easier and something you and anyone in your team can definitely copy, without the need to learn any complicated skills.

Whatever the ad is about, you can create it just like I mentioned before…

But at the end you add some copy (meaning sales writing), which says…

“Comment below for more information.”

Now, you don’t even need a website!

Nor do you need any other links; your “call to action” (what you’re asking your audience to do, in ad-speak) doesn’t need to actually go anywhere.

Now, think about it…

Do you think I could teach someone to write three paragraphs, add a positive image of people smiling, and write their call to action as something along the lines of, “comment below for more info?”

Yes, one hundred percent I can!

And I do.

We are doing it right now, every day, here at Elite Marketing Pro.

In fact, not long ago one of our students, Gloria, after attending one of our workshops, reached out to me and told me that she did exactly that.

The strategy she was using to generating leads online is quite simple.

All she did was write three paragraphs about a mentor she had met at our workshop (who’s also one of our students).

She explained a little about the strategy her mentor was using to generate leads online and used a picture with her mentor and other people from the workshop for the ad.

Then added a call to action that said…