Posts Tagged ‘Melaleuca Representative’

MELALEUCA REVIEW – Follow the Selling Model

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

Many producers follow the selling model. The selling model holds that consumers will not buy enough of the company’s products unless the company undertakes a substantial selling and promotion effort.

The selling concept is practiced most aggressively with “unsought goods,” those goods that buyers normally do not think of buying, such as insurance, encyclopedias, and funeral plots. These industries have perfected various sales techniques to track down prospects and hard-sell them on the benefits of their product. Hard selling also occurs with sought goods, such as automobiles.

From the moment the customer walks onto the showroom floor, the auto salesman “psychs him out.” If the customer likes the floor model, he may be told that there is another customer about to buy it and that he should decide on the spot. If the customer balks at the price, the salesman offers to talk to the manager to get a special concession. The customer waits ten minutes and the salesman returns with “the boss doesn’t like it but I got him to agree.” The aim is to “work up the customer” to buy on the spot.

The selling philosophy is also practiced in the nonprofit area. A political party will vigorously sell its candidate to the voters as being a fantastic person for the job. The candidate stumps through voting precincts from early morning to late evening shaking hands, kissing babies, meeting donors, making breezy speeches. Countless dollars are spent on radio and television advertising, posters, and mailings. Any flaws in the candidate are concealed from the public because the aim is to get the sale, not worry about post purchase satisfaction.

The marketing concept is a more recent business philosophy. The marketing concept holds that the key to achieving organizational goals consists in determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competitors.

The marketing concept has been expressed in colorful ways, such as: Find wants and fill them”; “make what you can sell instead of trying to sell what you can make: “Love the customer and not the product: Have it your way”; and “You’re the boss”. J.C. Penny’s motto summarizes this attitude” “To do all in our power to pack the customer’s dollar full of value, quality and satisfaction.”

The selling model and the marketing model are frequently confused. Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.

The selling concept starts with the company’s existing products and calls for heavy selling and promoting to achieve profitable sales. The marketing concept starts with the needs and wants of the company’s target customers. The company integrates and coordinates all the activity that will affect customer satisfaction and achieves its profits through creating and maintaining customer satisfaction. In essence, the marketing concept is a customer needs and wants orientation backed by integrated marketing effort aimed at generating customer satisfaction and earns its profits.

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Melaleuca review – Melaleuca Divisions of Labor

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

The concept of transactions leads to the concept of a market. A market is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product.

To understand the nature of a market, visualize a primitive economy consisting of four residents: a fisherman, a hunter, a potter, and a farmer. These skilled trades people can interact in different ways to meet their needs.

In a self-sufficiency representation, they gather the needed goods for themselves. Thus the hunter spends most of the available time hunting, but also has to take time to fish, make pottery, and farm to obtain the other goods. The hunter is less efficient at hunting, and the same is true of the other trades people.

In a decentralized exchange model, each person values the other three as potential “customers” who are apart of a market. The hunter then may make separate excursions to trade goods with each of the fisherman, the potter, and the farmer to exchange meat for their goods.

In a centralized exchange model, a new person is required. This person is called a merchant who locates in a central area called a marketplace. Each skilled tradesperson brings goods to the merchant and trades for other needed goods. Thus the hunter transacts with one “market” to obtain all the needed goods, rather than individually with three other persons.

The merchant substantially reduces the number of required transactions required to achieve a given volume of exchange. In other words, merchants and central marketplaces increase the transactional efficiency of the local economy.

As the number of persons and transaction increases in a societal group, the number of merchants and marketplaces also increases. In advanced societies, markets need not be physical places where buyers and sellers interact. With modern electronic communication, banking and transportation, a merchant can advertise a product on late evening television, take orders from hundreds of customers over the phone, and ship the goods to the buyers on the following day without having had any physical contact with the buyers.

A market can develop around a product, a service, or anything else of value. For example, a labor market consisting of individuals who are willing to offer their time and skill in return for wages or products. Various institutions will develop around a labor market to assist its functioning, such as temporary employment agencies and career placement firms. The money market is another important market that emerges to meet the needs of people so that they can borrow, lend, save, and safeguard money. And the donor market emerges to meet the financial needs of nonprofit organizations.

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Are you a Melaleuca Marketer?

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

What does the word MARKETING mean for the Melaleuca marketer? Many business owners ask this question everyday. Most people believe that marketing is selling, advertising or public relations. Only a small group of top level marketers recognize that marketing also includes needs assessment, marketing research, product development, pricing and distribution. Most people mistakenly equate marketing with selling and promotion only.

