Growing a team in your direct Sales biz has to be one of the most rewarding parts of this gig, doesn't it!? It's the point where your business starts to grow by multiplication, rather than addition, and it's so amazing to share an opportunity that YOU love, and see that same opportunity transforming the lives of others.
It's also a huge responsibility, and one that will require hard work on your part to make sure your new recruits are equipped to thrive in their business too! They will need to learn all the ins & outs of getting bookings, coaching their hosts for successful parties, building a loyal customer base, providing great customer service, how to share the business with others, and in turn train THEIR new recruits on how to do all this easily & effectively too!
The good news is that if you have great systems, those will be easily replicable for anyone who is watching & learning from you. And if you're good at passing these good habits along to your team, it will truly grow in leaps & bounds before you know it!
I wanted to show you a few ways that you can use the tools in our web-app to effectively and EASILY train your team members for success, so grab yourself a beverage and lets get on with it! BTW, if you haven't tried our app yet, you can do so for FREE for 30 days while you put all these tips into practice!
1. Create a Profile and Get to Know Her
Now you are direct sales FAMILY with your new recruit, so be sure to create an authentic relationship that reflects this!! Creating a strong team comes from being a leader who supports her team members for THEIR business goals, NOT her own! Did you hear me? If getting a new team member immediately makes you think of all the $$$ you will now make on her parties & purchases, your heart is not in the right place. Growing a team should always come from sharing an opportunity that will meet THEIR goals. (But don't worry, when you grow a team the right way, the $$$ will be a natural result of that!)
Using our app for this:
Use the Contacts data-base in our app to store her contact info. You will notice this contact type has several extra fields you can enter than other contact types. It allows you to add her business anniversary date, so you can celebrate it with her every year!
It allows you to save info about her spouse & kids, so when your team is 75 people strong, you can remember even their family members' names, because let's be honest, even with The Office's Michael Scott's mnemonic name remembering devices, this would be tricky! (Did you see that episode? Hilarious!!)
It also gives you a place to leave NOTES! This becomes such a handy tool as your team grows, too, because trying to remember each persons goals or the struggle you spoke with them about last time becomes impossible. Just refer to your team members' profile before your weekly call so that you can keep your business TRULY AUTHENTIC while you support them. This feature also prevents you needing to haul a file cabinet around with you, since all their info is at your finger tips!!
2. Create a Consistent Training Process
There should be a process that you repeat for every new recruit, because this will make it easy for you, whether you are new to recruiting or have many recruits you're working with at once, and it will also be easy for others in your team to learn & replicate!
From the moment you share your biz-op and hear that excited "YES! I want to do this!", you need to be ready to support and help your new DS sister get off to a running start in her own biz.
Here's a few topics you will want to include in training your new recruit:
- Depending on your business model, this may look like walking through the website as she gets signed up, and helping her to set up her own profile etc. She will need to be familiar with how to place orders, and utilize the promotional materials provided by the company.
- Often, it will mean being involved in her launch party - and this is where you need to treat her like any other hostess and give her all the tips for how to have the MOST successful party (and what did you just do? You taught her how to hostess coach!! She will no doubt look back on this as she prepares to coach her own hosts in the coming weeks & months!!)
- It will no doubt entail teaching her how to get bookings on her calendar right away, AND how to book more parties from those parties. This is so important, because no new business owner wants to feel like she's starting from scratch every month trying to find new hosts - the BEST & EASIEST way to book, is at other parties. This one is a must or that new recruit won't last long!
- Be sure to give "assignments" that your new team member must complete and report back to you on, this gives accountability for her OWN effort into her new biz. This could be something like, reading through the terms and conditions of her contract, and familiarizing herself with company policies, so that she will be a shining example in the company, AND your DS family. Another great idea is to have her put together several hostess packets the way you have shown her to. You could offer an incentive for getting 6 bookings on her calendar in the first week of her biz!
- Give her a file/folder of "cheat sheets" for all the business systems you use that work well - like your hostess coaching checklist, your customer care routine in the event of a return/product exchange request, and even your new-recruit process! Show her how to complete all of these things with excellence, but encourage her to tweak things that may work better for her another way - this is, afterall, one of the amazing things about being your own boss - doing things in a way that works for YOU!
- Help her set some GOALS for her first 3 months in business, making sure she knows about and understands the companies "fast-track" or "quick-start" incentives. This is also a great time to sit down with her over coffee to find out what SHE truly wants out of her business so YOU know how best to support her & keep her accountable.
- Get her plugged in quickly to your team by adding her to your virtual communities, and inviting her to any local team trainings you hold. My sponsor in direct sales once told me "those who train remain, those who don't, won't", AND IT'S TRUE!!!
Using our app for this:
Use the Timeline Feature in our app to automate your new recruit training process. You can add every step of your process by editing the "Team Training" event type in the timeline tab of the settings menu. Just click the "custom task +" button to add each one & the timing of each task in your process, and then when you begin training a new team member, This is Dot will set automated reminders in your dashboard to-do list for each step of the process when you create an event in the training category. Hello consistency!!
Our app comes with a pre-populated task list for the Team Training event type, and has task reminders for planning a whole-team training type of event too. This is something you should be doing, even as a leader of just one, or perhaps you are able to attend a team training that your upline holds WITH your new recruits. If you want to use this feature to plan team trainings or mark one on your calendar, as well as customize your training process as we talked about already, simply set all the new recruit training tasks with a timeline AFTER the event (for example, in the dropdown boxes: *Set Goals with recruit* *1* *WEEK* *AFTER* the event), and always set the "event date" as the new recruits business sign up date, or TODAY, if you are creating it after she has already signed up. This is because all of the tasks are anchored to the event date you set when creating a new event! This will allow you to just select the appropriate tasks from the list when creating a new training "event". (Helpful hint: The whole-team training tasks will be the first four on the list, since they all occur BEFORE the event!)
The reminders for both of these team training processes will ensure that nothing falls through the cracks, and that your team thrives because of CONSISTENT support.
3. Stay in touch on a regular basis
By now you have laid a great foundation for your new team member, but the support shouldn't stop there. Just think back to when you began your direct sales journey - there are setbacks that may come along, there are ALWAYS people (the negative Nellie's!) ready to discourage even the most excited new business owner. Plan for a weekly phone call or meeting to touch base, give encouragement and train specifically on issues that may arise.
Using our app for this:
Use the Follow-Up feature in our app to automate reminders for these calls with your new team member. You can add the follow up by clicking the edit button on her profile, and using the follow-up drop down boxes to select the frequency. It should be very regular for the first several months, you may start with every week for six weeks, then switch to every other week or monthly once she has found her business groove. These handy reminders (which you can edit whenever necessary!) will pop a reminder on your dashboard To-Do list!! This feature also provides a great way to make sure nobody on your team is neglected as it grows! I recommend keeping a follow-up reminder active for each team member, so you can have real conversations with them all on a regular basis about THEIR business. The direct sales industry has a bad rap for turnover & reps who quit shortly after getting started - HEAR ME WELL ON THIS ONE..... Support of your team makes a HUGE difference to the longevity of their business!!
Well, I am so glad you stopped by the blog today!! I hope these tips help you in growing a STRONG team, even just one recruit at a time, and I KNOW our app will be a handy helper along your way with this!! xx
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