Why People Hate MLM People

Spam by Stefano Brivio

When I was in college, I was an active member of a Multi-Level Marketing company: TIENS [1]. Most of my friends who aren’t MLM distributors or have only heard about it from unreliable sources usually are skeptic and unwelcome towards it. On one side I must admit that being a distributor for an MLM company has had a huge positive impact on my growth as a person, but on another side I do understand the problem people have with MLM people.

There are plenty of good points from my experiences as an MLM distributor that I can share with you, and one of them is the fact that I started writing a journal [2] as an indirect effect of being an MLM agent. You see, a bonafide MLM company would have a business school that’s part of the program and as a distributor you would be invited to participate in the events of this business school. And like Robert Kiyosaki said in his Cashflow Quadrant [3], one of the stronger points of working in an MLM or network marketing company is the benefit of the business schools that can really help us to know ourselves and grow to become a better person.

However, as I said above I often see the case where people avoid interacting with these MLM people and sometimes even to the point where they hate their MLM abducted friends. Accusations of brainwash and cult religions have even been thrown around, but the main turn off is usually the way these MLM people try to recruit others to follow their cause. This has made me think why do people object strongly towards this approach in marketing, and then it suddenly hit me: it’s spam.

Spam is no trust

Several weeks ago, I read an article from Chris Brogan who talked about spam revolution [4]. That article gave me insight as to why people hate MLM: it’s because the way MLM distributors work is similar to how spam works. You play by the numbers, you make cold calls or cold emails, and your approach is most of the time purely marketing.

Or in other words: the MLM distributors don’t take enough time building trust and relationship with their prospective clients, so it feels like spam when they’re approached!

Think about it: spam is spam because it has little to no immediate value to us. It’s believed that the way spam works is by relying on the 1% of the target prospects that do reply back, at the inconvenience of the 99%. That’s why we hate spam, because it’s a cold and impersonal method that offends and annoys us when we receive this kind of marketing.

And that’s exactly how most MLM distributors work: they send out emails en masse or make cold phone calls to people they’ve never met before, and then they make their pitch of a better life and an unlimited stream of income. By any other standard, this quality of approach is no better than an infomercial on late night TV or those annoying telemarketing people that always call during dinner time. This is hurtful for both parties: the prospect feels annoyed because he is constantly being called or texted or what not, and the MLM distributor has a hard time convincing a prospect that doesn’t want to be approached like that.

Build trust for a better life

I’m writing about this because I do believe that joining an MLM company is one the better ways to build an asset for your financial independence: it works on the same business principles as opening a chain of stores or building your own conventional enterprise. There is also a lot to gain from joining the business school, as it’s one of the least expensive and most efficient ways to grow as a character. But the problem remains: there is not enough trust and relationship building, therefore people will always misunderstand the simple intention of MLM distributors.

This is also true for all businesses: if you don’t build trust with your customers and clients you’ll have to rely on big budget advertising to promote your products, and we all know that isn’t sustainable in the long term. This is also true for non-business relationships in life: when we want to ask a person to contribute or do something for us, asking first without building a healthy amount of trust prior will be like spamming that person to buy our product. Why? Why should I do it for you? Why should I join your cause or help your family?

As I’ve said before, trust is the fundamental currency of society [5]. It takes a long time and plenty of hard work to gain the trust of another person, but when we do then we are able to make valuable transactions with that person, money involved or not. I think we should give trust building approach in our relationships more credit and attention than the small amount we do now.

What do you think?

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[1] TIENS is an MLM company from China. It’s considered to be one of the largest and most expansive international MLM’s here in Indonesia
[2] Write Your Own Spiritual Memoir, 2009
[3] Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki is a best selling book on independent financial education
[4] Spam is a Perception – Mine, by Chris Brogan
[5] Be Authentic: The No.1 Commodity is Trust, 2009
[6] Photograph by Stefano Brivio. Because spam doesn’t work, people!