Evolution of “The Perfect Presentation”
Grandma Holt vs. Julio Varela: The Past vs. the Internet
By Clifton H. Jolley, Ph.D.
My grandmother built one of Shaklee’s early Distributor organizations, one gas station attendant at a time.
Since June 2016, Julio Varela has pre-qualified more than 160,000 potential Distributors in his unilevel payout but more than 1,000,000 in his power leg.
With apologies to the Wizard of Oz, I guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
Grandma Holt had a Shaklee “demo” she said was “fool-proof, the perfect presentation!” It was one-on-one with a pre-qualified audience she could always count on closing. And I saw her do so consistently, relentlessly.
Many times on our family vacations—always car trips (because this was long before lower middle class MLM families could afford airline tickets—Grandma would insist that Dad pull over a block before the gas station and let her drive the car in to refuel.
It was a mysterious a ritual, but I never thought to ask about it. I thought all grandmothers drove the last block into the gas station, where she would get out of the car and stand next to the pump jockey filling the tank. (Yes, Dorothy, there used to be a guy who pumped the gas for you!)
At some point Grandma would look down at the guy’s hands and ask: “How do you get those hands clean?”
“Don’t come clean, Ma’am.”
“Sure they do,” she’d insist. “Put ‘em out.”
And as the gas station attendant obediently held out his hands, Grandma would pull a small squirt bottle from her purse—a clear bottle filled with a translucent green liquid—squirt it into his palms and order: “Now rub that around a bit. Don’t have to wash it off right away; it’s biodegradable; can chew through iron but won’t burn your eyes. people used foldable cashI brush my teeth with it.”
The attendant would finish pumping the gas, and before Grandma would pay him, she’d tell him to go wash his hands so the money wouldn’t get dirty. (That’s right, Tin Man: way before credit cards and bitcoin, people used fold-able cash!) And when the guy came back—with clean hands!—the question always was the same: “What’s in that stuff?!” And Grandma had him. She’d tell him about Shaklee Basic-H and how he could “build a future for yourself instead of the man who owns this
And that’s how I learned about demonstrations: Face-to-face situations in which products proved themselves, usually in circumstances encouraging the potential customer and Distributors to agree. (“Only time you can be sure a man will listen to a woman is when she’s holding his money,” Grandma later told me about her gas station strategy.)
But that was then. Now is…well, Julio Varela.
MLM = “Medium Learns the Message”
Marshall McLuan is thought to have had TV in mind when he first said “The medium is the message,” but it’s even truer of the internet. And perhaps even truer for MLM than for other occupations and supply chains to which the internet has become essential.
Early on in MLM, we discovered what computers were good for: computing compensation plans and keeping genealogies straight. Who knew they would become as important to messaging as to math?
Julio Varela knew.
“From the early days of the internet, I knew this was the way forward. Just as we had transformed the future of long distance communications by marketing Sprint through an MLM distribution channel, I saw the internet as a tool, a resource that would make it possible to sell and to sponsor all over the world, vastly multiplying the influence and resources of knowledgeable people to empower tens of thousands.”
The Field Leads the Way
As with most good ideas (and many bad ones), MLM Distributors understood the value of the internet long before companies caught on! While companies were just beginning to get comfortable computing commissions, Distributors already had begun to investigate the possibilities of using the internet to present to a larger audience.
Julio was trained in sales by IBM in the 1970s and took that training to become hugely successful in MLM in the early 1980s, helping to popularize “alternative long distance” through Network 2000 and Sprint (US Sprint back then, Toto). Back then we called the union of MLM and technology “high tech, high touch,” because the presentations were done at county fairs, in homes, in conference rooms. And, yes, Julio says even in gas stations.
Julio foresaw a day in which those meeting rooms would be replaced by monitors, and the global telecommunications systems of Sprint would be as archaic as an IBM typewriter.
“No more getting people into a presentation by hook or crook,” Julio laughs. “No more circles on a white board or napkin. No more necessity for belly-to-belly presentations at the Holiday Inn. No more polished speakers with fancy presentations and motivational hype stories. All of that suddenly seemed to slow everything down.
“MLM is a distribution system, and the faster you can make the distribution, the more likely you are to succeed.”
Makes sense. Amazon delivers on Sunday and same day. No more rushing home to catch the evening news when it’s already been distributed and saved by your Dish receiver. No more 18-minute video presentation when YouTube is full of fun and effective commercials that take 15 seconds. No more Life Magazine when Fast Company has taken its place, promoting speed as much as content.
Julio is bilingual (grew up in Puerto Rico) and saw the power of MLM right away, but he also recognized a flaw: “I discovered I couldn’t duplicate myself, because I had too much training and experience. Most people didn’t want to take the time I’d taken to develop my skills, and many people did not have the personalities or desire to communicate a mission and message with a persuasive degree of conviction.”
Conference calling had been the first bridge to success for Distributors unable to craft an effective presentation for themselves: Get 150 people on a call, and let an “expert” do the presentation and close. A lot of massive organizations were built with nothing more than that.
But Julio wanted more than that. And he knew MLM needed more than that if we were going to support everyone to a success promoting degree.
Speed = Numbers = Success
“You have to help people discover they are greater than they believe they are by guiding them to discover where their power is. That was easier when you were doing it belly-to-belly and could hug them and they could feel your warmth. But it was one-at-a-time or a-few-at-a-time.”
