No one quits direct sales with a full calendar, so teaching new consultants how to book a solid show schedule is the surest way to build a sales team.
Direct sales leaders can do three simple things that will greatly affect sales team retention and their ability to build a team.
Here are my top three team building tips to improve team retention.
1. Stop teaching your new sales consultants that the best place to find business is with friends, family, and acquaintances.
A new business can never depend on friends and family to create a profitable business.
In direct sales, we are often told to make a list of everyone we have known since kindergarten and ask them to help us get started.
This is an unrealistic approach to marketing and one that is never applied in the world of brick and mortar businesses.
Team leaders should educate their direct sales team more effectively on finding business from a variety of sources.
Each new distributor needs to tap into seven sources or techniques to find a business.
Friends, family, school, work, neighbors, organizations, and strangers should all be a part of the foundation that is put into place in a new home party plan business.
The most important one, of course, is doing business with strangers, but most new distributors only use one or two of the above lead generation systems.
When a new sales rep schedules three or four of the first 30 home party shows in every category, then they will create a business foundation that will be strong, stable, and build a robust show schedule.
2. Put a training building system into place that creates team camaraderie.
Meeting makers make more money.
Use a training system as if you are a major corporation.
All companies have a routine or training system. Putting a system into place for your new consultant, as well as your more seasoned consultant, will ensure that they stick around.
New consultant training should be a given format that you follow for each new rep.
Whether that is a phone call series or a series of meetings, a method of training that develops friendships will improve team retention.
People do not let friends down, so developing friendships or camaraderie among team members will give your sales consultants motivation. Even phone call systems of training using conference bridges can develop long-distance friendships that will improve your retention.
At every team, meeting dedicate time to networking between members so that they build relationships and become friends!
3. Teach recruiting from day one.
Direct sales recruiting is not hard!
Don’t separate your recruiting training from the sales training. When you reserve the topic of sharing the opportunity until the distributor is more experienced, you make it seem harder or more advanced.
A direct sales consultant who can create a desire for products or bookings can also create a desire for the opportunity using the same principle.
Dale Carnegie said, “The only way under high heaven to get anyone to do anything that you want them to do is to want them to do it themselves,” or something to that effect!
Deb Bixler says: “You have to create desire!”
Put out enough information about the benefits or value that your company’s opportunity provides and you will attract people who want what you have to offer.
Teach your team to create desire, and they can create a desire for anything!
Finding business – becoming friends!
Teach your team members how to set up their first shows with a solid base of lead types as well as encourage team friendships. This will get your distributors off to a great start and keep them coming back to meetings to see their friends!
So there you have it, my three favorite team building tips to improve team retention. What strategies do you use in your direct sales business?
This is part of the Direct Sales Recruiting University found at www.CashFlowShowRecruiting.com
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