In today’s post I want to share some of my top Richard Poe quotes.
I recently read the book The Wave 4 Way to Building Your Downline by Richard Poe. This book was recommended to me by a close friend.
I really enjoyed the book. It was informative, well written and easy to read. It would definitely benefit any network marketer. What I enjoyed most about the book were the stories of successful distributors.
Top Richard Poe Quotes
What I want to do in the paragraphs below is share some of my favorite Richard Poe quotes from the book. Each quote is in bold and italics. After each quote I will share my own thoughts on the quote. The quotes are listed in no particular order.
# 1: I would rather have one perfect of the efforts of one hundred people than a hundred percent of my own efforts.
The real beauty of network marketing is that you can potentially get on paid on hundreds, thousands even tens of thousands of people’s efforts. This is much better than only getting paid on the work that you do.
# 2: No matter how much linear income you receive, you must still report for duty and perform physical work…in exchange for every penny you make.
Whether you own a traditional business or have a day job, you have no leverage. When you stop working you stop getting paid. This isn’t a big deal until you get hurt, want to take time off, or no longer can work. Even if you have a linear income, you should strive to build up some residual income.
# 3: The dropout rate is high among MLM recruits.
Most people who join your team will quit. From personal experience, at least 50 to 80 percent of your team will quit each year. It’s just human nature to quit things.
Most people who start college never graduate. Most marriages fail. Most people who buy a gym membership never even go to the gym even once.
Most sales jobs have high turnover. Be prepared for attrition and accept it. There’s very little you can do about it. The secret to success in your business is new people. New recruits will solve most of your business problems.
# 4: Those who made fortunes in MLM tended to be the super-salesmen, the gifted entrepreneurs, and the highly motivated, driven personalities.
These are the folks you want to prospect and sign up on your team. Even if you don’t have these qualities yourself, look for others that have these qualities and recruit them. It takes someone with an exceptional drive and work ethic to build up a big team.
# 5: Conventional marketers look upon word-of-mouth promotion as a result of good advertising, not a strategy for conveying it.
Most businesses rely on paid advertising to get customers and then they benefit from word of mouth advertising from their happy customers. MLM is designed around word of mouth advertising, so the money that would normally be spent on advertising and marketing can be paid to distributors via commissions.
# 6: He needed to win people’s trust and hold their attention long enough so he could tell his story.
People like to do business with people they know, like and trust. Combine that with a good personal story and you can be a recruiting machine. Facts tell, but stories sell. Your goal is to appeal to people’s emotions and focus on what’s in it for them.
# 7: MLM companies of the future will be more like Amway. Their main business will be selling everyone else’s mousetraps.
This is a very interesting concept: an online shopping mall. I’m not sure how this will turn out or how profitable it will be for a company, but I like the idea of having a variety of products and services to offer customers and distributors. Plus, you aren’t dependent on one product or one product line. You can offer a variety of things until you figure out what the reps and customers really want.
# 8: I learned that the three most important things about leadership are support, support, support.
You need to support your team and be accessible. Don’t do anything for someone that they could do for themselves, but when they ask for help, be there to point them to the resources that can help them answer their own questions!
# 9: Rather than slaving away for a salary, men and women of the twenty-first century will work for themselves, earning an income commensurate with their efforts.
While many people crave job security, good benefits and a steady paycheck, many other people like commissioned based pay. If you are a producer, you want commission based pay! With a salary, you are capped, regardless of how well you perform. When you work on commission, the sky is the limit.
# 10: You don’t own a business; you own a job. What’s more, it’s the worst job in the world. Unlike your corporate job, this one doesn’t give you time off for vacations. It consumes you, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.
It’s true. Most business owners have a high stress, high demanding, and low paying job. Their business owns them and they are a slave to their business BECAUSE they don’t have systems. Or, they focus on the wrong activities.
What’s great about network marketing is that you can keep your day job while you build your business part-time and avoid all of the headaches of owning a traditional business.
# 11: The fact is that most people would rather be a franchisee than a Ray Kroc.
People love the idea of buying a business that has already been created and has systems in place. Few people want to build a business of their own from the ground up. I can’t blame them!
