How to Reverse Attrition

There is a popular belief in Network Marketing circles that attrition is normal, to be expected and is a fact of life. Well, let me tell you - IT IS NOT!

Attrition is usually thought of as the natural and expected reduction or decrease of numbers in a DownLine over time. Up until now the industry's solution to counteract this problem is to recruit more and more people in order to keep the numbers up. With attrition going on - growth is slow because to grow you first need to constantly replace the people you are losing thru attrition. To grow you need to keep pumping more and more new people into the equation. To grow you have to outpace attrition. It's a lot of work to have to keep thinking of new ways to "get" new people in. There is a better and easier way. And that's exactly what we will be talking about here.

Traditional views of attrition are not only about the gradual reduction in numbers. Attrition is also about the wearing away and reduction of enthusiasm, interest, and participation over time. Without attention people do stop their AutoShip and people will drift away. The industry does not really talk much about this nor does it offer many real solutions. We both talk about attrition and offer real solutions!

To us attrition in Network Marketing is not a fact of life that we have to live with and work hard to overcome. What if we could not only stop attrition, but - even better - what if we could reverse it? What if you could profit more from working with your existing DownLine than you could prospecting? With appropriate software we now have the technology to do all this.

As an example let's calculate and consider the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a person drinking a healthy beverage in the business I do. You can calculate the LTV of someone in your own business using the LTV concept. In this kind of analysis you will see why it is smart to spend some of your time to make a few structured follow-up phone calls to make sure a new customer is off to a good start and continues on the program. In our example, the average drinker with spouse and family and loved ones will consume $220 worth of product per month (a company average). With a 20% commission per drinker I will get about $44 each and every month for as long as they drink their healthy beverage. This is a recurring income of $528 per year or $10,560 for a 20-year period.

In my Network Marketing business I do regular follow-up calls at least once or twice a year. Depending on the expected LTV of a customer in your business you can design your own follow up protocol. Don't you think it is wise to make a few calls to educate and support your people in their health and to make this kind of money? It's actually better than that. Each happy consumer will tell their happy story to their friends and relatives and many of them will want your product. This simple follow-up that can now be automated is designed to create the majority of everyone in our DownLine "loving" your product and becoming "Raving Fans". This is how you can have your downline can grow even without recruiting any new outside people! Attrition is something that should never be happening in the first place.

Besides being more fun to work with happy people - let me talk about the money side of it for awhile - since that's what a lot of people are interested in. The contact with a customer can just be a short phone call, message, or personal email that says you are wishing them well and that you are calling to insure that your product is contributing to their health and happiness. With proper software I can say "I'll talk to you again in 6 months" and the software will remind me in exactly 6 months to do just that.

When I do call back the software will display all my notes from my past conversations. It will be like we're old friends. Over time I will know all about this family of consumers. I have the advantage of TOTAL RECALL because all my past interactions with this person are all be on the screen in front of me. It will be like we just talked yesterday. People are amazed by what they think is my extraordinary memory.

The benefits of this new program can be extraordinary! Would you make a short call to insure, trouble shoot, nurture and grow about $158 to $500 of annual income for every contact or call?

Let's say you average 2 to 3 minutes per phone call. Remember, with proper software this is all automated. Your DownLine Genealogy is downloaded into your PC from your Back Office so it is in a very user friendly format. Good software will do the organizing and even the dialing for you. All you have to do is the talking, inspiring and have fun with your people. And don't forget to put notes in your computer system for the next time you FollowUp.

Let's say you can average 20 calls an hour. In that one hour you can empower, grow and insure over $3,000 to $10,000 worth of your own annual income. This is what you can do with technology. It sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

By calling just an hour a day you can totally cover a DownLine of 2,000 in about 100 days. And just think, every time you raise up someone's energy in your business - you raise the energy of that person's circle of influence and the energy of yourself and of your whole business! Each contact you make with someone is an opportunity to make sure that they are totally delighted with your product and that they are getting their shipments OK and to put attention on the value they are getting from your product.

If people are not real committed to your product they will stop AutoShip for very minor reasons. This is the root cause of attrition. Attrition should not be happening. If it does, you are not doing your job of taking care of your DownLine. In hard times like these the most popular reason people drop out is that it costs too much. Many will think of your product as a luxury that they think they can do without. When someone says "it costs too much" they are really saying that to them - their money and what it can buy is of more value than your product. It is your job to reverse this idea and keep it reversed.

What we have been talking about here is reversing attrition by increasing the value and the joy of using your product. Each contact with a customer is an opportunity to educate and raise them up! In other words - it is a chance to increase the value of the product and increase the probability that they will stay with the product, stay healthy, and stay on AutoShip. Remember, you are doing them a favor by giving them a call and supporting them in taking care of themselves.

