Five Steps to Improving Downline Performance

Now that you have a downline of your own, it’s your job to lead them. Your team won’t automatically know what to do, even with a beginner’s manual put in their hands. It’s up to you to coach them into becoming the successful business owners they aim to be.

Training
Successful network marketing is always a team effort. For your organization to be successful, they must possess the same skills you learned from your own upline. That means a lot of training!

Initially, you’ll want your downline to know these basic skills:

• Building a prospect list
• Teach them to make a list of a hundred or more people they know, along with their contact numbers. The longer the list, the better.
• Have them order these people according to priority (e.g. those with dependents, those with influence, those that are easy to approach).
• Approaching and inviting prospects
• How to do phone invitations
• Different ways of approaching a person face-to-face
• Presenting the business and its products
• How to use visual aids and marketing material
• Knowledge of all products and services
• Knowledge of the business system
• Closing a prospect
• Handling objections
• Asking for the business
• Asking for referrals

Showing, not telling, is the best way to teach a skill. Let your team see how you invite, present, and close. Let them sit in on your meetings. Schedule some time for simulating invitations and presentations. Then, let them do the presentations and give them feedback on what worked and what can be done better.

Monitoring
Always begin with the end in mind—that is, set a concrete, reasonable goal. It’s the only real way to tell if you’re getting anywhere with your business:

Goal + Plan + Action = Results

Start by setting a target for your team to reach. If some of your teammates declare that they want to have X amount of income in Y number of months, then you must work with them to formulate a plan on how to get there. For example, it may translate to contacting ten people and presenting five times in a week for a period of two months.

Once you have the plan in place, touch base with your active downline partners once or twice a week to make sure they are following their own plan. Track their performance and see if they hit their targets. It’s best if you can meet with them face-to-face on the first few weeks of working together.

Giving Feedback
It’s not enough to monitor your downlines progress—part of your job is to give them feedback on their performance, to keep them on track. This means two things:

• Acknowledging their efforts and successes.
• Coaching and motivating them when their performance goes down.

It helps to continually focus on the goal. If your team gets discouraged and is no longer following their plan, remind them of their commitment to their dreams and the purpose of working their business. If, on the other hand, they have been exceeding their targets, be sure to acknowledge their efforts and tell them that they are that much closer to achieving their goals!

Remember that your business partners are not machines. Like any person, they need to be motivated and to feel that they’re not swimming alone against the current. Do your best to bring up their morale.

Setting New Standards
Once your team has achieved their primary goals, congratulate them. Then encourage them to set higher ones. If they are doing five business calls a day, why not ten? If they are closing one person a week, why not set a goal to close two?

Continuous improvement is the key to any successful business. Keep the attitude of: “I did well; can I do better?” After all, all your teammates have big dreams: a mansion by the sea, a brand new sports car, a month-long cruise, a wealthy retirement, a lasting legacy, and so on. They won’t reach them if they settle for easy mediocre goals. They must be committed to stepping things up.

It’s up to you to encourage them to reach higher, so continually set higher targets for your business partners. Sitting on your laurels only deters them.

Teach them how to teach others
Now that your downline knows the very basics of your business and is moving on their own, your final task is to teach them the more advanced skills—that is, everything we just talked about! They must all know how to train, monitor, encourage, and coach their own recruits. After all, your personal goal is to duplicate yourself, so that you can leverage other people’s time and talents. Soon they’ll be leading their own groups, and they’ll need to know how to manage them the way you did. Show them how.

In network marketing, your team is your greatest asset, and they’re the key to a comfortable, stress-free future. Nurture them well and watch your business grow by leaps and bounds.