There is a saying in Arbonne, “If you can get to District, you can become a NVP because what you did to get to District you just keep repeating until you are a NVP.”

There is much truth to this statement. However, there is one big difference between qualifying and maintaining District and transitioning from District to Area Manager. The difference is the significant amount of additional drag time.

Our research of this issue revealed the following facts:

1. The quantity of Consultants who promote to District Manager but never make it to Area Manager is significant and staggering.
2. There are several key ingredients that cause this stall out.
   • Arbonne Ricochet
   • Residual Income Quarterly Time Drag
   • Business Builder Drag is a Multiple Times Thirty
3. Consultants can increase there success by:
   • Being aware of what we call the District Manager Grinder
   • Being aware of what we call the DM-2-AM Abyss (District Manager to Area Manager Abyss), and
   • Implement specific strategies to neutralize its effects

Contents of the Arbonne District Manager Grinder:

1. Building to District Manager – The Process
2. Arbonne Ricochet
3. Arbonne Residual Income Quarterly Time Drag
4. Arbonne Business Builders at a Difficulty Times Thirty
5. Summary
6. The Remedy

The Process of Building an Arbonne Business:
Success by the Numbers:

Building an Arbonne Business is a rather simple process. Call, Book, Present, Close & Follow up! Follow Up! Follow Up!

Using the process taught by Patrice Matteson of Dynamic Production a Consultant building to District would have the following numbers.

1. A Consultant does 3 contacts a day 6 days a week
2. This equals 18 contacts per week
3. Times 4 weeks totals 72 contacts per month
4. With a 6 to 1 Booking Ratio this totals 12 presentations per month
5. Assume cancellations of 20% to 30% on average leaves 8 presentations a month
6. Sales/Presentation: Let’s say the average sales are $400 for each group presentation
7. This totals $3,200/month in new sales on average.

By following the above system Consultants will generate approximately $3,000 per month which is enough volume to qualify and maintain District Manager.

Overcoming Arbonne Ricochet:
Arbonne Ricochet is the process of clients, preferred clients, consultants and managers who come into an Arbonne network and then drop out. A certain percentage of ricochet is a natural process. All successful Consultants in Arbonne have some ricochet in their network.

However, the greater the percentage of ricochet in the network the more drag there is on forward movement. When the quantity of ricochet in a network reaches the same level as the quantity of new sales in the network, it will erode forward movement and tip the network into negative growth. It is at this tipping point that a Consultant is officially in what we call the Arbonne District Manager Grinder and the DM-2-AM Abyss.

There are two ways to deal with this.

1. Reduce the quantity of ricochet
2. Increase the quantity of new sales

Arbonne Residual Income Quarterly Drag:
Residual income is the volume generated by reorders in the network. A client, preferred client or consultant will purchase product, consume it and then come back and reorder a few months later. The volume from reorders is then added to the new sales and creates an increase in total volume. As more and more clients are added to the network, and a percentage of them come back to reorder, residual income will increase. The process would look something like the bar graph below.

The green bars represent $2,500 in new sales every month. This will also add new clients to the network each month. The gold bars represent residual income from the reorders these clients place after they consume the product.

As you can see if a Consultant works consistently and adds new clients to the network each month, as the reorders kick in, there is a corresponding increase in volume.

When a Consultant does $3,000 in direct new sales each month, and then in the fourth month 50% of those who purchased the first month come back and reorder, this will increase the volume by $1,500. So their total volume would be $3,000 in new sales plus $1,500 in reorders for a total of $4,500 in the fourth month.

Jumping out to the seventh month there is again $3,000 in new sales and 50% of those who purchased the first and fourth months reorder. This is $3,000+$1,500+$1,500 or $6,000.

Continuing this process, using the above calculations, the Consultant will hit first step Area at $10,500 in the 16^th month.

This reveals two things:

1. First, residual income is a very powerful way to build a consistent income in Arbonne. This is why it is one of the four keys ingredients to look for in a successful network marketing business according to Dr. Charles King.
2. And second, because the residual income is tied to the use of the product, promotions are tied to the frequency rate of reorders.

Since promotions and residual income are connected this creates what I call the Arbonne Residual Income Quarterly Drag.

This simple fact greatly increases the failure rate as many Consultants assume that since they could reach the District Manager level volume of $2,500 in one month, then they can also get to Area Manager level volume of $10,000 in a few more months.

When the promotion to Area Manager does not happen as quickly as anticipated, many Consultants quit before they reach Area. It takes so long to transition from District to Area Manager that they think the system does not work or they think there is something wrong with them and that’s why they cannot get to the next level of success in Arbonne. As a result they disappear into the Grinder of the Residual Income Quarterly Time Drag and disappear into the DM-2-AM Abyss.

Arbonne Business Builders at a Difficulty Times Thirty:
Another way Consultants can transition from District to Area Manager is by adding business builders to the network. This process also known as duplication is another feature that makes network marketing so powerful. When a Consultant adds one business builder to their network, and that business builder follows the same system outlined above, the sponsoring Consultant will see an immediate $3,000 increase in their volume.

Using the process outlined above a sponsoring Consultant with a volume of $3,000 who adds two business builders to their network, who each also have $3,000 in their volume, will now have $9,000 in volume.

If adding business builders to the network can have such an immediate and dramatic increase in volume, it would appear this is the key to bypassing the DM-2-AM Abyss. But similar to the Residual Income Quarterly Time Drag, the process of adding business builders to the network also contains a time drag.

