WMI Marketing: Reverse funnel recruitment. No retail?
As reported last week, Wealth Masters International have severed their longstanding partnership with Carbon Copy Pro to make way for their new in-house marketing platform, ‘WMI Marketing’.
As WMI Marketing is being rolled out WMI have begun to actively advertise the marketing platform and as we start to see the efforts of a greater campaign unfold, one aspect caught my eye.
Exclusively, the marketing for WMI Marketing relies on recruitment as a sales point. Retail sales… what retail sales?!
WMI have decided to push WMI Marketing as an ultimate ‘reverse funnel system’. The basic idea behind a reverse funnel marketing system is that you provide as little as possible upfront information to a potential recruit. The idea then being that they need to contact you in order to get more information about the business.
This in effect for the most part ensures that only prospects who are genuinely interested in your business contact you. More importantly though, it also prevents prospects from conducting their own research into the opportunity being sold.
Whether reverse funnel is effective or ethical way of marketing an MLM business is a topic for a separate article but one characteristic of the system is that it’s almost exclusively used to market an opportunity, rather than a retail product line.
If you were just selling retail then there’d be no need to worry about disclosing the company you were representing. After all a product is a product, if the consumer needs it they’re going to buy it.
If you’re trying to prevent prospects from researching compensation plans, corporate structure, member reviews and the wealth of information out there that exists on any company in MLM though, then reverse funnel might just be for you.
WMI are marketing WMI Marketing by asking whether or not it’s the ‘ultimate reverse funnel’. The reason they’re going with ultimate is because they believe existing WMI members are going to have great success in using it to cross promote WMI’s two new ventures, WMI Nutrition and Opes Partners, and create an entirely new field of recruits to the WMI opportunity.
They even go so far as to provide a little bit of roleplay for you;
Jerry (or Sherry), I know that you have been an insurance agent/financial advisor for a number of years, and that you have a considerable client base. But what if I could show you a way to dramatically increase your income by joining us at Opes Partners?
You see, in addition to continuing to build your client base in the financial services industry with Opes, you will also have an opportunity to introduce your existing clients to WMI’s world class product line in Wealth, Health and Wisdom.
The bottom line Jerry (Sherry), is that based on your existing clients alone, we can increase your income by several hundred thousand dollars in just the first year.
Amazingly the claim appears to breach WMI’s own advertising standards, specifically policy no. 4 – “No income, earning or lifestyle claims”. More importantly though it illustrates how Wealth Masters envisage WMI Marketing is going to be used; to recruit new members to the business who with them bring existing potential downlines.
Clearly the focus is on recruitment as once Jerry’s (or Sherry’s) clients see how much Jerry has made by introducing them to WMI, they’ll naturally want to follow suit and sign up… and then go find others to sign up and so it goes.
Disturbingly if WMI Marketing is exclusively a reverse funnel system then it appears retail is going to be long lost and forgotten. A business opportunity can be marketed via witheld information but products on the other hand require a lot more trust.
Often times a consumer is looking for a quick and easy product purchase and if you’re going to bog them down with secrecy and make them jump through hoops just to find out what you’re selling, then you’ve already lost the sale.
As I mentioned in my overview of the introduction WMI Nutrition and Opes Partners to the WMI business, it appears that the company is at least trying to diversify it’s retail arm from the MLM business opportunity. let’s hope WMI Marketing has more than just a reverse funnel system at it’s core or I can see it severely crippling this effort.
A good strategy against “Reverse Funnel Systems” is to provide plenty of information and facts – easily available when searching the web with common keywords. People like better to find information with their own methods than follow other people’s “presentation methods”. RFS lose a lot of impact if the information is readily available through search. It will also lose impact if people have had adverse experiences with these methods – if they have “guard up” to such methods.
One of the purposes of the RFS is that it acts as a “foot in the door technique” – the brain becomes habituated to repeat a particular type of action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-perception#Foot-in-the-door_technique
You are more likely to accept a choice if you have previously accepted the same kind of choice. In the RFS you will be “rewarded” with a little more information every time you contribute something yourself (enter email address, fill out the application, order information material, etc.). You make many small choices that are all geared towards the same purpose. This means that you are being “softened up” to greater choice in the same direction.
To provide factual and unbiased information works better than if you try to convince someone of your own “views”. People like better the feeling that they have made the decision themselves, instead of being “pushed on” other people’s decisions or opinions.
Another purpose of RFS is that some gets even more eager to “get to the finish” when they encounter obstacles. They feel smart when they “continue all the way” – “I do more than others to succeed”. “Nothing would have happened if I had NOT filled out the application” is used in some of the websites that promotes CCPro or WMI.
Eagerness “to get to the finish” also helps that they do not check the details especially thorough. The vast majority doesn’t check the 4 disclaimers on the landing pages before they order – although very important information is hidden in the disclaimers.
RFS strain out those who do not have the right “psychological profile”, such as those that make the “wrong kind of questions” or “has the wrong order of questions.” The system lets through those who are more willing than others to follow a “recipe” or a mentor (without difficult questions).
General comment:
This is nothing new, but just as disturbing. I had a guy who tried to recruit me about a “business sales position”, only to tell me about Quixtar upon arrival. He doesn’t know that I already know a lot about Quixtar as my aunt is in Amway.
Reverse Funnel was also used commonly on the internet as a “transactional capture page” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_page ) The post just loud claims but no details and hope you’d click and/or put in your email address to get their sales pitch.
@M_Norway:
I previously wrote an article on how scammers scam their victims. Their primary tactics are to withhold information and to spread misinformation. Withholding information is a very good way to lead people to make misjudgments on value, risk, and cost.
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-Does-a-Scam-Mess-with-Your-Head
These reverse funnel systems typically charge prospects to receive additional information about an opportunity. That fee is usually split between the recruiter and the company.
Supposedly you get a more qualified prospect, because the prospect is interested enough in the opportunity to pay for the additional information.
Hi, WMI is now officially declared as an illegal pyramid scheme by Norwegian authorities, and members have been instructed to stop promoting WMI products immediately.
The official statement from Lotteritilsynet can be found here:
http://www.lottstift.no/eway/default.aspx?pid=236&trg=LeftPage_5487&MainPaige_5482=5610:0:8,1108&LeftPage_5487=5491:86118::0:5490:1:::0:0
From E24:
http://e24.no/naeringsliv/article3959112.ece
I will try to translate the entire document into English.