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April 12, 2003
Things on my mind
By QBlog in
Door to door selling is dead. Phone solicitations are dead. High-pressure sales are dead. Bulk mail is dead. Multi-Level Marketing is dead.
There I said it. MLM is dead. It is an idea that is past its prime and, if not yet dead, is quickly fading into the sunset. How do I know this? One indication is Spam. That junk e-mail that fills your inbox every day is a metaphorical church bell ringing the end of an era.
Explanation
All of the above "sales" techniques are essentially spam, meaning they are intrusive. To be more specific, they are aggressive (on different levels). The model is that the sales force finds the customer instead of the customer finding the sale. This model worked for many years for a variety of reasons. Some of those reasons are:
1. Information was difficult to acquire
2. People were less mobile
3. Americans had more free time
4. Society was more trusting as a whole
5. Community was strong
People have increasingly busy lifestyles and having someone break that routine to try and "sell them something" is less kosher than it was in past decades. When modern man wants to buy something he knows it and he will research it and then buy the product or service. Sometimes that "research" is in the form of advertising but even that isn't intrusive in the same way that MLM marketing is intrusive.
Advertising can be ignored, skipped, passed by or ridiculed without involving any personalities. It is, by definition, passive. Even "intrusive" Web ads are essentially passive. Yet, when you introduce the human element into the equation the entire dynamic suddenly shifts. Suddenly, emotions, personalities and expectations begin to affect the "customer." In a passive setting this is quite unexpected and generally unwelcome today. This is the reason door-to-door sales have declined precipitously in the past few decades. People generally don't want to unexpectedly interact with people when they are in passive mode. What's more, they don't want to interact with someone who is trying to sell them something.
I speak only from observations and lack any real scientific knowledge of sociological trends. What I wonder is if others see what I see. Additionally, from my understanding, Quixtar hasn't grown much in modernized markets (where community is less central to the social environment) while it (Amway) has grown rapidly in less-advanced markets (where community is still central). Is there a correlation? Maybe. Maybe not.