# 12: Indecision can kill a distributor force.
Be a leader. Lead your team. Provide purpose and direction for them. Be the rock for others to lean on. Do the things you want your team to do.
# 13: Distributors can come and go, but the core of your business is the leadership.
The true measure of how good your team is depends upon the number of leaders in your group. This is the number of people who have taken responsibility for their own business and are actively retailing, recruiting and team building every month without your help.The more leaders you have on your team the more money you make AND the more stable and secure your business!
# 14 To succeed, an MLM company must have a salable product or service. It must be competitively priced, and ideally, it should be hard to obtain from non-MLM sources.
Look for a great company with great products that you are passionate about and provide VALUE, even to people not doing the business. Try to find a product line that isn’t for sale on websites such as Amazon® and eBay®.
# 15: Joining start-ups is a bit of a crap-shoot.
Most start-ups fail. While start-ups and ground floor opportunities offer huge upside potential, they also come with a ton of risk. Before you join a company, research their leadership team, their financials and their reputation.
# 16: Your story is the most powerful recruiting tool you have.
The reason you want to start your business the right way, preferably by doing a 90-Day Blitz, is so you have a good success story you can share with your prospects. You also want to use the company’s products so you have a good product testimonial you can share with others. Use stories with your prospects whenever possible. Facts tell, but stories sell.
# 17: It was easy to sign people up, but hard to motivate them into building a downline.
Your job is to sponsor self-motivated people. You can’t drag anyone across the finish line. Most people you sponsor, at least 80 percent, will do absolutely NOTHING with the business, regardless of how much you help them. Most of your income will come from the work of two to five people, even if you’ve sponsored hundreds.
# 18: Instead of trying to motivate her downline to do better, Kalyn realized, she should be going out and prospecting people who were already motivated, people with a track record of success in network marketing.
Your best prospects are other network marketers. Look for people with proven network marketing experience and share your products and business with them.
# 19: People today shop for sponsors as carefully as they shop for companies.
Spend more time picking a sponsor than you a do a company. Look for someone who is skilled, serious, and established with the company. Look for someone with systems in place and a proven track record.
# 20: Twenty percent of the people do 80 percent of the work.
If you have 100 people on your team, 80 will do nothing and 20 will do something. Of the 20 who do something, 4 will be fairly serious and 1 will be all in. These are just how the numbers pan out. Expect it. Embrace it. Accept it. And go work the numbers.
# 21: If your business is to succeed, you must recruit leaders.
Leaders will build your business. They won’t need you to hand hold them, babysit them or motivate them. Distributors come and go, but a good leader is worth their weight in gold.
# 22: A heavy hitter from another company is a prize worth waiting for.
Build strategic relationships and friendships with other successful network marketers in different companies. Show them you are a good person and leader. Stay in touch. You never know when they will leave their company or their company will go out of business. One good leader can skyrocket your income and growth.
# 23: Network marketing’s key advantage – its face-to-face, belly-to-belly methodology.
When the book was written, I would have to agree with him. But in today’s digital age, I think it’s foolish not to leverage technology. By all means, meet with people face to face if you want to, but I think you would be much better off combining high tech with high touch.
# 24: The only glue that will hold together a network for very long is friendship, loyalty, and relationship.
This is a relationship business. If you want a long-term business, you need to get good at building relationships with people on your team. It’s hard to quit on a friend. When your team members become close friends, you won’t have to worry about them switching companies or dropping out.
# 25: Turnkey systems cannot replace elbow grease.
Systems are great, but people still need to do the work. Nothing replaces hard work. Any system will work if you work it continuously. Any system will fail if you do nothing.
# 26: Most salespeople want to make their sale on the first stop, but most buyers don’t buy until the fifth stop.
This might be the most important lesson in the entire book. Just because someone says NO today doesn’t mean it is a no forever. Keep in touch with everyone you meet every few months. Be a professional. Never use pressure or hype.
Your best distributors five years from now will tell you NO five or ten times BEFORE they ever join your team. The fortune is in the follow-up.
# 27: Accomplished networkers are masters of “sifting and sorting”.
Learn how to sift and sort through your prospects. It’s not your job to sell, pressure or convince anyone. Work the numbers and then go and work with the willing. Trust me, there are people out there who are looking for what you have to offer. It’s just your job to find them.
