Attraction Marketing

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the methods you can use is ‘attraction marketing‘. You don’t only use attraction marketing to attract people to join your direct sales business, but you can also use it to attract people in your team to leadership!

Show your team the benefits of being a leader in your team’s Facebook Group. You can post about training or meetings you’re attending as a leader. With videos or photos show how much fun you’re having running training, attending events, etc.

You want to be that magnet that attracts people to want to be you and have fun, rise to challenges, and have that interesting life as a direct sales leader.

Encourage attendance at company events

Company events are a massive booster for anybody in the direct selling industry. It makes people more excited to be part of the brand, it builds your team as they get to know each other better and seeds the desire to grow in their business.

Part of why events are such a booster is the recognition. Being recognized at a regional or national event is super powerful – not just for the person being recognized but also for their peers. Seeing someone they know being recognized in a huge and public way will increase their desire to also be recognized.

Company events can turn an average consultant into someone who’s excited to build her business and move forward!

Check this article for tips on how to encourage your team to go to the next company event.

Personal Invitations to Leadership

Sometimes leaders forget how powerful they can be. It can mean so much to someone if you phone them up and tell them that you think they’d make a great team leader!

Look at your team and identify people who you believe are ready to strive for leadership (even if they don’t believe it themselves yet). Check this article for some tips on how to identify those teamies that are ready to move up.

Then make personal contact with them. When you tell them that you’ve noticed that they’ve been doing a great job, they know that their efforts matter and have been noticed. You give them recognition and then you encourage them towards leadership.

If they agree to start on the path to become a leader, you can work with them to get there. Check this article on coaching for some tips on how to do that!

Create a cohesive team

Part of leadership is creating a motivated and engaged team. And part of that is make everybody feel like their part of your community. In turn, your new leaders will want to create their own community!

Here are some quick tips:

• Choose a team name
• Choose a team color
• Create a logo or team mascot

Use your team name and color in your team groups (like your Facebook Group). Use the logo or mascot occasionally and creatively.

Even if your team is small, do these things. It’s like dressing for the job you want rather than the job you have!

And of course, once a team member elevates to leadership they can choose their team name, their team color and mascot.

For most direct sellers this is immensely exciting and you can help to motivate your leadership candidates by encouraging them to choose a team name already and think about a team color.

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You want people at all different levels in your team so you want to ‘fill’ that elevation pipeline.

Far too often I see leaders get into trouble when one strong team member elevates to leadership themselves. Then their sales no longer count in the leader’s central team anymore which leaves a sudden gap.

If you have only one strong leg in your team, it puts you at risk of this happening to you. To prevent this you want to work on a healthy elevation pipeline.

How to build an elevation pipeline for your direct sales biz

I recommend dedicating time each day to coaching people with an aim to moving them up to the next career level.

I use a roster and allocate the same day every week to the different levels to keep it all manageable for myself. A coaching roster could look something like this:

• Monday – New consultant coaching
• Tuesday – People who want to start recruiting and grow their biz
• Wednesday – People who already have a couple to team members but now want to find more
• Thursday – People who are close to elevating to leadership
• Friday – Existing leaders in your downline

You might only have one or two people at some of the levels and no one at some others. But your aim is to work towards having people at all these levels – this is your ‘elevation pipeline’ and it ensures you continue to have a strong and thriving business.

Don’t make the mistake many leaders make of concentrating all your energy on only one or two of these levels in your business.

You need to keep pushing people up from the bottom – from brand new party plan consultants to consultants building a team, and finally encouraging them to leadership.

Elevated leaders come out of your ‘pipeline’ at the top, and you keep working with them to strengthen their business and your organization.

How to plan an incentive challenge for your direct sales team

You must use incentives well to save time, effort, and money!

So let’s talk about how to plan and run a great incentive challenge for your direct sales team.

Make the most of company incentives

If your party plan or direct sales company is already offering an incentive, there is no need to add additional rewards for reaching the same goal. Instead put effort into driving the company offer. Focus on recognition for those who have achieved the company’s incentive and encourage those who are close to reaching it.

