Ask Victoria: What Should I Do About Leaders Who Stop Leading?

September 8, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

Leaders are so important to the success of all direct selling companies. They sell more, recruit more, and stay active in the business longer than the average representative. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that, eventually, all leaders stop acting like leaders. Why? There are many reasons and there is a lot you can do to keep them engaged and productive.

I recommend a two-pronged strategy: leader retention and leader recovery.

Leader Retention

Leaders stop leading when one or more of the following are present:

personal priorities have changed
disenchantment occurs in response to changes in your company that are unfavorable to leaders
unhappiness is present with an upline leader
there is poor or absent leadership from the company
company training of leaders is poor
leaders don’t have personal goals
company or leadership politics make leaders feel uncomfortable
company provides inadequate recognition
your compensation plan does not provide leaders with sufficient rewards for their contributions

Retention is doing all you can to keep your representatives engaged and active in the business as long as possible. Leader retention is providing leaders with the opportunities, recognition, and rewards that leaders want.

To keep leaders engaged, direct selling companies must:

have a leadership development program
train and retrain leaders
consider how changes will affect leaders
provide leaders with advance notice of upcoming changes
communicate to leaders the benefits that leaders will experience
teach leaders how to set personal goals
recognize privately and publicly leadership achievements
be consistent in how they respond to leader complaints about other leaders

Leader Recovery

If you are measuring both company and individual consultant performance metrics in a set of key operating indicators, you can tell when individual leaders, and when leaders as a group, stop leading.

Here are steps your company can take to get leaders leading again:

remind leaders of the benefits of leadership
revisit past achievements and ask how they felt when they accomplished these goals
help them to set new goals
on a personal level, find out why each leader stopped leading and then respond, when possible, with specific solutions
offer to work with leaders personally to help them to get growing again

Don’t make the mistake of threatening leaders with discipline as a consequence of inactivity. Like all independent representatives, even your leaders are volunteers.

Jay Leisner, the President of Sylvina Consulting, is a top compensation plan and direct selling expert, a trusted adviser to new and established network marketing and party plan companies. For more than 30 years, Jay has enjoyed assessing and improving network marketing, party plan and referral marketing companies across the globe.

Jay Leisner and Victoria Dohr authored the top-rated book for new and young network marketing, referral marketing, and party plan companies, "Start Here: The Guide to Building and Growing Your Direct Selling Company".

Available in English and Spanish. This startup guide contains 250 pages of wisdom that will guide you through the right steps to start and continue on your journey to build a successful direct selling company.

You will save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of your time using the information you will read in our book.

In 1986, Jay began his career in direct selling by working for a major direct selling software provider. First as a software developer and later as a project leader and a business analyst, Jay worked closely with new and established network marketing and party direct selling companies to provide them with software solutions to meet their unique requirements.

Jay contributed in many ways to the success of large implementation projects for many companies. Jay also worked with dozens of smaller companies to assist each of them in various capacities to provide them with the systems they needed to help their businesses to grow faster.

Along the way while working with them, he learned the secrets of successful direct selling companies and the challenges faced by them. In true entrepreneurial spirit, Jay’s decision in 1999 to start Sylvina Consulting as a direct selling consulting company was driven by what he saw was a need for answers, advice, and solutions.

In 2004, 2006, 2009, 2014, and 2018, Jay gave presentations on compensation plans, recognition, and field leadership development at conferences held by the US Direct Selling Association.

He traveled to South Africa in 2015, 2016, and 2017 to conduct workshops on compensation plan design and recognition programs for member companies of the South African Direct Selling Association.

In 2017, Jay spoke at the Canadian Direct Sellers Association Meeting on the importance of recognition.

More than just a compensation plan expert, Jay is exceptionally skilled at advising new and established companies on business strategies. Before offering advice or solutions, he asks important questions to understand each client’s specific concerns and goals.

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