MLM Mistake #1 — Mistaking Effect for Cause

Part 1 of a 4-part series
Four Lethal MLM Mistakes

No.1: Mistaking Effect for Cause

by John Counsel

The secret of success in MLM – like in life itself – is to only do the right things, only for the right reasons. But how can people do things for the right reasons if they don’t know what those right reasons are? Unbelievably, most people simply don’t know WHY they do so many of the things they’re taught by their sponsors and leaders. So if they DO manage to do the right thing, for the right reason, the truth is that it’s probably just a fluke!

It’s not really surprising that so many people can’t tell the difference between cause and effect. Effects are always tangible. We can see them, hear them, feel them, taste and smell them. Causes, though, are almost always hidden.

Not only that, cause-and-effect is usually a chain-reaction: the final effect that you see or experience is the final consequence of a series of events that had its beginnings much earlier. For example, take the chap who storms into the house at the end of a trying day and kicks the cat, for no apparent reason.

If we trace back the cause-and-effect relationship, we might find that the cat’s master wasn’t too happy with the way things had gone all day as he prepared to turn into the driveway. The idiot who blared his horn as he swerved around him at high speed simply triggered that “final straw” in his deteriorating attitude so that, on entering the house, he was ready to take his foul mood out on whomever or whatever he came across first. In this case, the cat.

The other driver who almost caused a collision between them had been running late for an important appointment and had run a red light at the last traffic lights – and been caught by the police (a substantial on-the-spot fine was the immediate effect). So he was on a short fuse when the cat-owner slowed down in front of him to make a right turn into his driveway.

The reason this driver was running late was because his boss had held him up by being late back from a meeting with his boss – who’d “chewed him out” over some minor matter because he’d copped a blast from his boss, who had been on the receiving end of a dressing down from a major client, who’d misunderstood the quote he’d received and thought he was being ripped off!

Get the picture?

This absurd chain of events culminated in a kick for an innocent cat that might have caused even more chain-reaction had the kicker’s wife witnessed her beloved feline’s trip through the air!

If we want to get to the real cause of a particular effect, we’ll often find that we have to dig much deeper than just the last event in the chain.

It’s the same in MLM. Let’s look at a couple of examples of how people fail to come to grips with the reality of what they experience, and end up doing:

the wrong thing for the right reason (“the end justifies the means” – a Win-Lose approach that will eventually get what it deserves)

the right thing for the wrong reason (“the means justifies the end” – a Lose-Win approach that’s nonsensical!)

the wrong thing for the wrong reason (a Lose-Lose approach that’s nothing more than commercial suicide!).

Example:

Many people experience rejection when they first try to retail their company’s products.

How they get it wrong:

Instead of investigating and analysing the situation, and identifying the prospective customer’s true motives (the true cause of the rejection), they simply deal with the immediate effect.

So they try to find ways to retail the products that don’t involve selling!

This leads to all kinds of farcical rationalisations for doing the wrong things for the right reasons. The most common is to turn around and recruit all your prospective customers so you don’t have to sell to them!

Yet, if you were to ask those same individuals which is harder to do – getting a customer or getting a distributor – they’ll almost always exclaim “getting a customer!”

So why do they opt for the exact opposite?

Because they mistake effect for cause. They mistake the rejection of the product or business opportunity as rejection of them. They fail to realise that the rejection was motivated by the prospect’s fear of loss. (Loss of money, face, control, etc.).

If they’d been able to define the cause of the customer’s behaviour, instead of merely describing the effects, they’d have understood how to fix the real problem, not just ease the painful symptoms. Treating symptoms does not cure the disease. It just masks it. So we fool ourselves that it no longer exists, then wonder why our business withers and dies.

A prime symptom of this inability to distinguish between cause and effect is our inability to define causes. When asked to define a problem, most of us describe its effects. Try this quick test:

Define fear.

Fear is the single biggest problem facing everyone in MLM. It’s what prevents people from buying, joining, working, presenting… everything!

Yet few people can define it. They can describe how it makes them feel. They can describe how other people react to it. They can describe the condition, but they can’t define the cause!
The alarming part is that if you can’t define the cause of the problem, you can’t prescribe the cure! Until you can come up with the reason why, you’re going to end up treating the effects – and rushing from one brushfire to the next.

Defining fear

The definition of fear is “absence of personal control”. That’s it. Think about it. If you experience fear, it’s because you lack control over your situation.

So if you want to eliminate fear from retailing (or sponsoring, or anything else), you have to find ways to put the prospect in control of their own situation. It’s that simple.

But it’s not what people in the industry do. They simply rummage round in the dark like “the six blind men from Hindustan who went to ‘see’ the elephant”.

Each one felt a different part of the elephant and proclaimed it to be just like “a rope (the trunk), a tree (its leg)”, and so on. But not one of them could define what the elephant really was.

What about you?

Can you recognise the things you may be doing right – but for the wrong reasons? Or the things you’re doing wrong – for the right reasons?

To learn more about doing the right things for the right reasons in MLM – and avoid the self-defeating practices that plague the industry (because people can’t define causes), order a copy of “The Beginner’s Guide to Making Money in Low-cost, Home-based Business… No Risk!”

© 1995 John Counsel. All rights reserved. No reproduction by any means permitted without prior written consent of the copyright owner. This article appeared originally in Australian Business & Money-Making Opportunities magazine.