The company and its management

The company comes first in priority for one simple reason: the company is your major strategic alliance partner. If it goes out of business, for any reason, so do you.

Company failure is the single biggest threat to every network marketer, because 75% of MLM companies fail in the first five years, and that figure rises to more than 90% by the end of ten years.

Check out the track record of the company owners and senior management. Have they been previously involved in failed companies? Do they have convictions for criminal or corporate offences, such as fraud? (Corrupt, incompetent or inexperienced management is still a major cause of company failure. Any decent company will be happy to be scrutinised.)

Does the company display one or more of what I call "MLM Company Killers"? These are features that may be desirable in conventional businesses, but become corporate death wishes in network marketing companies.  Learn more...

The real role of the company in network marketing is twofold...

• Develop and supply high quality, marketable, in-demand products that meet the Three Criteria of Fulfilment, are highly consumable and are supported by quality collateral materials (sales aids and tools) and adequate quality control, quality assurance and product insurances.
  
  
• Make sure you get paid – on time and the right amount.

It is not the company's role to provide you with leads, with free literature or stationery to help you run your business. Yes, it should provide product-related information and training to help you know those products better and sell them more effectively, but network marketing companies are different from conventional business organisations in only one crucial aspect...

They outsource their selling operations to their distributor networks.

That's it. End of story. They may deliver the products sold by the distributor networks to the individual distributors, or they may deliver them to the end users. That's logistics, and you should be aware of this as part of your evaluation.

In the strictest sense, however, everything related to sales and recruiting is up to its network of distributors, who are all independent small business operators. These independent networks are responsible for recruiting, training, supporting and supervising their teams of distributors. The company may choose to help out by providing systems and collateral materials to help in these responsibilities, but that's not their true role.

If you see the relationship between distributor and company as anything more than this, you've missed – or misunderstood – the most basic reality of network marketing.