Training is generally something direct sales consultants either love or hate. One of the reasons you might not look forward to training is that it can take away from the time you might be selling. It’s all a matter of perspective really. When you provide your recruits with great training you are growing your business. The more successful they are, the more successful you are.

That doesn’t mean training has to eat up all of your time. You can connect with and train your direct sales consultants online. Let’s take a look at a few tips and success strategies.

1. Webinars
   A webinar is an online seminar. You can find free conferencing programs, online services that start around $50/month, or you can set up your own online video conferencing or Skype system. Webinar services make it easy for your trainees to connect. They simply have to get online, click a link and they’re there.

   You can hold monthly webinars to answer questions, present materials, and motivate your team. Webinars can be fun too. You can play games, acknowledge profitable teammates and explain new products and promotions. It’s a great way to connect with your team on a monthly basis and to offer them the training and support they need.

2. Online discussions
   Another useful tool is an online discussion group for your team. You can set up a private forum, chat room, or Facebook group. Regularly upload training materials and connect with your direct sales team on an as needed basis.
3. Private Blog
   If you have a blog you can create training materials including videos and downloadable print materials and deliver them privately to your team. WordPress for example, offers plug-ins that gives you the ability to set up memberships and private access pages.
   Blogging Resources

   How to Create a Blog
   How to Choose Blog Web Hosting

4. Email training
   Using an autoresponder service you can set up a series of email messages to be delivered on a schedule to train a new team member and also send broadcasts when you have new information to share with the entire team. Since email training is not interactive you probably want to use it in conjunction with one of the other more conversational methods.

There are also many other ways you can use the internet to train your direct sales team. Before you decide on a system consider how you want to train your direct sales team. What materials will you provide? How often do you want to meet? Also consider the technical ability and comfort level of your direct sales recruits.

Create a plan. Choose a tool or system that supports your plan and get started. Save time, grow your business and use the internet to train your direct sales team.

You might be surprised to learn that one of the most effective ways to recruit new direct sales consultants for your team is to publish an online advertisement. Online advertising isn’t cheap and for many it can be a bit of trial and error. The key to success is creating advertisements that speak directly to your audience. Namely, you want to appeal to people who are looking for new opportunities, self-employment or careers.

There are three essential tips that help you appeal to this audience.

1. Keywords – What keywords do your prospects use when they’re searching for information? This is important particularly if you’re utilizing PPC ads. The ads will be displayed depending on the keywords your prospect has used in their search. You want to make sure you’re targeting the right keywords.
    
   If you’re not using PPC but are instead creating a traditional text ad to be published on a website or ezine keywords are still important. They grab the reader’s attention and help them quickly identify the benefit of reading your ad.
2. Call to action – What do you want readers to do when they read your ad? Do you want them to visit your website? Do you want them to give you a call? Do you want them to download a free ebook you’ve created about how to achieve direct sales success? Make sure your ad’s call to action supports your goals. If your goal is to connect with potential recruits make sure you give them the means to connect with you.
3. Benefits, benefits, benefits – What’s in it for them? An advertisement that says, “start your own direct sales business” is fine. You might get a few responses. However, an ad that says, “Control Your Destiny – Achieve Your Personal Annual Income Goals Your Way with Direct Sales.”
    
   In order to stress the benefits of becoming a member of your team consider what needs, desires, wants and problems your prospects are feeling. Then show them how to solve their problems by becoming a consultant. Keep it short, simple and sweet.

The final element of direct sales advertising success is to make sure you’re placing your advertisements in the right location to attract your prospect’s attention. Additionally, test and track your advertisements success. Keep tabs on which ad’s perform the best. Which generate the most interest and response? Which produce the most effective recruits?

Image courtesy of 4nitsirk on Flickr

Direct sales offers an abundance of opportunities to make a great income. In addition to your own sales success, recruiting other consultants can boost your income. There are many common and effective ways to recruit new teammates.

