Flyer for local prospects - Is this the right message?

We are selling pharmaceutical grade health supplements that benefits people who suffer from cancer, diabetes, high blood, etc, and also for maintaining our overall health. We also have weight loss and beauty products as well. I am not here just because of the opportunity, I am here because these products are amazing and effective for me.

Jeff, I want you to succeed and I ask that you read every word of this lengthy post- I can't really shorten it without taking away from it. Read the whole thing from the standpoint that I truly do hope the company is everything you hope it is and that all works out well for you.

The short answer is test it. But keep in mind if you advertise something simple and very broad, you will get quite a range of responses from all sorts of people who each have all sorts of assumptions in their mind. I can pick out most of the mlm ads in the job section of the paper because the ones that are run over and over follow a similar theme. But many are run because they have been tested and pulled decent enough responses for many years. For instance, all the "sports minded" headlines. Buck, whom I'll mention in a moment, literally had a binder full of 100+ ads he had tested over time in the employment sections of newspapers all over the country.

The longer answer is let me tell you a story and please do more due diligence no matter how much you love the company. In fact, the more you love the company and the people, please research it even more...

When I was 18, I sold for a company called Equinox International. In fact, it was how I spent my summer in between high school and college. The products were generally pretty good. They had some anti-smoking herbal pills that worked like a charm for lots of people. I am generally against mlm's selling magic pills, but many of them seemed to do what they promised when I tested them on myself. Their water filters were excellent, including a great filtered shower head. Like most of these sorts of companies, the prices were a bit high, which was a sticking point to getting people to actually buy, particularly for the soaps and shampoos. For a few years after the company closed (more on that later), people were actively searching out distributers who still had product so that they could use them for personal use- because of the quality.

The problem was that hardly anyone sold product. The company didn't teach or support you hardly at all in selling product. It was all about getting people to sign up who will sell for you. But those people are pitched the same idea, etc. At 18, I was one of the youngest "director" level people. That means literally nothing other than a handful of people who responded to an ad were pitched and sold by my upline into a $5k package. I burned a lot of bridges turning toward my warm market. In fact, I'm pretty sure my high school changed their policy regarding the student directory in part due to me calling so many from it to pitch showing up to a meeting or whatever.

The guy that recruited me was Buck Reed. This guy could have sold anything to just about anyone. He would probably be worth $100m or more today if he had just stayed out of MLM/network marketing. If you google him, you will find that he went on to a number of similar companies, taking a step down in quality seemingly at every turn. Last I heard, he was arrested for shoplifting and is being investigated by the FBI. Pretty much all the guys at the top seem to have similar colorful histories. What you have to understand is that these top earners are often "bought." They bring a downline and their charm to the top spots many times for an outright, under the table bribe.

So anyway, this company seemed great at the time. In hindsight, there were many of the classic warning signs, but I didn't know that then- as was the case for many people. In a way, I'm now grateful that he or his assistant literally stole money from me because it made me walk away from that company sooner than I otherwise would have.

The company was shut down and the founder barred from the industry. He's now spending his time going around and suing all the former leadership for stealing his ideas and systems, which is kind of funny when you google the types of trainings they put on. I'm reserving judgement on whose fault everything is at the top- could have been them all, could have been a handful. We will never know. I don't know how much any of these guys ever really owned anyway because everything was leased it seems. Many were still "faking it til they made it" even near the top.

I'm not saying Usana is Equinox, but I urge you to research Equinox and some others that did fail first. Then compare them to Usana. This will allow you to hopefully make some comparisans and judge for yourself a bit better whether you are with a good company or not. Remember, the products are not enough. They could have the best products in the world and still fail as a company depending on their practices. If Usana is still looking good, wonderful.

I would like you to look at the compensation report on the Usana website. Like many similar companies, it does not look good at all when you crunch the numbers. Less than 1% make up the top 5 tiers combined in the "full time" category. That is NOT good. The next 3 tiers down combined make another 1.2% of the reps ranging from around $400-900 a week. The rest of the tiers have pretty pathetic income. Now I am purposely ignoring the "% active" column, because when you check th footnotes, that is throwing out the people who have not earned a commission check in certain period of time. That is an arbitrary measurement that basically is saying, if you ignore the people who have had no luck, quit, or are just signed up for a discount, then the numbers look better. Unfortunately the footnotes are being used to explain away the poor overall numbers, which is not a good sign. Footnotes should be used to show risks and caveats, NOT to sell us on why we should paint a rosier picture if we throw out a bunch of the data. Also keep in mind that the "income" is not including the personal orders people are making to keep their earnings, so even these low numbers are inflated.

Here is my suggestion: Forget about signing people up right now no matter how much you love the products. Spend at least 1-3 months selling the products only to regular people, not mlm types- though you need to target the more affluent. Leave the mlm/network marketing lingo aside and focus on selling the products. If your upline tells you the opposite, consider running. Do not even attempt to sell the opportunity until you can prove that you can sell the products on their own to people.

If you can do that, and you still believe in the company, not only will you likely make money longer term, but you will likely excel and do very well for yourself- if and only if the product is sellable on its own merits.

You will then be able to legitimately show people who sign up how to make money selling product versus just opportunity. Insist that your downline do exactly as you did. Provide them training and support on how to sell product. REQUIRE they do this before selling the opportunity. You may just find that others start asking you to train their people. They might even pay you, and you might be able to make additional income doing seminars and selling packaged training products.

As others have said, if you skip all of this and everyone's focus is on the opportunity, consider looking for the exit before you get too far into this. But I do hope things work out well for you. Just keep in mind that most everyone who signs up is thinking exactly as you are right now- hardly anyone signs up planning to fail.

I hope it's clear that I'm not trying to knock the company or your goals, because I know that won't help anything at all. I just want to be sure you look at it from all different angles other than product quality and internal company training/koolaid.