Product Integrity-Scrutinizing an MLM Product (Part 2)

Product Integrity-How to Scrutinize an MLM Product (Part 2)

Philosophies behind nutritional product lines

Before reviewing a product line, it’s important to find out the company’s philosophy behind its products. There are several basic product philosophies adopted by nutritional product lines on the market today. Some of these philosophies are in conflict with each other, as you will learn. I’m going to review the pros and cons of each philosophy as I go through this material, and as I do, I will give a short summary and offer some observations and opinions. You can decide which ideas match the way you think. Then try to match the philosophy with the product line. If you don’t, you run the risk of joining a company you don’t believe in.

Treating Symptoms with Herbs Philosophy

First, we have the herbal medicine product lines. To understand an herbal medicine line, you must first understand traditional medicine and drugs. When we go to the doctor, the doctor examines our symptoms and prescribes a drug. The purpose of the drug is to take care of the symptom as quickly as possible. If you have a headache, you may receive a prescription painkiller. You take the painkiller and the pain goes away. Is the problem cured? Probably not, since we really don’t know what was causing the symptom. For convenience and comfort, the symptom was simply masked. If the symptom is gone, that’s all that matters, right? Some doctors seem to think so.

Herbal medicine companies believe in treating health issues with all-natural solutions. Think of the native villagers living in the heart of the Amazon basin. They do not have access to hospitals or HMOs. They have to deal with any kind of health condition or emergency with the plants and botanicals growing around them. And generally speaking, they do so quite remarkably. If they have an infection, they use plants. If they have pain, they use plants. They use the whole plant, not just an extract or a concentration of one ingredient from many plants. This is the holistic approach that herbal medicine companies swear by, and it seems to work quite well.

Now on the flip side, herbal medicine companies claim to disagree with the “American medicine philosophy.” However, the first thing you do when you join an herbal company is purchase a book on herbs and then you look up all of your ailments in the index to determine which single herbs, herbal combinations, and vitamins you should be taking. Is this not the same allopathic approach used by Western doctors? For example, if you have a headache, the herbal book says to take White Willow Bark or various other herbal combinations that act as natural pain relievers. Again, we are just putting a mask or a bandage over the symptom. If you have multiple ailments, you could be taking different combinations of herbs that are mixing together to cancel each other out or react to each other. Many herbal medicine combinations, like drugs, can be highly toxic or even deadly.

The power of herbs and herbal medicine is undeniable. In fact, millions of people consume herbal products daily, including me. What most herbal supplements enthusiasts have a problem with is the philosophy of treating the symptom rather than treating the cause. After all, symptoms are the final manifestation of illness and the first thing to go away with treatment. Even when symptoms go away, sometimes the root cause of the symptom still exists.

Regardless of how you feel about using herbs to fight symptoms, most people today would agree that the natural approach is still preferred to taking prescription drugs. The natural cure is still the best cure.

Full Meal Deal Philosophy

Consumers want peace of mind, knowing they’re getting everything the body needs for optimal health. Science has taught us most of the critical vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, enzymes, acids, and other substances that are needed in the body daily. Some product lines are designed to offer a complete spectrum of nutrition. It’s always a great idea to try to cover all of your bases. Be sure to know the ingredients in your supplements. Find out where the nutrients are derived and why these sources are better than the competitor’s sources.

Some companies do a fantastic job of providing the essential nutrients in proportions that most researchers agree are ideal for the human body on a daily basis. However, many companies will claim to have every nutrient necessary for optimal human health when, in fact, their product is quite deficient. Beware of claims that seem too good to be true. I’ve seen dozens of products pulled off the market for illegal or misleading advertising claims. This can throw any company into a tailspin.

Also, keep in mind that it can become quite cost prohibitive for individuals to be taking every beneficial nutrient known to modern science. So it may be necessary to control your spending and stay within a reasonable budget for your daily nutritional supplements. For example, at least a dozen nutritional lines I have studied carefully would have you believe that an individual looking to achieve optimum health could spend as much as $300–500 per month just on their own full-spectrum nutritional system. This does not account for the rest of the family’s nutritional needs.

Immune System Philosophy

Another type of nutritional product is what I call an immune system product or a product line that focuses on building the body’s immune system. The immune system is your front line of defense against infections, diseases, and other illnesses, and it is regulated by nutrition. If we give the body’s cells everything they need for optimal health, the body can take care of itself, with a strong immune system to ward off disease and maintain optimal health. As a result of this philosophy, immune system companies have developed products that do not treat symptoms. These products are developed to assist the body in getting to the root of the problem by helping the body correct its nutritional balance and eliminate any deficiencies.