There are 3 dimensions to Increasing your Bottom Line.

1. Quantity refers to the number of consuming units you have
2. Depth talks about how much each unit is consuming
3. Width refers to how many different products are each unit using

First, each call is a great opportunity to increase the Quantity of consuming units. Always ask for referrals. This can greatly expand your business. Who do they know that would love the benefits they are receiving? Who in their own family could benefit from your product? You can coach them to follow up on the referrals or even do the follow up yourself.

Second, each call is a good time to increase the Depth of the use of the product. During each call we want to review the idea of Recommended Use. Are they using enough to make a difference. This is the amount someone should be consuming in order to get the best results. If you do your job of teaching then each consumer and all family members will be taking the optimal amount. Find out how many people are consuming what in the family and that is how many cases they should be consuming each month. Moving people up to the recommended amount, keeping them on AutoShip, and expanding the AutoShip in a family will greatly increase your bottom line.

Third, is increasing the Width. Remind them of other products your company offers like: diet, vitamins, snacks, and beauty supplies, etc.

It is important to know the percentage of AutoShip Participation on various levels of your DownLine. Possibly your back office can help you with providing you the data you need to make this calculation or you can use our software which can report this. The Percent AutoShip Participation (PAP) is an index of how educated and inspired your DownLine is. Another way to think about this is that this is an index of how much your DownLine values your product. It is also a measure of the financial productivity of your DownLine.

Your Percent AutoShip Participation is good to know for your own business. If you are buying or selling a DownLine - you will be able to quantify how fast the line is growing or shrinking and how financially healthy it is. If a DownLine is losing energy you can use these techniques to improve it's health.

Our initial findings on live data show that typical actual AutoShip Participation is about one fourth to one half of what it should and could be. The difference between actual and potential sales in a DownLine is what we call "the Gap". Wouldn't it be nice for you to be able to measure and therefore know your Gap. Once you know your Gap you can begin using a system to fill it in.

This means that by calling into our DownLine and empowering them - you can double, triple or quadruple your volume without even enrolling another person. Now, what do you think of that?

If you have tens or hundreds of thousands in your DownLine this sounds impossible to do, but in reality it is simple and here is how to do it. Have key players in your organization take on the responsibility of their own leg. It's in their own best interest to adopt these ideas. It will be easy and profitable for them to follow these common sense guidelines to support and energize their own DownLine - which is also part of your DownLine. Software can help analyze legs and find problem areas.

If you have a large organization and have many distributors that are not covered by key players you can hire a nice person to do this kind of Customer Service activity. Big businesses will do this. Based on our work in another industry we predict that the Benefit to Cost Ratio of having a paid Customer Service person will be as high as 10 to 1. That is to say - the income produced by this paid Customer Service Representative can be 10 greater than their cost. We have shown this to be true over and over again in other businesses. It also means you can go out and play more while your Customer Service person grows your DownLine from the inside. The alternative is to just let attrition continue to happen.

Everyone in business knows that it is at least 10 times easier to keep a customer than it is to get a new one. And that's exactly what this new technology is all about. We also know the damage that just one unhappy person can do to a group. As they say: "just one sour apple can spoil a barrel". By calling into your DownLine - you can find slightly unhappy situations and prevent people from becoming more unhappy and doing damage to your group. If you catch the cause of someone's unhappiness early it may be trivial and is easily fixed. It might be a lost order, a rumor, or a silly misunderstanding. An industry standard is that one sour puss will infect, on average, 13 other people.

A HUGE reason for unhappiness in a DownLine is that it seems that nobody cares. And that's exactly what we are remedying by calling and putting energy into your DownLine.

In general, in the past, the Network Marketing industry has placed its focus on recruiting to counteract the problem of attrition. We know there is great value in shifting the emphasis more to keeping, building, loving, and growing the people we already have.

With new software this is entirely easy, doable and effective. You can easily do a fantastic job of expanding the people you already have! I might add that the results of this extra attention will last and be very profitable. As your DownLine stabilizes and grows, so does your Residual Income. Attrition will be a thing of the past. Attrition can be so much a thing of the past that we predict that we can begin to expect tremendous spontaneous growth from inside your DownLine without having to create any new outside enrollments yourself. Of course, you should keep prospecting outside your DownLine, but in a balanced sort of way.

Remember, one of our intentions is for your clients to "love" your product and become "Raving Fans". Having your people raving about your product can only breed more Raving Fans. With proper software you will have an ability to easily do this type of structured follow-up and we predict your DownLine will spread like wildfire!

About the Author

Daniel Blake is a seasoned Network Marketer and has designed over 20 major computer systems. He is currently putting the final touches on a system to support Network Marketing organizations.

Daniel would love to discuss the software or these concepts with you. He can be reached at 541-482-0800 or emailed at Daniel@DanielBlake.US