One of my current prospects sent me a link today to this story about two people who quit Nikken. They feel that it is a myth that people can become financially independent as a Nikken distributor, and it’s Nikken’s fault. I want to address some of their key points.
First, it is very possible to become financially independent with Nikken. I have met a few and know of many more. My local Royal Diamond upline, Jack and Sheri Clarke, then way up at the top of Nikken income earners: Dave Johnson and Reid Nelson. I missed an opportunity to meet Dennis Estes when he was in town last year. The cool thing about these people is that they are just regular people. You would never know that they are wealthy.
They came to 3 conclusions as to why Nikken’s marketing plan doomed them to failure:
- Nikken does not concern itself with sales but is predominantly interested in the recruitment of people
- The customers are primarily the Distributors themselves
- The Nikken products are not officially approved and also expensive. This combination means that the products are very difficult so sell to ordinary consumers.
It is true that Nikken, and all other network marketing companies, are more concerned with recruiting people than with sales. They aren’t in the business of selling their product. That’s what the distributors are in business for. McDonald’s doesn’t sell hamburgers either. They recruit businesspeople who open franchises to sell hamburgers.
It is probably also true that the distributors make up the largest percentage of customers, which is unfortunate. But that isn’t Nikken’s fault. It is the distributor’s job to find customers and sell the product. That’s what a distributor is. Another interesting point here. The same prospect told me that she was talking to other Nikken distributors today about internet marketing. They told her it wasn’t possible to sell Nikken’s products online because they have to be demonstrated first. I haven’t done a product demonstration in years and I am finding more and more customers online all the time.
As for the third conclusion, I think I just partially answered that one. I am selling these products online to regular people every day. $60 for a pair of magnetic insoles that last 10 years looks very inexpensive compared to the $60 shoes that people buy and wear out within 3 years. A $1500 magnetic mattress pad to resolve sleep problems doesn’t sound like much compared to what people are spending on hi-def flat-screen TVs. I’m not sure what they mean by “officially approved” other than by something like the FDA. Vioxx was approved by the FDA. Do I really need to say anything more?
The rest of their gripes apply to all MLM companies, not just Nikken. The problem really comes down to the sponsoring distributors. They are targeting regular people who don’t know what it means to run a business, and then don’t teach them once they are in. If they did, it might be harder to recruit new people but they would get better results from the ones who did join. As a distributor with a network marketing company you are a self-employed business owner. You are also your number one salesperson and your job is two sell two categories of product. One is the actual product or service that the company offers, and the other is the business opportunity. Old-school uplines recruit new people through hype and then teach the new people how to recruit others through hype. Once the hype wears off, chances are that the new distributor will disappear. That’s why most people fail in network marketing and there is such a high turnover.
So, if you are interested in “joining the club”, getting excited, and hyping up rookies, then please find another sponsor. On the other hand, if you are interested in owning your own business, building a team of responsible business owners who want to run a real business selling remarkable products, then I would like to talk to you.
Wayne Woodworth
Self-employed independent Nikken wellness consultant
