The dreaded F-word, failure — it is so important, so common, and yet so misunderstood. Succeeding in Network Marketing depends on knowing how to apply the same leverage principles that make the business model work to the failures you’ll encounter in your day-to-day experience as a Networker.

Few people choose to study their own failures except to lament the consequences and formulate what they believe to be corrective solutions. Most of us have strong tendency to concentrate on the negative side of failure — it’s all bad. (This is terrible., I was counting on Bill to join! It’s no wonder, I must have sounded so stupid on the phone. . . . The meeting was awful! This one prospect just wouldn’t shut up about pyramids so it got all tense and no one signed up…. Oh my God, the company’s gone bankrupt, how am I going to explain it to my group ?!) While the experience of a failed effort can range from mildly unpleasant to devastating, in focusing on the experience alone, we miss the significant positive contributions. The fact is that, like it or not, it’s impossible to be successful without experiencing some degree of failure. Of course we want to avoid it, but how many of us avoid it at such costs that we end up avoiding success with equal determination?

By promoting a more informed and tolerant opinion of failure, I hope to counter the pressure that causes people to respond to failure in ways that inhibit progress and spawn more of the same.  I suggest instead that failure can be a compass for day-by-day progress as you build your Network Marketing business.

Your Failure Guarantee:
Perfectionism

Even if you don’t consider yourself a perfectionist, my guess is you are, even if not as rigidly as the self-proclaimed. Have you ever not engaged in a company promotion because you were afraid you wouldn’t be able to meet the requirements to win the prize or recognition? The perfectionist model of “needing to win to try” kept you from trying. How often have you heard the Network Marketing adage, “The only way you can fail in Network Marketing is to quit or not to start?” Many prefer the second because it’s easy to argue that you can’t fail at something you didn’t try.  (Is it true?)

Perfection is obviously an unrealistic benchmark, yet we hold ourselves to that standard as each of us have self-defined it.  Don’t get me wrong; perfection serves as a useful model, but not as a standard for assessing progress and failure!

In the perfection model, everything works 100 percent of the time and in just the right way. The perfect Network Marketing organization uses the best resources available smartly and efficiently; all members are dear about their visions and eagerly work toward achieving them; the group volume is always on the rise; everyone is making all the right moves generating all the right results; everyone is having fun and experiencing incredible personal growth. Everyone is armed with the same information, and everyone is a rational decision-maker making the best possible choices. Everything is absolutely perfect! No one is ever guilty of making a wrong move. No one wastes valuable resources pursuing unachievable objectives. No one ever loses a customer, no one
quits. Powered by perfection, the emphasis is on outcomes and all of them are just right.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? And a bit like a joke. In reality, because of natural limitations in every area, failures are native to even the most dynamic individuals and organizations in this industry. Ask the leaders in your organization and I assure you they will confirm that making progress, building a customer base, and increasing your residual income level entails increasing the number of failures in the process. How many times have top leaders said that in the early months of their MLM business they “did everything wrong” or “made every mistake in the book”?  The key is that their goal was progress, not perfection — and progress requires more, not fewer, failures.

The very notion of perfection is at odds with the most
fundamental premise of success: Failure is inevitable. I realize that this knowledge may or may not help you sleep easier. Letting go of the impossible standard of perfection, however, can be a welcome relief — and the first meaningful step toward the success you’re after. The flip side of a commitment to perfection is a too-active relationship with the progress killer — excuse. When we renounce the perfection paradigm, we can also “break up with” our excuses.

Excuses: Explaining Failure Away

Failure is not socially acceptable. It’s humiliating, the kiss of death, the plague, insert your own opinion of it in yourself and others. Is it any wonder that we go to great lengths to avoid failure? Who would want to be associated with something so terrible?

Conversely, excuses are socially acceptable reasons for socially unacceptable behavior. Whenever we make excuses, we shortchange ourselves, either claiming failure from the get-go — Oh yeah, I made those calls but… no one was home, -yeah that’s it, and I didn’t want to leave a message…. Oh, I can’t commit to bring anyone to my website this week because I’m going to be really busy — or explaining our results away — These people must be stupid not to see how great this is! Next! — and missing the opportunities for growth that failure offers.

No one wants to experience failure or to be held responsible for it. When unsuccessful, we tend to make excuses, convincing ourselves that the causes lie beyond our control. In some cases this may be true, such as no one showing up at your website because a horrible blizzard suddenly blew through town, but such rare scenarios aside, we need to get real — success depends upon failure and acceptance of responsibility. This isn’t to castigate ourselves — failure doesn’t have to be all bad, remember? — it’s to learn from those failures. If you keep talking to people and keep assessing your audience as stupid when no one signs up, week after week, where’s the sense in that? Excuses get in the way of progress. In Network Marketing, excuses often start inhibiting progress on day one. How many people sign the application because they would love to be successful but aren’t willing to risk the failures they know lie between them and their dream?

Successful people refuse to play victim to “the system,” the government, the economy, the red tape, or the “impossibility” of a situation. They attempt difficult tasks, fail frequently in the process, and consider each failure for the information it provides for the benefit of future endeavors.

How about that as an approach? Failure as a data collection bank.  With every failure, you gain new information, new insight, a deposit to draw upon for future success. Consider the possibility that failure provides an invaluable contribution: feedback.
 
If Failure Could Speak . . .

Failure serves much the same purpose as pain in the human body.  Although no one wants to endure pain, we respond to it as a warning. Just as pain during exercise tells us we’ve hit our limit or used bad form and need to change what we’re doing, failure is our cue to take action to avoid more of the same and
promote progress. It tells us where we went wrong and which is a step closer to what’s right. Failure is simply feedback!

Unfortunately, when we encounter failure, we tend to concentrate on the pain that this failure has caused rather than examining the reason why it happened in the first place. As in medicine, accurate diagnosis is a large part of the cure. Both progress and failure leave clues. Be willing to trace your actions and determine the weaknesses in your approach, or you will face repeating the same failure. Failure is a great teacher, but we must be willing to identify its cause.

As you make decisions about how and what to pursue in your Network Marketing business, remember:

1) Perfection stands at odds with the most fundamental premise of success: Failure is inevitable. To double your income rate, trade your excuse rate for a failure rate!

2) Excuses are socially acceptable reasons for socially unacceptable behavior. Whenever you make excuses, you shortchange yourself.

3) Failure is inevitable and provides valuable feedback for how to be more effective as a Networker. Harvest failure for positive new approaches and techniques for building your business. It is the greatest teacher of success — be an A student!

So what have you been viewing as Failure so far in your MLM business?  Does this post help you in figuring HOW to begin leveraging it now?

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