It’s No wonder! We are all barraged with television commercials, newspaper ads, direct mail, Radio, email and sales calls. Somebody somewhere is always trying to sell us a product or service. It may be clich and it seems that we cannot get away from death, taxes or getting sold something.

Consequently many beginning and seasoned small business owners are surprised to learn that the most important part of marketing is not selling. Selling is only the part of the marketing iceberg that is visible publicly. Selling is only one of a number of critical marketing functions and often not the most important one. If a marketer does a good job of identifying potential clients needs, developing or representing appropriate products, adjusting pricing, determining efficient distributing, and promoting them effectively, any product or service will sell very easily.

Everyone knows about “hot” products and services to which consumers flock too. When Microsoft designed its Xbox, when Chevrolet designed its first corvette, and when Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced Google, these innovators were swamped with orders because they had designed the “right” product. Not me-too products, but distinct ones offering new benefits.

Mike Dillard, one of Network Marketings leading attraction publishers, put it this way: the answer lies in basic human psychology, so thats where we need to start.

This is not to say that selling and promotion are unimportant, but rather that they are part of a more comprehensive “marketing mix”. Selling is part of a set of marketing tools that must be organized for maximum impact on the marketplace and individual consumers.

Here is my characterization of Marketing: Marketing is any human activity directed at full fill needs, wants and desires through a transaction system. Needs are products and services that are necessary such as food, water and shelter. Wants are needs that have been influenced by our environment like a specific brand, color or model. Desires are needs for a product or service that are in limited supply. Unfortunately we desire what is difficult or possessed by an elite few.

In future postings, I will explain these definitions further and will put in plain words the following terms: Needs, wants, demands, products, exchange, transactions and there importance to the complete Melaleuca marketing process.

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Melaleuca Review – Analyzing Product Demand

Friday, March 6th, 2009

A market is in a position of negative demand if a large part of the market disapproves of the product or service and may even pay a price to avoid it. Consumers have a negative demand for doctors visits, teeth cleaning, taxes, and funerals. Employers feel negative demand for untrustworthy and underperforming employees. The marketing task is to analyze why a market dislikes a product, and whether a marketing campaign can alter the market’s beliefs and attitudes through product redesign, decreased prices, and positive advertising.

Target consumers may be uninterested in or indifferent to the product. Thus farmers may not be interested in a new farming method, and college students may not be interested in taking foreign language courses. The marketing task is to find ways to connect the benefits of the product with the person’s natural needs and interests.

Many consumers may share a strong desire for a product or service that cannot be satisfied by an existing offering. There is a demand for less harmful cigarettes, crime free neighborhoods, and fuel-efficient transportation. The marketing mission is to measure the market potential and create effective goods and services that will satisfy demand.

Every business, sooner or later, faces falling demand for one or more of its products or services. Clubs have seen their membership decline, and restaurants have seen their diners decline. The professional marketer must analyze the causes of markets, changing the product’s features, or developing more effective communications. The marketing process is to reverse the declining demand through creative repositioning of the product.

Man organizations face demand that varies on a seasonal, daily, or even hourly basis, causing problems of idle capacity or overworked capacity. In mass transit, much of the equipment is idle during off-peak hours and insufficient during the peak travel hours. Museums are under visited during weekdays and over crowded during weekends. Hospital operating rooms are overbooked early in the week and under booked toward the end of the week. The marketing task is to find ways to alter the time pattern of demand through flexible pricing, promotion, and other incentives.

Organizations face full demand when they are pleased with their amount of business. The marketing task is to maintain the current level of demand in the face of changing consumer preferences and increasing competition. The organization must perceive its quality and continually measure consumer satisfaction to make sure it is doing a good job.

Some organizations face a demand level that is higher than they can or want to handle. For example, the Brooklyn Bridge carries a higher amount of traffic than is safe, and Yosemite National Park is over crowded in the summertime. The marketing task, called demarketing, requires finding ways to reduce the demand temporarily or permanently. General demarketing seeks to discourage overfull demand and consists of such steps as raising prices and reducing promotion and service. Selective demarketing consists of trying to reduce the demand coming from those parts of the market that are less profitable or less in need of the service. Demarketing does not aim to destroy demand, but only to reduce its level.

Unwholesome products will attract organized efforts to discourage their consumption. Unsealing campaigns have been conducted against cigarettes, alcohol, hard drugs, handguns, X-rated movies, and seat belts. The marketing task is to get people who like something to give it up, using such tools as fear communications, prices hikes, and reduced availability.