# 28: I never talk business, we talk product.
Richard and I can agree to disagree with this one. I personally talk business first and then default back to the products. I’ve just found that ALMOST EVERYONE is interested in making more money, but not everyone will be interested in your products.
# 29: If a customer asks for a discount… that’s a good time to explain our program.
When you are sharing your products or services with others, and someone wants to save money on their purchase, show them the savings they would get as a distributor and sign them up!
# 30: People like the idea of getting their products for free.
One smart business move is to help each person you sponsor refer enough customers and distributors so they get their products for free each month. If you can do that you will have higher retention in your group.
# 31: I absolutely do not spend time with people who waste my time… I ask them for three things before I’m willing to commit my time to them: a twenty-four-month time commitment, a written mission and vision statement, and a business plan.
Lots of people will waste your time. If you want to work smart, you need to sponsor quality people and you need to work with people who are serious about building their business. This will be no more than five to ten percent of your total team, if that. To find out if someone is serious, give them a few assignments when they first join and see if they do them.
# 32: The more tools and systems we put in place the less important the leaders become to the day-to-day activities.
Smart network marketing leaders leverage tools and systems to free up their time. The last thing you want in your organization is to have everyone be dependent on you. Create videos, a team training website, a Facebook group, conference calls, and other things so you can LEVERAGE yourself and free up some of your time.
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About Richard Poe
Richard Poe is a screen writer, film maker and award winning journalist. He is also the best-selling author of eleven books.
About the Book
The Wave 4 Way to Building Your Downline by Richard Poe was published by Heraklid Publishing in November 2012. It features 240 pages. The ISBN is 978-0988490239. It comes in softcover and kindle format. As of November 2016, it has 80 reviews on Amazon with an average 4.5-star rating. It is available at most book stores or online. Order the book.
Final Thoughts
In summary, these are my favorite Richard Poe quotes from his book The Wave 4 Way to Building Your Downline. I thought this book was a good read and I definitely recommend it to others. Overall, I give it 8 of 10 stars. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.
What was your favorite Richard Poe quote listed above? What did you like or dislike about the book? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you.
Chuck Holmes
20+ Year Network Marketing Professional
Top Earner & Top Recruiter
Email: mrchuckholmes@gmail.com
P.S. Learn how to grow a successful network marketing business. Secret tips, training, and practical ideas. Free training delivered by email.
Another book to put on my reading list!
I think my favorite quote is #8. You really do support. I think I’ll take it a little further and say that I believe that just as much as your team needs YOUR support, you need their support as well. And they’re more likely to support you if you are showing them that same respect.
Good post!
There are many more quotes here that really sink in too as I read this post over.
#5 makes so much sense. Some network marketers think all they need is word of mouth advertising. You won’t get that unless you are putting out quality “pay for” advertisements. As people see your ads, the word of mouth will come, but if you are just relying on word of mouth alone, it will not come.
In #9, Richard gets prophetic, and I believe he is right. More and more people are searching for ways to have residual incomes. While many people think the MLM industry is on the down slide, I have to disagree; I believe it is on an upward swing. The key is: find the MLM that fits you and you have an excitement for the products or services.
This is really a great book.
I don’t think I was adequately prepared when I first entered into MLM for just how many people would leave. You start off so excited thinking you have this solid group of people and then more than half of them leave very early on, meaning you have to try to rebuild. What I had to learn quickly was the quality over quantity theory. What good is a lot of people if most of them leave? But if you can get some good quality folks into the business with you, you’ll be just fine.
Yes, attrition is quite high in our industry. It’s pretty normal in any selling profession though. I sold insurance once, and turnover had to be at least 90% a year.
All of these are great quotes Chuck; it is very difficult to zone in on a favorite. I will say that #14 really hits home though.
One of the biggest things to research before joining an MLM is their products. Are the sales worthy? Are they the type of products you could buy much cheaper at a retail store? Are they a product you will have a passion to sell? These are all important questions to answer before joining.
The other thing I noticed was having a story. A good story will sell. To succeed, you need a good story.
Great post Chuck.
Yes, you definitely need good products and a good story.
I have read a lot of your teachings through a friend and I like to be getting mails from you directly.
Many Thanks
Taiwo