The 5 Pillars of Network Marketing: The Foundation of Your Long-Term Success

A network marketing company is your financial vehicle: the thing that takes you from where you are independent now to where you want to be. Even if you are a good driver, you need to have a safe, reliable and efficient vehicle to get you to your destination.

So how do you know if your vehicle is capable of taking you where you want to go? How do you know you have the right vehicle? And what do you do when you find out you’re in the wrong vehicle?

That’s where the 5 Pillars can help you gauge if the MLM company you represent is the right vehicle for you. The 5 Pillars are what you need to be successful in a company in the long term.

My mentor Michael Dlouhy founded “The 5 Pillars” after joining over 100 MLM companies between 1992 and 1994 to find out as much as he could about how this business works. Since then, he has helped thousands of network users to solve this game.

Unfortunately, the network marketing industry has a strange reputation. That is partly due to people’s ignorance, lack of understanding and also largely due to the fact that there are too many network marketing companies that are just no good. People aren’t succeeding because they just don’t know any better.

For example, there are many scams disguised as MLM companies that take advantage of their distributors. There are many companies that come and go very quickly because they have incompetent management or because they don’t have the right product at the right time. There are many companies that have products that are too expensive. There are many companies that have horrible compensation plans. There are many companies that do not properly train their distributors.

The 5 Pillars that a network marketing company must have to be successful in the long term are:

1. Business management experience with integrity – If you don’t have this one, you can forget about everything else. How can you be successful without good people at the helm? It is imperative that company management understand what it is to be a distributor. Do a Google search on company executives to find out who they really are.

2. Timing in the company and Timing in the industry – Has the company shown consistent profits for at least two years? More importantly, will the industry you serve stand the test of time? There’s no use trying to sell long distance phone calls when you can now make them for free.

3. A great product at a cheap price – All legal MLM companies have amazing products. That’s a fact. But are they reasonably priced compared to the rest of the market? Sure, maybe it’s better than a non-MLM product, but can you easily sell the products based on their added benefits? Or do you constantly have to justify why yours is so much more expensive than anything else on the market?

4. A compensation plan that rewards part-time workers – 96% of all network marketers are building their business part time and a good compensation plan should reward them accordingly. Why should they continue to build the business if they get practically nothing for their efforts?

5. A proven duplicable system – This does NOT imply writing a list of family, friends and previous contacts. This has a lot to do with a training program that teaches people how to market and how to be leaders. A duplicable system gives people the necessary skills and tools to make the business work.

If your company does not have these 5 pillars then RUN. Due to your due diligence and finding a company that does it, it will pay off in the long run.