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Melaleuca Review – Marketing Philosophies and Profit

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

We will illustrate marketing management as the conscious effort to accomplish desired exchange results within target markets. What marketing philosophies will guide these marketing efforts? What weight will be given to the interests of an organization, the customers or the thin market? Very often these concerns conflict.

Marketing functions are implemented under a specific philosophy. These ideas provide direction and focus to make the most of production, deliverability and profits. Failure to identify and modify business strategies causes established companies to lose market share or to fail completely.

Marketing management can be broken down into several rival concepts under which businesses and other organizations conduct their marketing. These models are generally described as the production model, the product model, the selling model, the marketing model, and the societal awareness model. These concepts are reactions to specific periods in the American economic history. These periods represent specific challenges for an organizations survival. Evolution from a production or product concept to a selling, consumer, or even societal orientation has been feed by major social economic upheavals and political impulses since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The production idea is one of the oldest philosophies guiding manufactures and marketers. The production concept is an appropriate philosophy in two economic models. The first is where the demand for a product exceeds the supply. Here a manager should concentrate on finding avenues to increase production. The second situation is where the product’s cost is high and improved productivity is needed to bring it down through cost savings. Henry Ford’s whole philosophy was to reduce production costs of the model T so that its price tag could be reduced to a level that more people could afford. He famously joked about offering people a model-T in any color as long as it was black. Today, businesses embrace internet practices to capitalize on this philosophy of pursuing production volume and lowering sales costs in order to bring down prices. These businesses succeeded in winning a growing share of the market with this philosophy.

Many service organizations also follow the production concept. Many hospitals and outpatient practices are organized on assembly-line principles, as are some government agencies such as unemployment offices and license bureaus. Although efficiencies are realized, this type of management is causes client frustration through the absence of personal attention.

The product concept is another major concept guiding sellers. The product concept holds that consumers will favor those products that offer the most quality, performance, and features, and therefore the organization should devote its energy to making continuous product improvements. Many manufacturers believe that if they can build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to their door. But they are often rudely shocked. The buyers are looking for a solution to a mouse problem, but not necessarily a better mousetrap. The solution that works better than a mousetrap. Furthermore, a better mousetrap will not sell unless the manufacturer takes positive steps to design, package, and price it to the attention of persons who need it, and convince e them that it has superior qualities.

The product concept leads to marketing myopia. Railroad management thought that users wanted trains rather than transportation and overlooked the growing challenge of airlines, buses, trucks, and automobiles. Slide-rule manufacturers thought that engineers wanted slide rules rather than calculating capacity and over-looked the challenge of pocket calculators.

In the following articles, we will drive deeper into the selling concept, the marketing concept and the societal marketing concept. Each served as a the primary template for its period only to be adjusted as American business changes.

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Melaleuca Review – Exchange – Foundation of a Melaleuca Business

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

If exchange is the core concept of the discipline of marketing, what is the discipline’s unit of measurement? The answer is a transaction. A transaction consists of a trade of values between two parties. We must be able to say A gives X to B and gets Y in return. Jones gives $400 to Smith and obtains a television set. This is a classic monetary transaction, although transactions do not require money as one of the traded values.

A barter transaction would consist of Jones giving a refrigerator to Smith in return for a television set. A barter transaction can also consist of the trading of services instead of goods, as when lawyer Jones writes a will for physician Smith in return for a medical examination.

A transaction involves at least two things of value, conditions that are agreed to, a time of agreement, and a place of agreement. Usually a legal system arises to support and enforce compliance by the transactors. Transactions can easily give rise to support conflicts based on misinterpretation or malice. Without a law of contracts, people would approach transactions with some distrust, and everyone would lose.

Businesses keep track of their transactions and analyze them vigilantly. For example, sales analysis entails evaluating a company’s sales transactions by product, customer, territory, and other precise variables.

A transaction varies from a transfer. In a transfer, A gives X to B but receives nothing explicit in return. Transfers comprise gifts, subsides, and altruistic acts. It would appear that marketers should confine their examination of transactions rather than transfers. However, transfer behavior can also be understood through the concept of exchange.

The transferrer gives a gift in the expectation of some benefit, such as a good feeling, relief from a sense of guilt, or the wish to put the other party under an obligation. Specialized fundraisers are acutely aware of the “reciprocal” motives underlying donor behavior and try to provide the benefits sought by the patron s. If they neglect the donors or show no gratitude, they will soon lose the donors’ support. As a result, marketers have recently broadened the concept of marketing to include the study of transfer behavior as well as transaction behavior.

