Karen Priemer, BSN RN ARBONNE INTERNATIONAL Regional Vice President
		Independent Consultant # 10037686

There are two things that prevent most network marketers from achieving success. First, they don't make $500 per month quickly enough. Second, neither do the people in their downlines!

Surprise: $500 is the income earning threshold below which there is no network  marketing organization - because there are no networkers around to make one. People who make $500 a month in this business stick around. People who don't - don't. It's that simple.

No one in this profession likes to talk about attrition. It undermines the picture-perfect duplication that some like to recite in their prospecting routines. You know the rap:  "You sponsor ten people, and they each sponsor ten people, and they each... and pretty soon..."  Now, how successful  would you be as a prospector if you said:  "You sponsor ten people, and then five drop out, and then the ones who are left sponsor ten people, and five of  those drop out, and then..."  Not as compelling a picture, is it? But it is the truth - or at least, it has been for most network marketers.

Please note that when we say "attrition," we're not just talking about "the downline," that impersonal entity  described on your genealogy. We're talking about you - the individual network marketer.

Statistically, attrition rates in network marketing organizations average about 40 to 50 percent per year. That  means that four or five out of every 10 distributors drop out of their organizations (and possibly out of network  marketing altogether) within a year of signing on - or sooner.

Now, that's no different from mainstream business startups, where four or five out of 10 new businesses fail within  the first year of operation. What hurts is that a 40 to 50 percent attrition rate means that 40 to 50 percent of all  your efforts as well as all the efforts of everyone in your organization are lost in spinning your wheels. You're all  sponsoring large numbers of folks into your organization only to have them leave before they've had the chance to be successful.

As Dayle Maloney says, "The problem with most network marketers is that they quit before payday."

What causes this high dropout rate, and what can we do about it? Ask open-ended questions like these, and  you're bound to get equally open-ended (and not terribly useful) answers. CEOs and master distributors alike have given us all sorts of philosophies on why distributors leave the business.

To find the empirical "truth," we rephrased the question. At what point do network marketers not drop out?    Specifically, how many dollars per month in compensation does a network marketer have to earn before a high percentage (let's say, 95 percent) do not drop out?  Just about everyone we spoke with answered: "About $500 per month sustained for at least two or three  months."  By when do they have to make that amount? Six to nine months, one year at most. Three months is even better.
And what if they don't? They leave the organization at a rate of 40 to 50 percent per year.  And if they do achieve $500   per month? They stay on board -  and usually become even more successful.  This law works. Have yourself (and each of your business  builders) achieve $500 or more per month in bonus/override compensation within three to nine months of enrolling, and just  watch. (Retail profits don't count in this scenariobecause the whole point is residual income.)   Your people will stay the course- if you teach them the truth about this business.

Ahh... now the 128-distributor question (at $500 per distributor, that's the $64,000 question): Why don't more network marketers ever get to the $500-per-month level?

Answer: poor sponsoring and training. Lack of knowledge about this industry and how it really works, which  leads to unrealistic expectations. The way you prospect and sponsor each individual into your program sets up their expectations for success... or for failure.

All too often, people dangle the "big money" in prospecting. But the fact is, a good number of business builders are not here for "big money" - just some money. With this grandiose style of prospecting, even if a distributor did reach $500 per month, he or she would probably feel like a big failure because he'd been set up to make $50,000, not $500. Responsible prospecting recognizes that $500 is a very respectable goal.

Tom "Big Al" Schreiter relates a wonderful story about a man who came into the business with the goal of making $500 a month. Not $10,000 or $20,000. Just $500 a month. The man achieved that goal fairly easily and stayed at that $500 income level for a number of years. That didn't seem very ambitious to Tom - especially for such an obviously gifted and capable guy - so he asked the fellow about it. Here's what the man told Tom:

He took his initial $500 and accelerated the mortgage payment on his house, paying it off in record time. He then  used his owned-free-and-clear equity to buy a second property, rented it out, and applied the "extra" $500 in the same manner he had with his own house. In less than five years, he ended up owning five income properties and was financially set for the rest of his life.  All by virtue of his $500 per month from network marketing.

What would happen if you told your people that the first step to success is to reach that $500-monthly level  within six to nine months - or maybe even a year? What happens to their expectations?

When they get to that $500 level, recognize and acknowledge their level of achievement. Treat $500 as a "rite  of passage." Call it a coming of age; celebrate it.  Now you have set up a wonderful expectation for your entire group.     (What if you told your people that the coming-of-age level was not $500, but $2,000? The $500 milestone would  go by unnoticed - and chances are, they wouldn't stick around long enough to reach $2,000.)

Share the $500 Solution, make a public celebration out of every distributor who achieves this level, and they  won't drop out: they've learned to expect that distributors earning $500 don't quit!

Also, note the difference in their attitude when they achieve $250 per month. Within the old paradigm of "getting  rich," $250 would have left them feeling like a failure (and therefore, being one). Now, when they reach $250, they'll say, "I'm halfway home!" What a difference!

If you want more of your people to stick with it - and stick with you - inject the $500 Solution into your teaching and training routine. Don't be afraid of scaring off "heavy hitters" with an eye to more sky-high incomes. Those  folks will quickly see the value of a system that has hundreds of part-time networkers (potentially in their  organization) all earning enough to keep themselves in business.

Just for fun, take out your calculator and crunch some numbers. What would happen if you dropped your own  organization's attrition rate by, say, 10 or 20 percent? I think that you'll find what you have is a good deal more than $500.