What's Better: A Company with a Wide Variety of Products or a Company With Few?

Read this excerpt from Robert Caldini's Book “YES! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways To Be Persuasive”

“Behavioral scientist Sheena Iyengar and several colleagues analyzed company-sponsored retirement programs for nearly 800,000 workers, looking at how the participation rates varied as a function of how many fund choices the organization offered.

Sure enough, the researchers found that the more choices that were offered, the less likely the employees were to enroll in the program at all.

For every 10 additional funds the company offered, the participation rate dropped 2%.

By comparison, they found that when only two funds were offered, the rate of participation was roughly 75%. But when fifty-nine funds were offered, the participation dropped below 60%.

In a second study, they set up a display at an upscale super market in which passersby could sample a variety of jams that were all made by a single manufacturer.

Either 6, or 24 flavors were offered at any given time.  The results demonstrated a clear and astonishing difference between the two conditions: Only 3% of those who approached the extensive-choice display actually purchased any jam. Contrast that with the 30% who bought jam when they approached the limited choice display.”

Now there are always exceptions to the rule.  Sometimes just offering more choices can be remarkable.  Sometimes we like to control our own destiny and offering choices or variety, like Baskin Robbins Ice Cream, can lead to success, but in most cases, too many options leads to indecision.

So, what does this have to do with your NM or MLM business?  Plenty.

Having a single product based line can be advantageous in many ways…

All the company's focus, and all the distributor's energy can be focused on a small cache of products. It crates momentum and levels the playing field as every single distributor is forced to market and deal with the same product.

All of the conference calls, all of the tools, all of the websites, and all of the training were about one single product.

New distributors didn’t join and say, “So which products should I promote”, or “Which tools should I buy?”

Having too many options creates fragmentation throughout a company. This creates confusion and doubt for new distributors who can’t help but wonder if there’s a better way being used by another team.

Focus is destroyed. Momentum is lost and doubt sets in.

Variety may work with Baskin Robbins Ice Cream, but when it comes to your business and livelihood, I would side with Mr. Caldini and choose Focus Over Variety.