In the broad sense, the marketer is seeking to bring about a response to some offer, and the response is not buying or trading in a narrow sense. A political candidate wants a response called votes, a church wants a response called joining, a social action group wants a response called adopting the idea.

Marketing is made up of actions undertaken to bring about a desired response from a targeted audience toward some item. Marketing goods and services on a global scale can happen in an “engineered” way, but often it is as a result of expert and well documented planning. Transactions get executed quickly and for maximum value, regardless of location or market conditions.

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Melaleuca Review – Marketing and Exchange

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Marketing occurs when people decide to satisfy needs and wants through exchange. Exchange is the act of obtaining a desired object from someone by offering something in return.

Exchange is one of four ways in which people can obtain a desired object. For example, hungry people can find food in the following ways. They can locate their own food by hunting, fishing, or fruit gathering (self-production). They can rob or seize food from someone else (coercion). They can beg for food (begging). Finally, they can tender some resource such as money, another good, or a service for the food (exchange).

Of these four ways of satisfying needs, exchange has much in its favor. People do not have to prey on others or depend on donations. Nor do they have to have the skills needed to produce every necessity for themselves. They can concentrate on producing the things they make best and trade them for items produced by others. A society whose members produce what they are good at producing ends up with much more total output under any other alternative.

Specialization in production, however, does not always lead to a society that uses exchange as the primary principle for distributing goods. Some societies labor on the principle of reciprocity. Each producer supplies goods or services to others who need them and in turn goes to others for anything is needed. The modern family operates on this principle, with each member freely providing services to the other members without formal exchange arrangements. Other societies use the principle of redistribution. Producers turn over part or all of their output to a leader or a central depot. The output is then redistributed to persons according to needs, status, or power.

But in most societies, producers sell their goods to others in exchange for money. Exchange is the core concept of the discipline of marketing. For a voluntary exchange to take place, five conditions must be satisfied: 1.) There are at least two parties. 2.) Each party has something that may be of value to the other party. 3.) Each party is capable of communication and delivery. 4.) Each party is free to accept or reject the other party’s offer. 5.) Each party believes it is appropriate or desirable to deal with the other party.

These five conditions set up a possibility for exchange. Whether exchange truly takes place depends upon the parties’ coming to an settlement on the terms. If they agree, we conclude that the act of exchange leaves all of them better off (or at least not worse off) because each was free to reject or accept the offer. In this sense, exchange is a value-creating process. Just as production creates value, so exchange creates value by enlarging the consumption possibilities facing an individual.

Exchange is a complicated human activity without a counterpart in the animal kingdom. Ant colonies and gorilla societies show some division of labor, but little evidence of formal exchange.

Adam Smith observed that “nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw an animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is money that is yours; I am willing to give this for that.” But man, according to Adam Smith, has a natural “propensity to barter, truck, and exchange one thing for another.” Anthropologists have cast uncertainty over whether exchange is a natural human inclination or a learned disposition, but exchange seems in any case to be a uniquely human activity.

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Melaleuca review – Melaleuca Divisions of Labor

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

The notion of transactions leads to the concept of a market. A market is the group of actual and potential buyers of an item.

To understand the character of a market, imagine a primitive economy made up of four persons: a fisherman, a hunter, a potter, and a farmer. These trades people can cooperate in different ways to meet their needs.

In a self-sufficiency model, they collect the needed goods for themselves. The hunter spends most of the available time hunting, but also takes the remaining time to fish, make pottery, and farm to obtain the other goods. The hunter is less efficient at hunting fishing, making pottery, and farming. The same is true of the other trades people.

In a decentralized exchange model, each person sees the other three as potential “buyers” who make up a market. Thus the hunter may make separate trips to trade goods with the fisherman, the potter, and the farmer to exchange meat for their goods.

In a centralized exchange model, a new person called a merchant appears and locates in a central area called a marketplace. Each tradesperson brings goods to the merchant and trades for other needed goods. Thus the hunter transacts with one “market” to obtain all the needed goods, rather than with three other persons.

The merchant substantially reduces the number of required transactions required to achieve a given volume of exchange. In other words, merchants and central marketplaces increase the transactional efficiency of the local economy.