Hypothetically speaking, if you were to take a product designed to boost the immune system and your headache were to go away, you would know that it wasn’t a mask designed to temporarily cover up your symptom. Your body is simply getting the nutrition that it needs to take care of itself. Sadly, in our study we only found a handful of companies with a preventative philosophy and a focus on the immune system. However, based on product sales and retention figures, this is probably the most consistent, sound, and popular philosophy on the market today.

Even though the immune systems products seem to provide the best overall solution to human health challenges, sometimes consumers simply need a specific herb, herbal combination, or a special nutrient designed to address a specific problem or ailment. In these situations, a product designed to treat the whole body is not sufficient. However, in most cases, a healthy immune system is all that is required to keep people in optimum health. From a marketing and sales perspective, this philosophy seems to generate the best sales and retention.

Science vs. Testimonials

As we’ve exited twentieth-century network marketing and entered the new millennium, we are moving from an era of salesmanship to an era of science. Some call it the information age, and it is changing the way people are selecting a nutritional product line. In the 1980s, people attended opportunity meetings and were pitched on the latest new product or service. Then, a handful of distributors would get up on stage and tell about how this nutritional product had helped them lose thirty pounds, re-grow hair, and get off of antidepressants in one week (I’m attempting to sensationalize a bit, if you weren’t picking up on that). The decision to buy the product and to get involved with the distributorship was purely emotional.

In the 1990s, although many people were still making their decisions based on emotional factors, many others started to do their due diligence when investigating a product line. People were getting tired of the hype associated with testimonials. As studies on nutrition became more scientific, people were becoming more analytical in their approach to selecting a good product. It is very clear that people in the twenty-first century are more concerned with scientific validation rather than hype and sensationalism.

All-natural, whole food philosophy

Ten years ago, I was much more critical of the whole foods sales pitch. Almost everyone who was making a big deal about whole foods was more concerned about saving endangered naked mole rats than they were about saving human lives. But I must now admit that these hippies were really on to something. Today, the whole food movement is not only scientifically validated, but it has moved into the mainstream. Everyone is going all natural. Everyone is eating whole foods and touting incredible benefits. From a sales and marketing perspective, if you’re not focusing on whole food nutrition, you’re behind the times and your sales will suffer for it.

Frankenstein’s monster

What does it mean to be whole food, and what does it mean to be synthetic? Even the whole food products industry is confused about this one. A whole food product is simply a product delivered in its natural, whole state while a synthetic product is man made or put together in a man-made formula. Even though some products are a sampling of many different nutrients derived from whole food sources, they’re still synthetically formulated. In other words, some human being decided how much of each nutrient goes into the product as a standard for that product or they fill the product with extracts from a natural source. It’s hard to claim your product is a whole food when it has a breakdown of how many milligrams of beta-carotene are in the product, and how many international units of vitamin C are in each bottle —especially when these amounts are the same in every bottle. How can a whole food product have perfectly defined amounts in neat little portions, perfectly measured and then pressed into pills or encapsulated? I call these products Frankenstein’s monster. Dr. Frankenstein believed in assimilating parts and pieces of once organic, living matter and trying to breathe new life into them. All of the parts were from natural sources, but they were put together in unnatural ways. Scientists who try to second-guess nature or improve upon it are truly distinguishing themselves in a way that other scientists fear.

Real whole foods don’t have itemized labels. They may tell what plant or botanical is in the product, but to break down the amounts of beta-carotene, calcium, and zinc is to admit that some human being manufactured this product to their specifications. With a whole food, you get what you get the way nature intended. True, there are some very smart scientists out there. But can scientists really improve on an all-natural, whole food formula? That’s a question you can only answer for yourself. I admit to leaning toward the philosophy of “you can’t improve on God’s formulas.” Is it because I’m a spiritualist? I assure you that I’m more of a scientist than a spiritualist. My conclusions are strictly based on the numbers. Product reorder rates for whole food products are off the charts.

One day it may be required that whole food products that are not really whole food formulations to at least come up with a fancy new marketing term such as “scientifically enhanced” so the rest of the marketplace wouldn’t get so confused. This way, the products derived from whole food sources, but then scientifically reengineered into a specific formulation, could distinguish themselves from the synthetic products that are actually man-made, laboratory-produced nutrients designed to mimic nature. The lab-produced product lines would probably need a fancy name as well, because no one cares for the word synthetic.