Julio began in technology with IBM, and he returned to technology for the answer of how to speed communications and dramatically increase the success of the individual.
“I began to ask how we translate what I was doing one-on-one to a technological platform. Because if we are going to go out and not just teach but inspire people all over the world, I knew we needed a simple, duplicable, technological system.
“That’s why I no longer communicate with people over the phone. Too much time, too many questions. Instead: here is the link, here is how you sign up…and I follow up with information that will answer all the questions they have before they ask any of them. Many of my leaders are people I’ve never met. Some of them I’ve never had a conversation with.”
Like all sales (Yes, Scarecrow, that’s what we do), MLM has been something of a numbers game: Call 10 prospects to get 5 to show up at an Opportunity Meeting. Talk to 7 to recruit 1. And Julio’s digital sponsoring system depends on numbers.
“But everyone knows more people than they know they know!” Julio insists. “I’ve got a thousand people in my phone book…and I don’t talk to anybody on the phone!” And there’s Facebook and Linkedin and many other social media platforms people visit without thinking of them as resources.
“But you need a resource, a system by which to process those names, those numbers, those email addresses. That’s why I tell people, if your company doesn’t have a system, go find a Distributor in your company who does! I’ve never relied on the company to do the work for me. I give my people a digitally formatted distribution system and complete content and training…and that’s how we recruit.”
The Results of Julio’s Digital Recruiting System
10 Hours a Week Part Time = Full-Time SUCCESS!
Julio believes in part-timers. “Too many lives have been ruined by imposters who told them to quit their jobs, buy a Cadillac (or I guess now that would be a BMW or Mercedes Benz), then force themselves to pay for it. Too many families have been destroyed by people working at MLM as though it were a job on Wall Street, putting in 80-hours-a-week doing opportunity meetings at other people’s homes and losing sight of what MLM is all about: Mi Familia!”
That’s why Julio’s most recent project is a program called “Ten Hours a Week” (http://tenhoursaweek.com/ten-hours-a-week-blog/momentum-marketing-system-7-25-2016/). This website was created to promote http://papijulio.thwglobal.com, a new global business model Julio claims will be a “disruptive internet-driven start-up that has inverted the YouTube financial compensation model. TenHoursAWeek.com provides support and training to the hundreds of thousands of people that have already signed up under Julio’s organization. And the response has been record breaking: 125,000+ signed up in the first 10 days of recruiting last June. More than 1,000,000 as of the writing of this article…signed up in less than 80 days!
Granted, it’s a free sign up, and those numbers will distill to something smaller. But remember: It’s a numbers game…and getting the word out is as important as what the word is about.
MLM Presentation Secrets Julio Has Learned from the Internet
- Free Is Key! Think of all the iPhone programs that include “free sign up, no credit card needed.” What is one of Amazon’s most successful programs: free shipping with Amazon Prime Free for 30 days! The days of $100 Distributor Kits is over.
- If you have a great product and a great program, then the longer the “Free Trial” period lasts, the more sign-ups you’ll get.
- “Clicks” are not important. “Eyeballs” are not important. Lookers are not Doers. But you need a lot of clicks, eyeballs, and lookers to put your product and opportunity in front of people with true potential.
- You already have a system. Even if you don’t know it: either a system for success or for failure. My system is: Here is the link. Here is how you sign up. And it’s FREE!
- Giving people too much information or expecting them to learn too much can defeat them. Instead, success in network marketing depends on supporting people with simple processes that speed rather than slow their success.
- 70% of the money you earn comes from a very few key people…and it can be hundreds of people before you find them.
- Success in MLM still depends on the same things as it always has: Great product or services. Great compensation plan. Great recognition. Great company and field leadership. But with as much static as people get from TV and the internet, you need one more thing to be heard and seen: a technology resource. Be sure your company or your upline has one.
- Whether you are selling a product or service is not so important as the delivery. No one today is willing to wait. Speed to market in MLM = Speed of success for MLM Distributors. INSTANT DELIVERY IS KING.
- Digital delivery and fast payment of commissions based on Bitcoin transactional capabilities can make you a lot more alluring to the global market.
So, can you still build a network of Distributors gas station to gas station? No! Because there’s nobody there to pump your gas! (Except in New Jersey, where it’s illegal to pump your own.) But while the world of MLM is changing, Julio says the old ways still work and there’s nothing wrong with working them. But at the same time —in the same way the internet has democratized access to information—the internet also is broadening and deepening the reach of presentations that lead to MLM success!
Julio Varela
(known as “papijulio” to family and friends all over the world) was born and raised in Puerto Rico where he graduated (BA) from the University of Puerto Rico in 1969. For more than 45 years he has worked in International Sales, Marketing, and Operations. His experience with start-ups and helping established companies—mostly with Direct Sales challenges—has given him experience as a consultant, corporate officer, and as an Independent Distributor. He believes his mission is “to bring harmony and balance to those involved in network marketing.” Acting on that mission, Julio has provided products & services to markets in North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean while creating high-level contacts throughout Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Evolution of ‘The Perfect Presentation’ Grandma Holt vs. Julio Varela: the past vs. the Internet
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clifton@adventcommunications.com • www.adventcommunications.com • 214-497-0084