I know all about the consequences of the current economic downturn – I guess you could consider me a casualty. After spending about 12 years of my life in the golf retail business, managing three stores and putting in the the 50-60 hours a week those in retail think nothing about, it came to a pretty sudden end in early 2008. The combination of the deteriorating economy, high fuel costs, three stores worth of overhead, costs of renting property in an area of the country where it certainly isn’t cheap, and increasing competition from online sources we were ill-prepared to compete against, cutting back on expenses became the owner’s primary concern. Being probably his largest day to day expense, eliminating my position seemed to be the most expedient way to start. I had begun to see the writing on the wall after a slow Christmas season in 2007, but the suddenness still blindsided me.
Do I even need to say that all three stores were closed before 2008 had ended?
At one time not too long ago, good job opportunities in the golf retail industry in privately owned shops were abundant, but those days are long over. Golf retail has gone the way of big box stores, like many industries, such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy and Golfsmith, and unless I was interested in entering the corporate world I had managed to avoid for virtually my entire working life, my options were limited to say the least.
It was decision time.
Owning a business was always something I had in the back of my mind, but like so many, I was so busy making a living and taking care of my family it was put on the back burner. I was in no position to invest the amount of money required to start a brick-and-mortar business – between renting space, buildout, inventory, and hiring employees you could be looking at $50,000-$100,000 before the doors are ever opened. Then come the marketing expenses.
Marketing was always something that interested me, and something I always felt was an area where most retailers were woefully inadequate, mainly because the majority of them offer absolutely no value. It is usually about nothing more than the sales pitch, which turns off most people, preventing them from ever becoming customers. I trained my staff to lead with value, and position our stores as the place to go for expert advice in all things golf-related, thereby eliminating price as the primary issue, and becoming consultants instead of salesmen. I always thought this was the only way to grow any specialty retail business. Unfortunately, the owner did not choose to market in this manner, employing instead the same tired “discount retailer” approach.
The network marketing industry had also engaged pretty much primarily in its own offline methods of marketing up to that time – cold calls, pitching family and friends, the dreaded “3-foot rule”, buying lead lists, and other unsavory activities. I had had my fill of that kind of selling in some (very) short stints with sales companies before I had entered retail. Ironically, one of the things that attracted me to retail was the idea of the potential customer coming to you, as opposed to chasing them down.
Enter attraction marketing.
Some very forward thinking people in the network marketing industry like Ann Seig and Mike Dillard saw the limitations the old model of offline marketing techniques presented in being able to recruit and maintain any kind of marketing team. They had become successful themselves, but prospects were hard to keep because not everyone has the single-mindedness and drive required to succeed using old school methods. On top of that, most people just did not enjoy it, and many times just could not afford to stay in business.
Attraction marketing is built around the concept that people like to buy, but hate to be sold to. Think of online stores like Amazon.com – is there a more pleasurable shopping experience anywhere? You get personalized recommendations, the ability to create wish lists, and both positive and negative reviews on almost any product under the sun. This is all before you ever buy a single thing! When you’re ready to buy, it can be as simple as one click. Is it any wonder that they are one of the few companies that has held its own despite the awful economy?
The key to attraction marketing success is offering value first. Instead of the tried and true marketing methods of chasing people down and selling them your product or opportunity, you are positioning yourself as someone who is a leader, and whose main concern is providing information. This information, usually free, educates the prospective customer, and helps to provide solutions. People are starved for this kind of information, and want to buy from someone who offers it.
Another key component of the attraction marketing model is the ever-growing number of methods to market online for little to no cost, thus eliminating one of the obstacles for a lot of people to enter the industry. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and Squidoo, known as social networking sites, are a handful of the places that network marketers use to position themselves in the marketplace for free. They’re also a heck of a lot more fun than the old school methods!
Why are specialty retailers positioned better than most to take advantage of the new model of network marketing?
1. Attraction marketing is second nature to us. Any good retailer understands how vital it is to always lead with value. We have spent our careers building relationships by positioning ourselves as leaders so that we were never in the position of having to chase down customers.
2. We are self-starters. You can’t survive as a retail owner or manager being a clock-puncher. No one is going to build your business for you, so long, odd hours are the norm. It’s no different building a network marketing business, except for one powerful thing – you make your own hours. If you feel like working in the middle of the night, the internet is always open. That’s the reason a lot of people are doing this for a source of supplemental income – there are no set hours. It’s your business, but since you don’t have employees and store hours to worry about, you work when you choose to.
3. Getting the proper education in internet network marketing is essential, but “sales training” is old hat to retailers. The beauty is that by using the attraction marketing concept of monetization, or affiliate marketing, you can actually pay for your education, and in a lot of cases actually be profiting, while learning. Affiliate marketing is essentially a business relationship with a merchant who allows you to link to that business, usually at no cost to you. When a visitor clicks on the link at your site and subsequently makes a purchase from the merchant, you receive a commission. This can be done in the course of learning the business, and is a vital part of many attraction marketing systems, like Ann Seig’s Renegade System.
4. The fact that we have spent our careers learning to deal with customers, both in person and on the phone, makes us uniquely qualified as leaders in this brave new world. The difference here is that using online methods allows us to reach far more people in far less time, and with far less expense.
5. The tax savings that many retailers are already familiar with and accustomed to are also very much present in network marketing. Your office is your home, and that in itself provides a slew of deductions.
Those are some excellent reasons for retailers to look at network marketing as a viable business opportunity, but the current economic situation may be the most important factor. The economy isn’t expected to turn around for quite some time, meaning more job losses and less discretionary spending money for Americans. Discretionary spending is the lifeblood of retail, so that fact doesn’t bode well for the industry, particularly for specialty stores.
The network marketing industry is entering a boom period that will only grow in size as more and more unemployed and disgruntled workers look online for income-generating opportunities. This works to the advantage of those of us already established in network marketing. We will be uniquely positioned to be leaders in the right industry, at just the right time, to provide much needed information about those opportunities. The low cost of entry and running a business makes it an appealing alternative now, and with social networking growing more and more every day, that isn’t going to change for quite some time.
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