Scientifically enhanced

Other voices claim that based on the depletion of nutrition in the soils and other environmental concerns, no products or ingredients in their natural state have enough nutritional value to supplement a fruit fly, much less a human being. This group feels that God has given humans the intelligence to enhance human nutrition through scientific methods. I must admit that I do agree with this philosophy to an extent. After all, so many manufacturers of nutritional supplements feel that offering whole food, all-natural, or organic products take the place of good science. They feel that no studies are necessary to validate the benefits of their product. Their belief in their natural products supersedes all rational thought.

My research points me to this conclusion: all-natural, organic, whole food products validated through scientific studies will retain more long-term customers than any form of synthetic products. They also produce the best sales, reorders, and retention of customers and distributors.

Taking the all-natural theme too far

Some people get so caught up in the all-natural battle cry that they disregard all practicality. After all, if you really wanted to start a business that supplied organic, unaltered whole food botanicals to consumers, you’d have to hand-gather herbs from some virgin rainforest and then hand-deliver them to your clients—no processing, no packaging, and you’d better figure out how to clean the bacteria off your hands without using harmful chemicals so you don’t contaminate the goods. No one can really claim to market all-natural products when they have to process them into tablets or liquids. No nutritional supplement manufacturers can downplay the role of technology in the mass production of highly effective supplements. Even the all-natural products are encapsulated, pressed, freeze-dried, pasteurized, or processed in some other high-tech manner to allow for safe, mass distribution. Some things are lost in mass production, but so much is gained when you can standardize the process. You want to be able to touch the four corners of the globe with your product. You must be able to trust that your product will be stable and effective once it reaches the other side of the world.\
First, Do No Harm

Some products sold through direct sales today are ticking time bombs. Not because there’s any risk that the product will explode (although it has been known to happen on occasion), rather, the product has not been protected against bacterial outbreaks or other stabilization issues. No company likes processing that can affect the contents of the product. No one says, “I wish we could add more preservatives to this product.” No one in his or her right mind would go through the costly and tedious process of filtration or pasteurization if it could be somehow avoided without increasing risk. When you’re dealing with human lives, an ounce of prevention is definitely worth a pound of cure. In fact, it’s not even an option. If you’re marketing a product that is not protected in any way against the risk of bacterial outbreak or other dangers, you might be better off not going into business with that product. It’s only a matter of time before you have an outbreak on your hands, and that means instant death to your product brand and reputation. Don’t risk it. Find a safe and effective preservative and use it.

Beware of junk science

Like any good researcher, I enjoy reviewing any scientific study I can get my hands on. However, as of the publication date on this book, the network marketing industry is going through a junk science phase of epic proportions. Never in the history of direct sales have so many companies chosen to participate in, or allow their independent distributors to participate in, junk science wars.

Let’s first define junk science as it relates to the network marketing industry. When you’re attempting to market a nutritional product through direct sales in the twenty-first century, competition is fierce. Distributors are always seeking new technologies, tools, and information that will help them compete on a higher level. At the same time, with our employment crisis, many scientists who were trained to never violate the scientific code of integrity and objectivity are starting to compromise their standards to get work. It seems that many scientists today would rather eat than maintain any form of objectivity. Can you blame them? They’re just trying to survive like everyone else. If you have a few hundred thousand dollars and the right connections, you can hire a laboratory to conduct experiments on your product and on your competitor’s products to try to create a comparison that will make your product shine. These scientists understand the age-old saying, “If you torture the numbers long enough, you can get them to say anything.”

If you don’t believe me, go to the Internet and review the various Web sites set up by network marketing corporations and their independent distributors. Try doing a Google images search for “ORAC charts.” If you scroll through just a few pages of these search results, you’ll find dozens and dozens of ORAC charts, most of them contradicting each other. ORAC is an acronym that means Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity. It’s basically a scientific testing system designed to measure the nutritional value of a product and its ability to absorb free radicals.

As you take a closer look at these sites, you’ll find that they contain bar graphs and charts detailing studies done at some laboratory that no one has ever heard of—except for the company paying for the experiments. They’ll go on and on about how this laboratory is the most respected in the world. Then they’ll publish their findings, placing their new Product X at the tip top of the scale, while lining up the competition (Product Y and Product Z) at the bottom of the scale. Then, you can go to another Web site featuring the competition’s famous study and now you see Product Y at the top of the chart, totally eclipsing Product X and Z. Then repeat the process for Product Z. It’s ridiculous! Surprisingly, most of the network marketing wannabes will never even verify these numbers and will take them at face value because they’re either too unintelligent to verify the facts or, more likely, they don’t want to know the truth. They’d rather blindly accept someone else’s conclusion since it will help them sell more of their product and condemn their competitors. They take great confidence in their product by believing bogus research projects conducted by sell-out scientists. What a great way to select a product.

