The Target Test

How do you know if your company is a unique opportunity? I call it the Target Test. Specifically looking at criteria 2, Is your product highly consumable and can it or a similar product be purchased else where? It is important to believe in your brand but if you need to ask yourself who your competitors are and what makes your brand different. Can you go to Target right now and buy almost the exact same thing possibly cheaper? If so, does your company offer a loyalty program to ensure your customers return? If not the odds are they may purchase in a pinch somewhere else.

After extensive research into the network marketing industry, Harvard Business School developed three criteria that a network marketing company must meet in order to make it a most desirable opportunity: ...

1. The company should be at least 18 months old, as 90% of all network marketing companies that fail do so in the first 18 months. (Rodan + Fields Dermatologists was just 3 years old when the case study was done and it is now 10.)

2. The company should have a product which is unique and highly consumable, unique in this case means that you have an exclusive product that can only be purchased from your company’s distributors. Having a product that is highly consumable means repeated sales, thereby guaranteeing customers loyalty versus a one time sale and having to locate new customers. (Anti-Aging clinically proven skin care is consumable by a mass market – $2.5Billion and growing – expected to double by 2015.)

3. It needs to be a “ground floor” opportunity. Harvard Business School suggests that in order for the opportunity to qualify as “ground floor” the number of existing active distributors should be less than ½ of 1% of the population (300 million in the United States) in the country where this network marketing company exists. In the United States this figure is equal to 1.5 million people. Harvard Business School also stated that if there were less than 500,000 people involved, you would be on the cutting edge of a great opportunity. If the company has less than 100,000 distributors, Harvard Business School considers it to be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

This case study was done several years ago and based on the most current numbers from the 2016 Income Disclosure Statement Rodan and Fields has just surpassed the 100,000 active consultants still making this a golden opportunity. See the blogpost, Are all Opportunities the Same? If you consider that Mary Kay or Avon have over 2 million consultants world wide you realize that this company is just beginning and you can be take advantage of First Mover Advantage. As Rodan and Fields launches every new country this Opportunity of a Lifetime starts over there! Don't miss out!