ClickFunnels for MLM: Can You Build a Downline Using Sales Funnels?

ClickFunnels For MLM: Do Online Sales Funnels Work in Network Marketing?

I love network marketing. I think it's an excellent business model that can be leveraged for serious passive income. If you've read any articles on this blog, you know that I'm actively involved in an MLM.

At the same time, I'm also a bit anti-MLM. I like the idea of what is essentially a multi-tiered affiliate program, but I'm really not a fan of old-school MLM and how these companies teach their sales force to sell.

I don't do "friends and family," social media outreach to acquaintances I haven't spoken to in ten years, or any of the other nonsense that you see MLMers doing these days.

I say "these days," but it's really the exact same tactics that network marketers were using 35 years ago...

If you're like me and you're building (or hoping to build) an MLM downline on the internet, you need to leverage the right tools and software. For many digital MLMers, ClickFunnels is a foundational piece of the online marketing machine puzzle.

So why ClickFunnels for MLM?

Can you leverage the sales funnel software to generate leads, attract business partners, and make product sales online? We'll take a look at the flaws in the MLM business model, show how funnels can side step some of the not-so-great aspects of MLM, we'll show examples of successful MLM funnels, and show how ClickFunnels was designed with network marketers in mind. I'll even link out to some share funnels that can be used for direct sales. Cool? Let's roll...

Table Of Contents

The MLM Struggle: Why 97% of MLMers FAIL

Is MLM a Scam?

There's a Better Way (Most MLMers are NOT Doing This)...

Enter ClickFunnels.

How to Build a Network Marketing Business with ClickFunnels

The Secret MLM Hacks Webinar Funnel

MLM Membership Site: Automate Team Training

ClickFunnels For MLM Product Sales

The Power of MLM Share Funnels

MLM Recruiting Funnel

MLM Follow-Up Funnels

Summary: Moving the Traditional MLM Sales Process Online

The MLM Struggle: Why 97% of MLMers FAIL

Warning: If you're a die-hard traditional multi-level marketer, the next few paragraphs might make you angry! That's not my intent! 🙂 I'm not trying to trigger anyone, but only address the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

This will be short, because it's a subject we've already covered a few places on this site.

Traditional MLM sells you the dream. You get roped into a phone call, meeting, home 'party' or business presentation. You're shown the potential income that can be yours through the company's compensation plan, and if the salesman is persuasive enough, you exchange a few hundred dollars for a business starter kit.

You walk away pumped to start your new business...

The truth: When you sign up as a distributor with a network marketing company, you're paying for the opportunity to work as a commission-only salesperson for that company.

No benefits, no vacation days, and zero pay unless you sell products. If you really want to maximize the company's compensation plan, you will also train and motivate a sales force to duplicate your ability to sell products.

This ability to leverage the work of your team is one of the real benefits of an MLM.

The training? In short, upline leaders typically ask you to create a list of friends and family and expect you to use this list of contacts as your source of "leads."

They may share some strategies for social media outreach, but in the end they're not really teaching you how to attract a qualified pool of prospects.

This isn't to say your inner-circle is low-quality... It's just that your uncle Joe probably isn't an ideal candidate to sell your organic make-up!

It's an uphill battle if your plan is to persuade anyone and everyone (people that never asked to be pitched) to join you on your journey in network marketing.

After burning through your list of contacts, most MLM companies don't really have a system in place to help you generate real leads...

That's why top earners get paid so well.

Finding prospects, drumming up new business, and closing sales is a tough job. The old way of MLM requires ongoing networking, building relationships, and prospecting... It's a full-time job. As soon as you stop manually prospecting, you stop generating leads.

#TruthNuke: If you do NOT have a system to consistently generate new qualified leads, your MLM business will fail. Leads are the life-blood of your business, but tragically, most MLM companies provide zero guidance on how to do this effectively.

The 1-3% of traditional MLMers that actually go out and do all this manual legwork (and are GOOD at it), win...

Is MLM a Scam?

MLM or multi-level marketing has a bad rep, but it really is a close cousin to affiliate marketing. The one critical difference between the two is that as a network marketing distributor, you're not just driving traffic to an affiliate link, but you're also doing the selling.

As mentioned above, most MLMs have an element in their compensation plan where they encourage you to recruit, train, and motivate other sales people for the company. The MLM company usually pays you a commission for the sales volume generated through your entire team of distributors.

On the surface, this element of recruiting can resemble a "pyramid scheme" but this is not the case.

Pyramid schemes are illegal.

