Networking Guidelines
1. The main focus of Network Marketing is building relationships. Successful Network Marketing depends on quality relationships and quality relationships depend on ethical behavior.
2. If you want to succeed in Network Marketing, choose a company with the products, services, corporate atmosphere, vision and compensation plan you prefer, and stick to it until you succeed.
3. In Network Marketing, as in all people businesses, reputation is everything. Your reputation is virtually the key to your success. Why jeopardize it with foul play?
4. Don’t jump at every next and best opportunity that comes along – there is always another better opportunity on the horizon. The grass only looks greener on the other side. Leave shiny ball syndrome marketing to MLM junkies.
5. Protect yourself from downline raiders and cross sponsoring profiteers by insuring maximal support to, and communication with, your network. Remember to be of service and contribution to your group.
Ethical Considerations
1. Network raiding is predatory, parasitic and unethical. It gives a bad name to MLM as a whole, and sets a precedent that is highly destabilizing.
2. The distributor application you sign is a legally binding document. It contains your company’s distributor bylaws which guarantee specific rights designed to protect the company and the distributor.
3. As distributors within the same company we share special contacts, restricted privileges, access to confidential information and a certain commonality that can not be abused without violating the integrity of the network as a whole.
4. Networks are built by the effort of many individuals, and are co-owned proportionally by everyone involved. No one has exclusive ownership of an entire network.
5. Cross sponsoring violates one of the most time honored and fundamental principles of human conduct – the Golden Rule. Remember: as you sow, so shall you reap.
6. Crossing up, or approaching your upline as targets for other Network Marketing ventures is just another type of cross sponsoring. Once again, as with sneaky crossing, this is an attack on someone else’s business network – their upline’s network.
7. Cross sponsoring or creating conflict of interest within a network damages a distributor’s reputation. Although the crossing may be done without malicious intent, the crosser’s honesty and integrity quickly come into question. Respect and trust are jeopardized or destroyed. Hard feelings are engendered with any distributors whose networks have been invaded or harmed.
Ethical Alternatives
1. Confine your business activities to just one MLM company at a time. You will avoid conflict and heighten your chances for success. This is our best advice and your best bet.
2. Thoroughly review your original company’s policies regarding multiple involvements and cross sponsoring. Either or both may not be allowed. Contact the company for current information.
3. Consult your upline and let them know of your intentions.
4. Do not engage in a covert strategy of deception. When it is found out, your relationships will suffer for it. Honesty is your best policy.
5. If you choose to get involved with two companies at once, keep the two networks absolutely separate.
6. Categorically refuse to sponsor anyone from the original company beyond or besides your own first level.
7. If you must be active in two companies at the same time, do not promote one company by discrediting, slandering, bad mouthing or denouncing the other. Avoid negative comparisons or representations.
8. If you absolutely insist on cross sponsoring or if you just can’t help from making negative representations and unfavorable comparisons – the Networker’s Code of Ethics, Etiquette and Honor behooves you to quit your original company before moving ahead.
9. Remember: When we, as Network Marketers, uphold ethical codes of conduct, we help strengthen the case for our industry as a whole.
Networker"s Code of Ethics, Etiquette and Honor
