Multilevel marketing is a business strategy that is used to increase sales by creating a downline of distributors and a hierarchy of sales personnel.  The structure is built on the idea that the compensation for each personnel is based not only on the number of sales they acquire, but also for the sales of other personnel that they have recruited.  The more downline that is being created, the more sales will be generated in addition to product sales, thus, creating a higher and much better profit. An MLM consultant is one of those who are employed to conduct trainings in this industry.

In business, when talking about multilevel marketing, we often hear the terms network marketing, pyramid selling and referral marketing.  Although these terms may be different, it would fall under one category, and that is multilevel marketing.   This type of strategy is considered to be a type of direct selling method and commonly, the sales personnel will sell the products through referrals and testimonials. Network marketing consulting is one of the businesses emerging under this industry.

Although multilevel marketing is a popular type of business method, there are a lot of negative issues that have been associated with this type of marketing strategy.  At present, it is often linked with issues on illegal pyramid schemes, price-fixing, excessive startup cost, and creating complex and overstated compensation schemes.

With regards to these negative issues being raised by critics, owners of legitimate multilevel marketing companies are now strong and firm on their stand that the techniques and strategies that they are using are proper business practices and not some dirty old tricks.  A large number of firms are now using multilevel marketing strategy and this proves that they are totally using different methods in order to distinguish themselves from illegal pyramid schemes and business scams.

Avon, Tupperware and Electrolux are among the few companies that are involved with using multilevel marketing strategy.  According to DSA (Direct Selling Association), an American industry body, these companies originally started to use single level marketing strategy and then later shifted to multilevel marketing.  They used to devise compensation schemes based on single level marketing and the sales personnel are given incentives if they acquire a high number of sales. They also provide network marketing training for micro distributors. As their business grew bigger, they started changing their compensation scheme and adopted the method of multilevel marketing.