Epic: Honesty & Ethics-- the way a MLM should be

Epic Honesty & Ethics

The vast majority of MLM companies try to portray themselves as being virtuous and trustworthy. Most make no attempt to demonstrate this in any specific way. They just say the right words. Alas, far too many conduct business in a manner directly opposed to their noble theme. While there are certainly MLM companies operated by honest and sincere management, it is the very same high ideals that they espouse that often times place them at a severe marketing disadvantage in today's MLM environment.

Any company that chooses to portray their MLM opportunity in a realistic and honest manner must somehow contend with the hype, exaggerations and outright lies that may be used by their less ethical, or less educated, competitors. When confronted with this situation, the honest company has three options:

1. Ignore the hype employed against them and stick to the high road - which usually leads to a dead end, or worse, a sheer cliff. It is often difficult to enroll a prospective distributor with a truthful and accurate presentation when your competitors are telling them how their deal will make them so much richer, so much easier, and so much faster. It's harder to close a customer with a realistic - and legal - representation of the benefits of your product when your competitors are telling them how their product will literally cure or prevent practically every disease known to science (unfortunately, such examples are not hyperbole). Several noble and well meaning MLM companies have chosen this option, and today are very admired, well respected - and relatively small - companies.

2. The second, and most common tact is for the competitors to play dueling hype. That is, try to come up with an even better story than the one being used against you – try to convince your prospect that your opportunity will make them more money in even less time and with even less effort. This process is then repeated by the opposition, and the alleged benefits of each opportunity escalate to, in far too many cases, the point of absurdity. In the end, the "winner" acquires a new distributor who will inevitably discover the truth on their own and quit – and thus be just as much not in the sponsor's downline as if they hadn't recruited them in the first place, only now the retired distributor leaves with a feeling of disgust and disillusionment making the recruiting process that much harder for everyone else.

3. The third, and rarely chosen option, is to fight back. To defend one's self against the hype. To cause the prospect to understand that their less ethical or ignorant suitor is indeed providing them with inaccurate or grossly exaggerated information. By doing so, the result is much like revealing how a magic trick works. You eliminate it's power to persuade.

Epic Network will not rest on simply not participating in the hype. We will embrace the third option of defending against it. We will emphasize the power of truth over hype. This theme will pervade our web site, literature and corporate sponsored events. Our distributors will be educated by various means on how to practice responsible defense. That is, how all the "tricks" work to be better prepared to expose them to their prospects.

This process absolutely would not involve the common tactic of gratuitous competition bashing. We recognize that Epic Network is among many fine MLM opportunities in the U.S. today and deplore the recruiting method of tearing down every other company. We are confident enough in our own opportunity to openly praise our worthy competitors, such as Oxyfresh, Vitacorp, Cell Tech, Matol, New Vision, Longevity, Watkins, and many others (not all are the biggest, but they are the one's who's management we most respect). We are proud to be a part of the network marketing industry along side such companies. This is an industry with over 2,000 total companies, and to suggest you should join Epic because the other 1,499 are no good is ridiculous.

The benefits of our "anti-hype" approach has been field tested and go beyond simply doing the right thing. From November 1997 to March of 2004 a display ad ran in various MLM trade publications that included the headline "NO! We will not build your downline for you... We don't have a product that cures numerous diseases... You can't make $5,000 with just 100 people in your downline... and so on. It was essentially the antithesis of most other ad headline in the publication. Our expectation was to receive a higher caliber respondent but significantly fewer of them. Instead, the total response rate increased 60%! There is clearly an immense, virtually untapped demographic within the national MLM prospect pool that is repelled by preposterous promotions. The more serious, professional network marketers are looking for the more serious, professional network marketing opportunities.

In Epic Network, our company culture is deeply rooted in truth, ethics and honesty. It is based on the confidence and pride that comes with the ability to not only guide prospects towards a worthy opportunity, but away from potentially harmful, or significantly less rewarding ones, while being fully accountable for the information we present. Epic will arm you with the tools to not only add weight to your side of the scale, but reduce weight (when deserved) from the opposing side.

We're sick and tired of good, honest companies getting out hyped. We're tired of them being placed at a marketing disadvantage because they tell the truth. It's time for the good guys to take back this industry!

For a more detailed discussion of our philosophy in this area, please read the articles titled "Romantic Semantics" at: http://www.marketwaveinc.com/articles/RomanticSemantics.asp
and "MLM Defense." at: http://www.marketwaveinc.com/articles/MLMDefense.asp