As the number of persons and transaction increases in a societal group, the number of merchants and marketplaces also increases. In advanced societies, markets need not be physical places where buyers and sellers interact. With modern electronic communication, banking and transportation, a merchant can advertise a product on late evening television, take orders from hundreds of customers over the phone, and ship the goods to the buyers on the following day without having had any physical contact with the buyers.

A market can develop around a product, a service, or anything else of value. For example, a job market consisting of unskilled people who are willing to offer their efforts in return for wages or products. Various services will blossom around a labor market to facilitate its functioning, such as employment agencies and insurance firms. Banking is another important market that emerges to meet the needs of people so that they can borrow, lend, save, and safeguard money. Donor markets can emerge to meet the financial needs of nonprofit organizations.

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Melaleuca review – Melaleuca Markets

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

The concept of transactions leads to the concept of a market. A market is the set of actual and potential buyers of a product.

To understand the nature of a market, visualize a primitive economy consisting of four residents: a fisherman, a hunter, a potter, and a farmer. These skilled trades people can interact in different ways to meet their needs.

In a self-sufficiency representation, they gather the needed goods for themselves. Thus the hunter spends most of the available time hunting, but also has to take time to fish, make pottery, and farm to obtain the other goods. The hunter is less efficient at hunting, and the same is true of the other trades people.

In a decentralized exchange representation, each person distinguishes the other three as potential “buyers” who make up a market. Thus the hunter may make individual trips to trade goods with each of the fisherman, the potter, and the farmer to exchange meat for their goods.

In a centralized exchange model, a new person called a merchant appears and locates in a central area called a marketplace. Each tradesperson brings goods to the merchant and trades for other needed goods. Thus the hunter transacts with one “market” to obtain all the needed goods, rather than with three other persons.

The merchant substantially reduces the number of required transactions required to achieve a given volume of exchange. In other words, merchants and central marketplaces increase the transactional efficiency of the local economy.

As the number of persons and transaction increases in a society, the number of merchants and marketplaces also increases. In advanced societies, markets need not be physical places where buyers and sellers interact. With modern communication and transportation, a merchant can advertise a product on late evening television, take orders from hundreds of customers over the phone, and mail the goods to the buyers on the following day without having had any physical contact with the buyers.

A market can develop around a product, a service, or anything else of value. For example, a job market consisting of unskilled people who are willing to offer their efforts in return for wages or products. Various services will blossom around a labor market to facilitate its functioning, such as employment agencies and insurance firms. Banking is another important market that emerges to meet the needs of people so that they can borrow, lend, save, and safeguard money. Donor markets can emerge to meet the financial needs of nonprofit organizations.

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Melaleuca review – Melaleuca Market Interaction

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

The notion of transactions leads to the concept of a market. A market is the group of actual and potential buyers of an item.

To understand the nature of a market, visualize a primitive economy consisting of four residents: a fisherman, a hunter, a potter, and a farmer. These skilled trades people can interact in different ways to meet their needs.

In a self-sufficiency model, they gather the needed goods for themselves. Thus the hunter spends most of the time hunting, but also takes time to fish, make pottery, and farm to obtain the other goods. The hunter is less efficient at hunting, and the same is true of the other trades people.

In a decentralized exchange model, each person sees the other three as potential “buyers” who make up a market. Thus the hunter may make separate trips to trade goods with the fisherman, the potter, and the farmer to exchange meat for their goods.

In a centralized exchange model, a new person is required. This person is called a merchant who locates in a central area called a marketplace. Each skilled tradesperson brings goods to the merchant and trades for other needed goods. Thus the hunter transacts with one “market” to obtain all the needed goods, rather than individually with three other persons.

The emergence of a merchant substantially reduces the total number of transactions required to accomplish a given volume of exchange. In other words, merchants and central marketplaces increase the transactional efficiency of the economy.

As the number of persons and transaction increases in a societal group, the number of merchants and marketplaces also increases. In advanced societies, markets need not be physical places where buyers and sellers interact. With modern electronic communication, banking and transportation, a merchant can advertise a product on late evening television, take orders from hundreds of customers over the phone, and ship the goods to the buyers on the following day without having had any physical contact with the buyers.

A market can grow up around a product, a service, or anything else of value. For example, a labor market consisting of people who are willing to offer their work in return for wages or products. Various institutions will grow up around a labor market to facilitate its functioning, such as employment agencies and job-counseling firms. The money market is another important market that emerges to meet the needs of people so that they can borrow, lend, save, and safeguard money. And the donor market emerges to meet the financial needs of nonprofit organizations.

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