The numbers it takes to add business builders to the network looks something like this:

1. Ask three people a day 6 days of the week
2. This equals 72 a month
3. With a 6 to 1 booking ratio you have 12 bookings each month
4. One third cancel leaving 8 presentations
5. This totals approximately 24 every three months
6. On average a Consultant has to talk to 20 to 30 persons to find one person that is interested in the business
7. So these numbers reveal that, on average, a business builder is found every three months
8. And of those that show an interest a percentage ricochet out of the system.

Since we are talking averages, the first person that shows interest in the business opportunity may not remain a business builder. It may be the second, third, fourth of fifth person that is interested in the business that actually becomes a business builder. If it’s the second it will take six months. If it’s the fourth, it will take one year to find your first business builder.

The point is there is no real way to control this. As my wife says, “When it comes to Business Builders, you are working with a volunteer army and they can go AWOL at any time”. All a Consultant can do is play the numbers game and let the numbers work themselves out.

The Business Builder Multiple Times Thirty Time Drag can be compressed by any of the following:

1. Increase the number of persons you contact.
2. Become more skilled at the process to increase the:
   • Booking Ratio (the number of “Asks” to “Bookings”) If you can increase the Booking Ratio from 6 to 1 to 3 to 1 you have essentially doubled the number of persons in the pipeline. This is turn will cut the three months per business builder in half to 1.5 months.
   • Close Ratio (the number Bookings to Presentations)
   • Fact finding to discover a fit (If they don’t see how Arbonne fits into their life and/or dream they will not consider the business. Since they don’t know how Arbonne could work for them you have to facilitate this process by pointing to potential benefits.)
   • Targeting: while making the 100 name list, indentify those who you think would be interested in and would make great business builders.

Summary:
So what about the saying in Arbonne, “If you can get to District, you can become a NVP because what you did to get to District you just keep repeating until you are a NVP”?

There is much truth to that statement. However, even though the process to get to District is similar to what it takes to get to Area Manager, the additional time drag caused by the Residual Income Quarterly Drag and the Business Builder Multiple Times Thirty creates a Grinder that is not present in the transition from Consultant to District Manager.

The numbers reveal why this becomes a grinder and abyss. If only one in 30 persons is interested in the business and a Consultant has a 6 to 1 booking ratio that means she will have to contact 180 persons to find one potential business builder. For some these numbers are so staggering that they cannot push through it. As a result their dreams grind to a halt in the DM-2-AM Abyss. But that need not be the case. There is hope.

The Remedy to the Arbonne District Manager Grinder:
What we have found is when Consultants are aware of the Residual Income Quarterly Time Drag and the Business Builder Multiple Times Thirty Time Drag, they have a much greater chance of success. This is because when they hit the DM-2-AM Grinder they know it’s not their fault, or that the system doesn’t work or that Arbonne doesn’t work. They know it is a natural part of the process and if they stay in activity and keep swinging, they will eventually push through to success.

It is similar to one of my players who comes in for a pitching lesson. They are at point “A” and want to move to point “B”. Depending on the age and athletic ability of the player and which technique we are working to perfect, it could take anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 reps before they have it in muscle memory. There is no way to short circuit this process.

As a result there are only two ways to reduce the time line:

1. Increase the quantity of reps they do each day or
2. Increase the number of days they work out.

However, both of these are limited by the natural forces of metabolic recovery. Just as there is a limit to the quantity of contacts per day a consultant can make each day and the length of time they can sustain this, the same is true for a pitcher’s workout.

So when new players come in for a lesson to correct a flaw one of the first things I do is count out the Muscle Memory Time Drag for them. If a player needs 5,000 reps and they follow a standard metabolic recovery schedule then they should be able pitch 100 pitches a day, four days a week. This will total 400 pitches a week or 1,200 reps a month. At that rate, “IF” they do their workouts they will meet their 5,000 rep threshold in three to four months.

But even with these facts I still have parents who want to condense this time. When that does not happen, they either think there is something wrong with the pitching system we use or they think their daughter is not cut out to be a pitcher.

Now there is nothing wrong with the pitching system because it has produced a long list of players who have had all or part of their college education paid for through scholarships. In addition, every year since 2000, this system has produced at least one or more pitchers who have thrown a perfect game. So this eliminates the system as the cause of the failure.

Since it not the system, it must be their daughter, right? Wrong! There is no way to determine that either. It could be that she does not have what it takes to be a pitcher. Or it could be she is a great pitcher but has yet to reach the repetition threshold to establish muscle memory. In other words, on this side of the threshold she has not yet reached her greatness. We will only know whether or not she is a great pitcher, when she gets to the threshold.

The same is true in Arbonne. Greatness is in the numbers. Have you done the numbers necessary for success? If you haven’t then you have not reached the repetition threshold. So you cannot say it doesn’t work. Neither can you say “I can’t be successful at this”. In other words, on this side of the threshold you have not yet reached your greatness. The only way you will know if you can reach greatness in Arbonne or not is to reach the threshold.

So the saying in Arbonne, “Don’t quit before pay day” truly applies when you look at the numbers. In the final analysis, a Consultant’s belief in the system has to be strong enough to overcome the Grinder that includes the Residual Income Quarterly Time Drag and the Business Builder Multiple Times Thirty Time Drag. Their belief has to be able to grind through chasm so the DM-2-AM Abyss does not swallow them up.

If you are reading this you could be that person that is caught in the DM-2-AM Abyss. Or as a Manager in Arbonne you may know of others who are in this position. What is important to remember is “It is not you”; “It is not them”; it is a normal part of the process. To be successful you have to continue to work the process; to work the numbers, until you hit the threshold of success. Remember, your greatness will only blossom at the threshold.

© 2009 – 2010, VoiceWind. . .Greg Loveless. All rights reserved.

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