The image below is courtesy of the ClickFunnels blog.

One of the big differences: A legitimate network marketing company is marketing REAL PRODUCTS or services. As a distributor or sales rep, you only earn a commission from generating sales and NOT for recruiting new sales reps. The network marketing company only pays a commission when their products or services are sold.

MLMs are also typically low-risk, allowing you to get started with just a few hundred dollars.

Pyramid schemes on the other hand, are just that - fraudulent schemes. They are generally expensive to "invest" in. There are no customers or real products or services exchanged...

Pyramid and Ponzi schemes are both illegal. Direct sales companies like Amway, Herbalife, Mary Kay, and Avon do billions of dollars in sales each year, have a global presence, are involved in charities and philanthropy, and have been around for decades.

Ok, so while the traditional face-to-face way of doing MLM is flawed, MLM is a legit business model with a number of well-established companies that are active and thriving across the globe...

So how do we actually build a passive income with MLM? How can we leverage these companies and compensation plans without joining the 97%?

There's a Better Way (Most MLMers are NOT Doing This)...

While your grandma's MLM sold makeup to to the neighborhood housewives, we can now leverage the internet and widen our pool of prospects.

What if you could package your MLM and leverage the internet to get in front of the people that are already LOOKING for your products or opportunity?

What if once they find you, there was an automated system to collect their contact information, automatically follow up with them, sign them up, and even onboard and provide team training?

Then what if you could hand everyone that joins your team those exact systems so that they can duplicate your results?

Enter ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company designed for selling online. The software can really be used in any industry. You can use sales funnels to sell books, real estate, educational courses, or widgets on your website.

ClickFunnels is a WYSIWYG sales funnel building software. You can literally point and click your way to building high-converting online sales funnels. You can use these funnels for generating leads, selling products, and even have prospects APPLY to join your team.

Start Your 14-Day Trial of ClickFunnels Today and Build Your First Sales Funnel >>

How to Build a Network Marketing Business with ClickFunnels

Below are some examples of MLMers using ClickFunnels for list building, prospecting, selling products, courses, and more.

Russell Brunson (the cofounder of ClickFunnels), actually made most of his money prior to ClickFunnels through MLM. At one point, he was the top earner in two network marketing companies at the same time.

He's even written a book about network marketing which he currently sells via a sales funnel.

Russell Brunson's MLM Book Sales Funnel (built with ClickFunnels)

The digital entrepreneur understands direct sales. He's currently involved with an MLM company, and coming from that culture, he's integrated some cool features into his software that network marketers love.

In this video, network marketing twin sisters Mindy and Mandy show how they're using ClickFunnels to build their downline of heavy hitters.

If you're on this site, you already know that the CEO of ClickFunnels Russell Brunson and his protege Steve Larsen are both actively building a downline with Pruvit. (Full disclosure - I'm on their team)...

Let's take an inside look at one of Steve Larsen's Pruvit MLM funnels...

The Secret MLM Hacks Webinar Funnel

Steve Larsen used his popular network marketing podcast and youtube channel to drive traffic to his high-ticket Secret MLM Hacks training program... The entire sales funnel is powered by ClickFunnels and sold via a webinar funnel.

This is the registration page for his webclass. In his 90 minute webinar, Steve Larsen reveals:

The real methods top MLMers are using to recruit (and not sharing)
The truth about MLM duplication that no upline likes to talk about
The exact system Steve uses to recruit 1-3 people into his team each DAY

Steve uses this MLM funnel to build his email list and actually teach something of VALUE to people that sign up for his webinar. A small portion of the people that watch his webinar learn so much from the free class that they decide to buy his full $997 Secret MLM Hacks course.

This program has over 1,000 paying members. At $997, Steve's has earned over a million dollars in sales with just this one MLM training funnel.

Yes, let that sink in. This one funnel alone has made Steve Larsen over a million dollars. This is more impressive when you think about the fact that MLM is not even his primary business. The MLM program and his Pruvit downline are just a couple of his side-hustles.

#MultipleStreamsOfIncome

In fact, in late 2019 Steve shut the Secret MLM Hacks program down, only to reopen it six months later due to so many people requesting access!

With this program, he's positioning himself as an authority in MLM, he's making seven figures in sales from selling the program, AND many of his students also end up applying to join his personal downline.

If you're not yet familiar with this concept of "Paid Prospecting" is... Watch the webinar.

