If you want to grow your Network Marketing Business, it’s all about leading.
As you start to grow your network marketing team, many leaders feel pressure to dedicate more time to their teams and often move into management mode — pouring time and energy into training, support, information sharing, team calls, one on one strategy calls, and the list goes on. It can become more challenging to figure out how to split your time between growing your personal business (your own recruiting and personal customers) and leading your team. The result: business actually starts to decline. Why? There are two reasons.
Two reasons your business may decline by “over-managing.“
Then first reason the decline happens is from spending less time on personal recruiting and sales. This can have a negative long-term effect on your overall business growth. In Network Marketing, the health of your business starts with a strong foundation of your own recruiting and sales. Additionally, the “pace” of your team starts with you. If you want to grow your business and grow fast, your team will follow your lead. So it’s really important for you to continue to recruit and add new customers so your team can follow your lead.
Second, managing your team does not empower leadership in your team. In other words, managing creates followers – not leaders. When you manage your team, you’re creating a culture where the team will rely on you for everything which means there’s no reason why your team members would need to step into their own leadership. Yet, one of the most important factors in determining the growth of your team is duplicating leadership. The more leaders you empower on your team, the larger your business will be.
Lose the management role, take back the leadership role.
Try and set goals (team and personal). We’re more likely to achieve what we focus on and the best way to focus and achieve more in your business is to set goals. Write down your 30, 60 and 90-day goals. But don’t just write them down, share them in a place where they are visible to you and your team. This helps with staying accountable to the goals. Make sure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound). Also, make sure you’re setting personal and team goals. By setting both team and personal goals, you’ll be able to better manage your time, focus on growing both parts of your business and you can make sure that the time you are spending on your business aligns with your goals.
Remember to do the hard things first. Every time you start to tackle your business to-do list (which now is hopefully aligned clearly with your goals), do the things you don’t want to do or like to do first. For many leaders in network marketing, that’s often the personal business actions. Many leaders enjoy the team leadership aspect and find it easier and as a result, spend more of their time devoted to their team than their own personal business. If that’s you, make sure to tackle your personal business actions first then move onto your team-based actions. That way, there’s no excuse to not get them done.
Lead by coaching them through their journey and asking questions. When leading your team, one of the best ways to empower leadership is through coaching (either in a group setting or one-on-one). However, “How” you coach is often more important than “What” you coach when it comes to empowering leadership on your team. When coaching, focus on asking questions that take your team through their own leadership journey, while allowing them to identify challenges and solutions on their own. This will help to build their confidence and confidence is the key to empowered leadership.
Leaders are seen as inspirers, so share the spotlight! Managers are seen as bosses, but leaders empower others to lead and step into their own greatness. Remember, it’s not about creating followers. It’s about creating leaders. One of the best ways to raise up leaders is by sharing the spotlight and letting them shine. Give them opportunities to share their best practices/tips, feature them on trainings and events, and provide opportunities for open collaboration and idea sharing.
Focus your mentoring on the right people. As your team grows, it becomes more challenging to identify who on your team is a rising leader (someone who is truly working and growing their business). As a leader, one of the most important things you can do to not only save time, but to grow your business, is work with the “workers” as these individuals are usually the team members that will become the best leaders on your team. Here’s a few tips to help you identify the right people to work closely with on your team:
Focus on the people who seek your leadership
Look for team members that are high performers but low maintenance. This means their sales numbers are great, proving that they are working, but they’re also pretty independent (meaning they’re not taking up a ton of your time with things that aren’t truly important to growing their business). Being independent is often a sign of confidence in up and coming leaders.
Focus on the two A’s: Action and Attitude – While working with team members, evaluate their Action and their Attitude. If they are in action with business building activities and they have a great attitude, that’s a win-win when it comes to developing them into a great leader.
Don’t be fooled by a “Super Liker” – Since many network marketing leaders are using team pages via Facebook, team member’s engagement on a team page (how much they are liking or commenting on the team page) can make it seem like they are in serious action when it comes to actually growing their business. But usually that’s not the case. Many team members actually use Facebook, even your team page, as a distraction to not work. So it’s important to not assume someone is really in action around their business just because they are super engaged on your team page. Make sure to really look at their numbers and how much time they’re spending on actual income producing activity.
