There are many direct sales and multi-level companies around and it is difficult to choose.

As we are now in the 21st century the internet can no longer be ignored by these companies, nor can the strength of their distributorship to use this medium to increase sales.

I have recently built my entire organization using my website and an auto-responder giving details of how to sign up, all set up automatically. I have only spoken to a few people directly about the opportunity and they were people who had questions about how to submit their application forms.

Using the internet as your opening speech has to be the way of the future. It saves you as the distributor untold hours of attending meetings, doing presentations, only to get a no at the end. It is a waste of your time which is the most valuable resource any of us have.

A well structured website does this for you. It answers all the questions a prospect may have, presents the company and the opportunity and offers sign up then and there. A one stop shop.

This way, it is the prospect who is using their time to invest in their own future, not you using your time, to hopefully convince someone to join you.

It is less personal if your prospect does not want to join you. They take a good look at the site and either sign up or not. No sweat. It is easier for them to ‘reject’ it.

My prospects are given a series of emails that explains the company details a little more than the website, even though the site does a really good job of that, and then sends them the form to fill in and send back. I have a 7-10% success rate which I think is pretty good.

I would urge other MLM companies to consider allowing distributors to utilize the technology rather than keep a cloak and dagger over what the opportunity actually is. This is more frustrating to people especially as internet users and consumers are much more sophisticated to today’s marketing techniques. If I give my email address then I’m exposed to whatever sort of information they want to send me. If you ‘make’ someone give you information before you give information, I can guarantee you that today, that prospect is just going to walk away.

If you don’t have the courage or ability to explain what your opportunity is openly and in a straight forward manner up front, your trust rating goes to zero and that prospect is going to move on to the next big thing who has the courage to do so.

I don’t believe that any MLM or direct sales company can afford not to move with the times, especially those that still rely on party presentations as their sole avenue for obtaining sales.

At the very least, allow distributors to have an email party. So easily done and much more effective. Can you imagine, for a minute, if you emailed everyone on your list and told them you were having a catalogue email party, take a look at xxxxx page and send me your order, how many more orders you are likely to get rather than having to get somebody at a place, at a certain time, with peer pressure to buy? Think about it.

As more and more consumers choose to shop online for all kinds of services, it makes sense that the direct sales community move with that opportunity and tap into those potential sales.