Secret MLM Hacks Webinar Funnel (built with ClickFunnels)

MLM Membership Site: Automate Team Training

If you're in the top 3% of MLMers that have actually recruit a huge downline, you know how time-consuming it can be to train your new team members.

What if you could create the training ONCE and then automate your training. With ClickFunnels, you can point and click your way into creating password protected membership sites.

After a new person joins your team (either directly beneath you or ten levels deep), they can log in to your membership site, view all of your MLM onboarding and training videos at their own pace, and YOU can focus on recruiting and selling.

Steve Larsen has created this for our team also. Below are screen shots of our Pruvit specific team training. After a new distributor joins our downline, I simply send them the code that "unlocks" our team exclusive content.

Russell Brunson Steve Larsen Team Training

MLM Team Membership Site (30 Day Training Created with ClickFunnels)

ClickFunnels For MLM Product Sales

Ricardo Gordillo joined us in Steve and Russell's MLM downline in 2019. When our MLM company launched their keto "Challenge" kits, Ricardo created this MLM supplement funnel.

Thanks to ClickFunnels, Ricardo can build his own keto email list, earn retail product sales, and best of all, he can share this funnel with the distributors that directly join his downline.

Ricardo Gordillo's MLM Product Funnel (built with ClickFunnels)

The Power of MLM Share Funnels

With our MLM, Ricardo doesn't have to create his own product, he doesn't have worry about processing sales, product shipping, returns, or customer service. The MLM handles all of that, but he can still earn a commission on customer sales by marketing their products online.

Instead of just telling his downline to "talk to more people," Ricardo can hand off this proven asset that converts.

Important Note: If your downline comes to you for help and all you can do is tell them to "talk to more people," you're not helping anybody!

After you build a sales funnel inside of ClickFunnels, you can literally GIVE your network marketing funnel to others on your team. ClickFunnels allows you to "share" your funnels.

Your team members can take your share funnel link and one-click upload your funnel inside of their ClickFunnels account.

This is an example of a share funnel link >>

What if you built a few funnels and gave them as bonuses to people joining your team? This is an excellent way for MLMers to stand out from everyone else in their company. ClickFunnels is a great way to build assets for your downline that actually help them recruit or sell products.

These are NOT your mom's network marketing tactics!

MLM Recruiting Funnel

Steve Larsen has done the same thing. Steve's built JoinMyDownline to take in applications to join our team. He then handed off this MLM recruiting funnel to the rest of us on his team. Members of our team can simply one-click upload, take the framework of his funnel and personalize it for our own use

Inside Look at Steve Larsen's Recruiting Funnel

MLM Follow-Up Funnels

So far we've seen how ClickFunnels can be used for prospecting, selling your MLM products, selling a course, or even a network marketing book... But most importantly, ClickFunnels is an excellent software for building your email list.

As the saying goes, "the money is in the list!" The ClickFunnels Platinum plan includes unlimited access to follow-up funnels - the email marketing platform built directly inside of ClickFunnels.

The benefit of this is that once you start with ClickFunnels, everything can be accessed inside one dashboard. Build a funnel, create your emails, and like the "share funnel," you can share entire email sequences.

Inside of our team membership site for example, Steve Larsen has included the links to one-click upload the recruiting funnel and his autoresponder sequence for the funnel.

All of the heavy lifting is done - new members can go in and swap out specific links and start using the email sequence.

If you instead decide to use the $97/month plan, ClickFunnels easily integrates with all of the major email marketing services.

From ActiveCampaign to GetResponse, network marketers can collect email addresses, build out email sequences, and nurture their list through automated email marketing campaigns.

Below is a screen shot of my GetResponse autoresponder thats integrated into my auto-recruiting funnel in ClickFunnels. I've built out a sequence of emails inside of GetResponse that drip out for almost forty days...

MLM Email Marketing: Inside My GetResponse Account

Summary: Moving the Traditional MLM Sales Process Online

ClickFunnels is made for marketing and selling.

In Russell Brunson's book "Network Marketing Secrets," the ClickFunnels CEO focuses primarily on the three proven offline funnels that have created BILLIONS of dollars (maybe more) for MLMs over the last several decades...

Start your free trial of ClickFunnels here and then instantly upload the three funnels below today:

He shows how you can take the tested sales templates that works for MLM in the real-world and essentially recreate it in an online environment.

What if you could replicate these funnels and get them in front of your ideal prospects using facebook ads, TikTok, Youtube, or blog articles? It beats trying to persuade your uncle Joe to come to your make-up party. I promise.

Welcome to the business of the 21st Century...