You’ve built a direct selling company and you’re open for business. Can you be patient and just wait for your sales force to do their part? No, you can’t.

You can’t afford to stand still.  You need to keep moving forward.  You have much more work to do.  The time for resting is later.

Recruiting

Recruiting is an essential behavior for all direct selling companies for it is recruiting that produces new independent representatives for your company. Without new representatives, your company will not grow. In fact, without new recruits, your business will shrink.

While in time your sales force will be fully responsible for recruiting new representatives, in the beginning, that responsibility belongs to YOU.

Recognize that your company has a responsibility to recruit alongside your sales reps until the business has enough momentum where this is no longer necessary.  In the world of direct selling, momentum is defined as an increasing amount of activity (recruiting and sales) per month for several consecutive months.

Until your company has momentum, your responsibility to recruit should not go away.

How long will it take for your company to gain momentum?  There is no stock answer, but it could take up to a year, or perhaps longer.

15 Options

In the Initial Recruiting chapter of our 250-page book, Start Here:  The Guide To Building And Growing Your Direct Selling Company, you will find 15 options for company recruiting.  These are:

1. Who Do You Know?
2. Approach Current Customers
3. Online Advertising
4. Social Media
5. Publish Content On Your Blog/Website
6. Contribute Content To Others
7. Opportunity Meetings
8. Face to Face
9. Referrals
10. Home Parties
11. Events
12. Automobile Advertising
13. Business Cards and Flyers
14. Founder Programs
15. Master Distributor

The decisions you make regarding your initial recruiting approach will have far-reaching implications.  Choose your selected initial recruiting approaches from our list.

Answer Your Phone

In all of your advertising, provide a telephone number that is answered at a minimum during normal business hours or at best, 24 hours a day, by a human being. Avoid using voice mail as your receptionist if possible.

When prospective and current representatives call your company, if they always get voice mail, they may conclude you are not really open for business. It’s better if a person answers the phone, even if that person is not you!]

Reply Quickly To Emails, Texts, And Messages

Just as important, make sure that emails, texts, and other messages from prospective and current independent representatives are replied to as quickly as possible.  Don’t wait hours or days to reply if a reply can be given immediately.

Start By Knowing What To Do

Creating and operating a direct selling company is a complex endeavor.  To be successful on your journey, you will need to know what to do.

We can help you with that.  Each chapter of our direct selling startup book will give knowledge and direction, ask you thought-provoking questions to help you to make key business decisions, provide examples, and tell you what to do next.

Our Direct Selling Edge Conference will give you even more information, presented by top direct selling experts in their respective fields.

10 More Tips For Your First Year

Here are 10 more tips for your first year of business:

1. The products or services you sell are critical to your success. Make sure that your products can be sold by your sales reps to non-participants in your income opportunity.
2. Your income opportunity is your second product. It needs to be branded and marketed like any other product.  Take the time to put your opportunity under a microscope.  Bravely evaluate your income opportunity through the eyes of prospective recruits.
3. Your compensation plan is an important ingredient in your success recipe. It must encourage and reward 12 specific behaviors. If your plan is weak, your income opportunity will be less attractive and as a result, your business will grow more slowly. It will also fail to attract and retain strong business builders, who are vital to your success and longevity.
4. Follow the golden rule of direct selling.
5. Communication with your sales force is always important, especially in your first year of business.
6. Direct selling companies need good margins. Without them, this business model will not work.
7. Act like a big business even when yours is small.  Take the tune-up steps we recommend for larger direct selling companies.
8. Watch your cash carefully. Use financial budgets and cash-flow management religiously.
9. Set targets for growth and monitor your progress. Whether you are ahead of plan or behind it, you will need to adjust your spending in response to where you are.  Report and analyze your key operating indicators monthly.
10. Take the time to run your new business.  You can’t operate a direct selling company successfully as an absentee landlord or part-time while you focus on other businesses.

If you don’t have all the answers or you don’t know what else to do, don’t wait months to get help.  Contact Sylvina Consulting today.