Overview Of The Arbonne International Business
Arbonne International is a Swiss company that has been in business for over 20 years. They sell skin care products, cosmetics, weight loss products, and nutritional supplements. Arbonne International is in compliance with two of the toughest companies when it comes to cosmetic safety. They are the European Cosmetics Directive and the European Chemical Agency, which is known as REACH. These 2 companies have tougher safety standards than USA compliance agencies and therefore, their skin care and make up products are just as good if not better than anything else that was made in America. Their products are made without any animal testing or animal by products. So there is no questioning the quality of the products Arbonne sells to the consumer.

My main goal in this article is to talk more about Arbonne business opportunity so that you can determine for yourself whether or not you want to be an Arbonne consultant.

How To Get Started
To become an Arbonne consultant, it will cost you $109. Consultants receive a 35% discount on all purchases. There is also a renewal fee of $15 each year to remain active. Consultants have the option to purchase the Arbonne pre-built web site for $30 per month.

In order to start selling products you have to do one of two things. Either buy the products you want to sell at 35% off the retail price or buy their Right Start Value Kit. This kit costs you $350 and its suggested retail price is $700. You can order a maximum of 2 Right Start Value Kits in your first 2 months. So with each kit you can make a $350 profit. After you run out of your maximum allotted 2 Starters Kits each worth $700 retail, you can still buy the same product but now it will cost you $450 instead of $350 dollars.

Arbonne International Compensation Plan
Arbonne consultants are able to make a 35% commission on their sales. Arbonne’s compensation plan allows you to recruit as many people as you want and the people under you can recruit as many as they want too. So there is no limitation on the size of your team.

Now in order to be qualified for commissions and bonuses at all times, you must order at least $100 of product every month. Now to some people this can be a disadvantage because you might not be able to sell those products causing your inventory to stockpile. But for some it can be an advantage if these are products they will use personally. Everyone is different and it’s up to you to decide if it is worth your time to spend $100 per month in order to remain qualified to receive commissions and bonuses.

As a new consultant you’ll earn 4% overrides off your team members. For example, if one of the team members you recruited made $200 in sales for the month, then you’d earn $8 (4% multiplied by $200). And remember, you only qualify to earn this 4% override if you are ordering $100 worth of products during that month. So you can see that you really need to do a few things to make a legitimate income. First you need to show your team members how to generate sales. Then you need to show your team members how to recruit new people to join the business opportunity. You also need to continue recruiting people on your own. And it’s up to you to become a leader and develop a training program that is able to duplicate success. So as you can see this is no easy task and is totally up to you to decide if this is a commitment you can make to succeed in the Arbonne business opportunity.

There are many other distributor levels you can get to in the Arbonne business. The level you get to will depend on how much sales you generate and how much sales your team generates. Now the one disadvantage with Arbonne is that are a lot of requirements you must meet in order to get to different distributor levels. This can be confusing. And this confusion can turn people off to this business opportunity.

For example, to just initiate the qualification process to get to the 2nd level distributor called District Manager you must purchase $1,000 worth of products in a single month. This will cost you $650 dollars at the wholesale price. Or if you don’t satisfy this rule then your whole team including yourself must have a minimum retail volume of $2500 in a single month. Remember this is only to initiate the qualification process to become a District Manager.

Now to complete the qualification process and actually become a District Manager you have 1 to 3 months to meet the following requirements:

1. You must make $6,000 in retail volume the 1st month, or you must make $6,000 in retail volume in months 1 and 2 combined, or you must make $7,500 in retail volume in months 1, 2, and 3.
2. In the last month of qualification, your team will need to have a retail volume of $2,500.
3. You will also need to have a $1,000 personal volume during the qualification period.

So these are just the conditions to qualify for the District Manager. There are more distributor levels you can get to. I just wanted you to see an example of the conditions you and your team must meet in order to get to the 2nd level distributor. Some people may or may not mind the complexity of this compensation plan. It’s up to you to determine if being an Arbonne consultant is right for you.

Arbonne Training
Arbonne International recommends that their distributors sell face to face. So they put emphasis in teaching warm marketing techniques to the Arbonne consultants. This means consultants will promote and sell their products to people they know like family, friends, and close associates. This is an old method of marketing and today this tactic makes it very difficult to get to your goal of financial independence. It’s not guaranteed that all the people you know will be interested in the products you’re promoting to them.

After you’re done promoting to the people you know what’s next? It is very necessary that Arbonne start moving away from warm techniques and start teaching their consultants how to use online marketing strategies that will allow their consultants to flourish. With warm marketing techniques, your market is restricted to your local area. But with online marketing knowledge, you are opening up your marketing beyond your local area. This will allow you to get more customer leads, which means more opportunity to sell your products.

Now in order to grow financially with Arbonne or with any business opportunity, you must find the right coach that will show you the effective online marketing techniques that will generate customer leads. Why use the warm marketing technique talking to people hoping you can get them interested when you can use the right online marketing strategies to only attract people and talk to people that are already interested in what you have to offer.

There are many ways to generate customer leads. You have to personally brand yourself, which means you have to somehow differentiate yourself from the competition. Now one of the disadvantages with Arbonne is that it’s very difficult to brand yourself because you’re restricted to only use Arbonne’s corporate template web site. It’s known that the best way to brand yourself is to be yourself by showing people your skills and your personality. And to do this, people make their own web site and provide useful information on their website that solves prospects’ business problems. This useful information can be in the form of articles you write and videos starring you. Even on your web site you can have people sign up to your newsletter and then constantly provide them useful informational emails. All of these things mentioned are used to personally brand yourself and are considered customer relationship building tools. People will end up trusting you and viewing you as a leader. And because of this they may start buying your products or better yet join your business opportunity.

Arbonne does not allow distributors to make their own custom web site to brand themselves. If you want a web site you have to buy Arbonne’s pre-built template web site. With the pre-built Arbonne web site, none of these marketing techniques can be implemented to build your customer base with strong long lasting relationships. How can you personally brand yourself when all the Arbonne distributors get the same cookie cutter web site?

So this can be a disadvantage for those people that want to utilize the new marketing strategies to generate customer leads and differentiate themselves from the competition online. However, there are people out there that don’t care about marketing online and who don’t mind using the warm marketing techniques by talking to friends and family and getting business through word of mouth. If you are this type of person then the Arbonne business opportunity can be a right fit for you.

Because Arbonne consultants can’t create their own personalized web site to promote Arbonne, you will see distributors using auction sites such as E-Bay to sell their products. Because there is so much competition among Arbonne consultants at these auction sites, the prices of the product will go down therefore making it difficult for consultants to make a reasonable profit.

Conclusion
There is no questioning the quality of Arbonne’s products. They are regulated by the top safety agencies in Europe and they don’t use animal by products or perform any animal testing. Their products can be quite expensive as a 1.5 ounce bottle of facial cream sold by Arbonne is close to $50. But it’s known you’re paying for high quality.

Before committing make sure to answer the following questions:

1. Can I profit from products with high quality and high cost?
2. Is it okay for me to use the old marketing strategies of warm marketing by selling to family and friends?
3. Is it okay for me not to be able to develop my own web site to brand myself and to promote the Arbonne products?
4. Am I okay with being restricted to the template web site that all other distributors have?
5. Am I willing to learn exactly how the compensation plan works?

If you answered yes to all the questions above then this is the right business for you. However, if you’re not sure and answered no to some questions, then it’s best to continue to look at other business opportunities before committing to the Arbonne business opportunity.