Are Facebook COTM, Swaps and Game Groups a Scam & Bad For Direct Sales?

Facebook groups are notorious for direct sales groups to lure in people for COTM, SWAPs and game groups to buy from each other.

We’ve heard many complaints about them from our consultants wondering if they are worth joining and their time.

The problem is, these are groups for consultants…..

…..NOT for customers!

That icky feeling in the stomach is pointing to some big RED flags.

A consultant is not going to GROW a business by simply trying to get sales from another direct sales representative….from another state…as a one-shot deal.

And this should not be your standard for getting sales.

In fact, if you are so desperate for COTM or “game” groups, then that means you are not making enough income currently in your direct sales business… which actually means your not getting the leads or bookings you need to actually grow your business.

Make sense?

We asked other direct sales consultants….

This looming question and concern for these type of groups got our attention.

And we asked our direct sales consultants,

“Have you or someone in your down-line ever received sales or recruits from the game pages, or groups that claim they have people that want to shop, or the groups that you pay to advertise on for online parties, etc?” 

Here are some of the responses we got back from consultants around the nation.

“Nope. Most of them want you to pay to be in their group then you have to play a game and you might win a buy or recruit but not likely to get return customers due to then having to purchase from others from different games”

“Those seem like scams. You have to buy $50 from 5 people every month and only get people buying from you a couple times. I never trusted it so I didn’t try.”

“It depends. I have been in quite a few and met some great people. I only have had one cotm group that holds people accountable and gets you missed sales, and from that group we continued through 4 rotations. Some people have left the group and messaged me to stay in touch and continue to swap if we ever needed anything. Some groups are great and some groups are duds.”

“Nope. I lost so much money. I should’ve just spent the money buying products from myself. At least then I would have stuff I would actually use.”

“Nope, I had to make purchases and no purchases were made from me.”

How To Run a Successful Direct Sales Business Without Using Facebook COTM, SWAPs and Games

So, if you’re thinking about or are being tempted to join in, we urge you to please reconsider! 

If you want to be successful in your direct sales business, that is NOT a smart way to run your business! Those are not “real” customers and you will not succeed if you use these groups.

Real customers are ones that you can re-market to, have continuous sales and repeated sales. That is how you gain strong loyalty and will lead to recruiting!

How To Run a Successful Direct Sales Business WITHOUT Advertising:

1. Create an online presence in social media platforms including Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram. Start with one and work on incorporating the others. This allows you to show individual products and images to people who WANT to see them. You don’t have to be a design expert. Use design tools like Canva to create beautiful images that make you look like a pro.
2. Share your business locally and expand outside of your area online.
3. **IMPORTANT** Nurture your current customers! We can’t stress this enough. We know that finding new business is important to growth, but you must take care of the customers you have, they have already bought from you, right? Reach out to them, share a previous customer deal, etc. Send them information or samples on items related to something they have already purchased.
4.  Build relationships online with leads, before they are a customer. Find local forums or Facebook groups that you can comment on and share opinions, NOT advertise! One of the biggest mistakes we see is representatives join a group and then just multi-post or rapid post to many groups their advertisement. At this point, people skim over this like a commercial.
5. Start a blog! If you don’t have one already, you are already behind your closest competitor. A blog is a great space to provide a direct relation to the products you are selling. You can share your own experiences, build a strong lead to customer relationship and have a great place to reach out to your team. And, having one is super easy with WordPress or Blogger.

Guess what? We offer our amazing direct sales readers the opportunity to share their blogs and also write blog posts for the HPM site! Click here if you’d like to learn more about how you can contribute your direct sales blog articles.

What’s Next?

Do you have some great tips for building a successful direct sales business? We’d love to hear from you. 

If you are interested in sharing your blog with us, please fill out the form to be a direct sales contributor!