Ideas:

• Do a Facebook Live as soon as the incentive starts to spread enthusiasm and tips
• Post tips in your team group and refer to earlier training or posts that are relevant now
• Help your team out by creating some social media images for them to share in their customer groups and on their pages
• Shout-outs to people who’ve reached the incentive (posts / Lives)
• Posts which tag people who are really close to encourage them to get over the line (and hopefully the rest of your team will join in the encouragement and act as cheerleaders)
• Ask people who achieve a company incentive to post in your team group. This adds excitement and motivation for your whole team – it’s social proof that the incentive is exciting and something to work for. You can even offer some small prizes to everybody who’s posted about their achievement (a small easy to post prize or credit on online store, for example).

What behaviors are your targeting with your incentive?

Think about what you want to achieve with your incentive, which direct sales behaviors do you want to drive? You might be looking for more recruiting, more sales, more active team members, etc.

Ideas:

• An incentive for
  • booking X amount of parties (above the average in your company or team)
  • attending markets, vendor events, fetes and fairs
  • recruiting X number of new people in a month
  • selling X amount during a period
  • booking X number of Zoom or Facebook parties (especially in lockdowns)

• Run an incentive for a combination of business behaviors that will help (new) consultants by creating a bingo card. When someone gets a bingo they get a prize. You can include behaviors such as:
  • contacting X people in a week
  • doing a Facebook live on a product
  • scheduling entertaining and informative content for their social for the next month
  • listening to a direct sales podcast for inspiration and motivation
  • finding a business buddy in the team to keep each other motivated and accountable
  • refresh party themes and announce in a Live

Who in your direct sales team are you targeting?

Think about who in your team you are targeting with your incentive. If you offer a prize for the top seller over a certain period and everybody in your team already knows who is most likely to win that prize, that’s a turn off.

Knowing that a certain top seller is probably going to win that sales challenge will not motivate anybody – not even that particular person!

A top seller, top recruiter or top party booker incentive only works if you have a few people at a similar level that will work hard to get the prize and recognition. If you have a few people like that, an incentive only for the number 1 will stimulate a surge of activity.

Ideas:

• Offer prizes for the top 3 instead of just the number 1.
• Offer one or more prizes for people who reached a certain level. For example everybody who reaches $400 in sales will go in the draw for a prize.
• Combine the above two ideas to have an incentive that drives all levels in your team.
• Offer a prize for the winner of the challenge and the next 9 will go in the draw for another prize to encourage people to strive to be in the top 10.

You don’t have to run an incentive for your whole team

Targeting specific segments in your team might be more productive than running a challenge for your whole team.

For example, if your goal is to get inactive team members going again, select a smaller group within your team for a special challenge. Make sure they know you’ve only chosen 5 or 10 team members (or however many you’ve chosen) for this exclusive incentive. Then set a prize for everyone who achieves it.

This works well because if they haven’t been active in a while, they now have a real chance to win a prize while the other incentives mentioned in this article won’t motivate them. When direct sellers have been inactive for a while, they assume they won’t achieve whatever challenge you’ve set and that other team members will get it instead. It’s easier to do nothing than to get into action!

By creating a special incentive for them that’s achievable, they are more likely get motivated and energized to get back into their direct sales business.

Tips:

• Look at your team members who have been inactive for a while in your company’s portal or business hub. Select them based on a metric (haven’t made sales in the last 2 months, for example)
• Or, select people in your team that you know that need a push
• Find some attractive prizes they actually want to strive for, not just products
• Set a challenge that’s achievable perhaps a sales amount that’s 1 average party
• Ask for a few goals to reach the incentive, such as a sales amount plus at least 2 party bookings. This will help them move forward beyond the incentive
• Provide some training for them, perhaps a Zoom coaching call to get them started again

Offer career plan-based incentives

Sometimes you want to push people in your team to move up the career ladder. An extra incentive for people to step up might help them to push a little harder. This incentive works best at the lower levels of the career plan.