Numbers Don’t Lie

You might be wondering, “Who can I believe”? This is an excellent question considering the fact that you’ll eventually have to trust somebody if you want to build a successful business. Here’s a foolproof method for determining if a company truly has a powerful and effective nutritional product line or if they’re just blowing smoke. First, find out how long the company has been in business and attempt to acquire the annual sales figures for every year they’ve been in business. Obviously you’re looking for an upward trend, not a downward spiral. But you’re also looking to see significant sales. Substantial increases in sales indicate explosive growth in a product line. Small incremental improvements show that a company is hanging in there and could someday be a contender. A downward trend is a sure sign of trouble. Once you find a company with a substantial growth trend (maybe the company started out doing tens of millions in sales and is now doubling every year), then you want to look at retention rates. A company must be experiencing substantial reorder rates over years of marketing activity. The company should also have a very high customer and distributor retention level. Retention of customers and distributors is even more important than growth rates.

Next time someone tries to shove a study down your throat, demonstrating the superiority of their product over the leading competitors, ask them to produce some numbers. Ask them for growth rates, reorder rates, and retention rates. If they don’t have these numbers, they’re flying blind. They have no way of knowing how their product is doing in the marketplace, and they have demonstrated a certain level of incompetence. If they do produce numbers which aren’t impressive, then their study is meaningless. If their numbers are impressive, you should continue to research that company, verifying that the numbers they’re giving you can be validated. You should also start looking at the other criteria for selecting a top company. If the numbers are too impressive, be wary. They might be fabricating the numbers just to impress you.

By the way, all of the sales numbers you’re seeking can be found either through company reports and literature, or by consulting with top distributors associated with these companies. Don’t just accept numbers from one person. Verify these numbers with several top leaders who are in different legs of the company. Sometimes I get different numbers from every distributor I go to. This does not instill confidence. I get some of my most objective reports from distributors who are retired or on their way out of a company. If they don’t have an axe to grind with that company, these are usually the most honest and objective figures you can find. You can also talk to the many network marketing consultants available for hire. Believe me, it’s worth the money to get the real facts before joining.

Copycats

How can network marketing companies really expect to build a strong brand on a product category made famous by another MLM company? That would be like trying to compete in the marketplace with Coke, Q-Tip, Kleenex, or Xerox. It’s going to be a tough row to hoe. It’s better to start with an original concept than try to steal someone else’s thunder. Some companies have made a career out of jumping on the latest new discovery and trying to launch their own version of it. Not only does it seem almost easier to find an original idea, but it’s also hard to explain to your distributor force why the company’s main promotional strategy involves picking on other top companies or why the company is constantly in legal battles. If your company relies on the copycat strategy, you’ll tend to retain a feeling of bitterness against the rest of this network marketing industry based on a culture of bitter competitiveness coming down from the top. There’s no reason in the world that network marketing companies need to be at odds.

Products Don’t Formulate Themselves

To close out this section on nutrition, its important to review the basic philosophy of researching and comparing nutritional product. Again, one of the best ways to scrutinize a nutritional line without a PhD in biochemistry is to research the people behind the products. These individuals should have many past accomplishments that will give you an indication of their experience, competence, and effectiveness in their respective fields. By reviewing all of the popular books on cutting-edge health and nutrition research, you can get a fantastic feel for what is developing in the world. In your studies, find out what the experts agree upon, and there you will find the most reliable, scientifically documented answers.

About the Author

Daren C. Falter launched his direct sales career in 1990, and has since become a passionate student and advocate of network marketing / MLM. He started work on the first edition of How to Select a Network Marketing Company in 1995 and published it as a paperback for the first time in 1998. Daren is now a top consultant, master trainer, popular convention speaker, and a full-time independent business owner in network marketing. Daren maintains a close connection to the industry and keeps his finger on the pulse of the independent distributor by continuing to conduct daily interviews with MLM’s most successful leaders. He maintains an active downline of distributors numbering in the tens of thousands. There’s nothing he enjoys more than training aspiring network marketing leaders and high-integrity MLM companies. Contact Daren Falter at www.networkmarketingreview.com or www.networkmarketingbook.com.

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