Tupperware Multi Level Marketing has, at its core, the same as all other MLM – a relationship.

“Everything is about relationship.” I have heard this repeated my entire life.

But you don’t get it until you get it, do you?

Wish I had really understood what this meant when I was 18, for the life-long implications of this are too important to ignore.

Understand: Relationship is everything.

I literally just posted about this point in regard to MLM.

Persuasion > Selling > Tupperware > Relationship > Philosophy/Theology

Funny the connections you make…

All the major weapons of influence are present to help things along, but the real power of the Tupperware party comes from a particular arrangement that trades on the liking rule. Despite the entertaining and persuasive salesmanship of the Tupperware demonstrator, the true request to purchase the product does not come from this stranger; it comes from a friend to every woman in the room. Oh, the Tupperware representative may physically ask for each partygoer’s order, all right, but the more psychologically compelling requester is a housewife sitting off to the side, smiling, chatting, and serving refreshments. She is the party hostess, who has called her friends together for the demonstration in her home and who, everyone knows, makes a profit from each piece sold at her party.

-Robert Cialdini, Influence

If you are looking for social proof in marketing, salespeople are on it.

This is because social proof is one of the main tools of persuasion.

A company who can get people to think that everyone is buying a particular car is halfway to selling them that car too.

Even if it isn’t entirely true that everyone is buying the car, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is one of the reasons that books and authors getting the title of New York Times Bestseller is such a big deal. It’s social proof.

This same idea can work in politics too.

Make people believe that everyone thinks X. 

You are an extremist if you do not think X. Why? Because nobody agrees with you.

Even if you can not convince everyone to think X, making people believe they are in the minority shuts them up, and makes them more compliant.

I see fingerprints of this everywhere.

I mean, it’s not an accident you are often prominently shown how many others have already Tweeted a post.

Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the “fastest-growing” or “largest-selling” because they don’t have to convince us directly that the product is good, they need only say that many others think so, which seems proof enough. The producers of charity telethons devote inordinate amounts of time to the incessant listing of viewers who have already pledged contributions. The message being communicated to the holdouts is clear: “Look at all the people who have decided to give. It must be the correct thing to do.”

-Robert Cialdini, Influence