Ideas:

• Link your incentive to the name of the career title. For example if your company has a silver and a gold level, it’s the perfect opportunity to offer gold or silver prizes (gold sparkly pens, silver drink bottles personalized with their name, gold or silver jewelry, etc.)
• Offer training/coaching (Zoom meeting) for people who want to achieve the incentive
• Ask other leaders in your team to participate by contacting the people in their mini teams that would be in the running for the incentive
• Every time someone achieves the incentive, do massive recognition not just for the new career plan title but also that they’ve won a prize
• Tag people in a post encouraging those who are close to achieving the challenge

Growing your team or encouraging kit-napping?

When offering recruiting or sponsoring incentives, you’ll have to consider whether you offer the incentive for joining or activation of a new team member.

I recommend offering the incentive to people who have new people that activate according to the rules of your direct sales company.

This not just avoids people encouraging others to join just for the kit (kit-nappers) but also neglect of newbies. You don’t want to encourage your team to just recruit for the incentive without any plans to help the new team members get started in their new direct sales biz.

Tips:

• Keep the ‘clauses’ to a minimum, so use your company’s definition of activation to keep things simple
• Run some training for your team on how to get their new team members started

Beware of the incentive pitfall

Although incentives and challenges are excellent tools to motivate your team, there’s one pitfall to beware of: if you over-invest in incentives and prizes, that can turn people off leadership.

Team members thinking about leadership might worry that it looks overwhelming or too expensive. That would demotivate them from striving for leadership.

It’s a fine line to walk, but I’m sure that by putting some thought and planning into your challenges and incentives you can achieve fabulous results in your team!

Here’s something to think about:

• Increased income
• The opportunity to change more lives and have a bigger positive impact on your business
• A sense of team pride
• Creating your own team name and team identity
• Attending leadership meetings, training, and other opportunities

For these reasons, I encourage everyone in the direct sales or party plan industry to recruit and build a team.

And you don’t have to wait until you know everything – jump into recruiting as quickly as possible and learn together as you go!

It’s not rocket science, and you can be honest with your new team member when you don’t know the answer…you can find out together.

I’ve created an assessment form for you that helps you to see how ready you are for leadership. It’ll tell you where you still want some improvement and where you are strong already.

What are you waiting for? Grab the assessment below.

Maybe you are a leader already and want to help others become leaders.

Excellent. I have 4 essential steps toward leadership for you.

1. Have a clear vision

Ensure you know exactly what recruitment and sales are required to achieve your goal. Put it on paper and keep it where you’ll see it often.

Set a review date for your goals to keep yourself accountable and motivated.

Also, have a clear vision of what it means to achieve that goal. How will your life be different?

2. Get good at the basics

Have you ever heard the saying, “The speed of the leader is the speed of the team“? As a leader, you’ll need to be a role model for your team.

You don’t have to be the top seller or recruiter on your team, but you must show consistency in all aspects of your business!

3. Don’t wait until you have the title

Leadership is very much about who you are and what you do. You don’t need to have the title to behave like a leader. The sooner you act like a leader, the faster you’ll get there.

Some key leadership tasks you can start immediately:

• recognize effort and achievements in your team;
• regularly touch base with your teamies and support them in achieving their own goals;
• aim to be their number 1 cheerleader, and they’ll be proud to be on your team!

4. Ensure you have a balance

A great work/life balance is critical. Not just for your own mental and physical well-being, but for your business too!

Start thinking about your life as one big magnet – an attraction marketing magnet. That way, current and new team members can see your awesome life and want that for themselves.

You need to balance work and income and have plenty of time for your family. That’s not just best for you but super attractive to others who want to strive for leadership.

If you want to learn more about ‘attraction marketing’ and how to draw people to you without being spammy, I’ve got just the thing for you: the Attraction Marketing Course for Direct Sellers. Check it out below!