One of the most popular of course is to recruit at home parties. If you’ve exhausted the standard recruiting strategies or you want to launch a recruiting campaign consider some of these unique, and effective, strategies as part of your overall direct sales advertising plan.

1. Social Networking
   Many successful direct sales consultants accidentally stumble upon the power of social networking. They post a promotion or a review for a product and not only do they make sales, they connect with others who are interested in representing the company. Social networking is extremely powerful for connecting with other like-minded people.
   However, instead of stumbling upon success, you can create a plan and implement it to recruit teammates. For example, you might create a Facebook advertisement or a Facebook fan page to support your career. In addition to promoting products occasionally you can also share your experiences and the joys of being a direct sales consultant for your chosen company.
2. Blogging
   Do you presently have a blog? You can recruit motivated teammates by starting a blog about your adventures, misadventures and successes as a direct sales consultant. You’ll help other direct sales consultants achieve success. You’ll also attract great people to work with and join your team.
3. Guest Blog, Article Marketing and Helpful Content
   Finally, and perhaps you’re starting to see a theme here, consider publishing content about how to succeed as a direct sales consultant. When you publish helpful content you position yourself as an expert. Share your personality in your content and you’ll also attract people who want to work with you. You’ll be amazed at how well this strategy works. Publish content on article marketing sites, become a guest blogger for work at home or direct selling blogs and publish content on social networking sites like Linked In.

Add these three online recruiting strategies to your next recruitment drive and reach your goals quickly, and effectively. You’ll recruit top notch teammates and be well on your way to lasting direct sales profits and success.

Goal setting can be extremely helpful for you. It can help you identify a target and create a plan to hit it. Goal setting can also help your teammates find the extra inspiration and motivation they need to achieve success. As a Direct Sales consultant and team leader holding goal setting sessions can help grow your business and your profits. Here are a few ideas to help you hold successful goal setting sessions with your team.

1. Make Sure Everyone Is On the Same Page

   When inviting teammates to the meeting make sure they understand that it is a goal setting meeting. You might stress why you think this is so important for their success but also stress how excited you are to help them achieve success. Make the meeting enjoyable – all work and no play doesn’t generate inspiration or motivation. Hold it at your home and serve delicious food or have the meeting at a local café. Make attending the meeting as exciting as possible.

2. Create Handouts

   Handouts help guide the meeting. They also help your recruits jot down their thoughts, goals and action plan as the meeting progresses. Handouts can be designed as worksheets leaving plenty of space for each person to write as much or as little as they need. Handout questions might include:
   What do you want to accomplish this month/quarter/year?
   What motivates you to achieve?
   What is working for you as a direct sales consultant? What isn’t?

3. Seek Input from Each Person in the Meeting

   In addition to possibly going over the handouts and corresponding questions, ask each person for their input. A successful goal setting session is a discussion. It’s a cooperative group of people supporting each other to succeed. This is accomplished when everyone feels comfortable enough to share and contribute.

4. Share Your Own Goals and Motivations

   As a team leader you have a very important role. Your role is to motivate and inspire. This is often accomplished by sharing your personal experiences and stories. Let others learn from your mistakes and from your accomplishments. Also, share your agenda. What do you want to accomplish this month or quarter? What are your goals for the year? What motivates you? How do you plan to achieve your goals?

5. Create a Plan
   As each person on your team begins to develop their goals the next step is to help them create an action plan to achieve them. A goal without a plan to achieve it is nothing more than a dream. Show your team how to create goals that can be measured. Show them how to break larger goals down into smaller, achievable goals. Show them how to schedule their action so they stay on track. Again, this can be communicated through discussion, personal examples, and through your handouts.
6. Seek Commitment
   Before you end the goal setting session seek commitment from each team member to achieve their goals. Consider creating an accountability and support system. For example, you might hold monthly meetings where everyone discusses how they’re doing on their path to achieve their goals. This accountability can be motivating. It can also offer the support they need to be successful.

Successful goal setting sessions are easy to accomplish when you have a goal and a plan – sound familiar! Determine your goal for the meeting. Then create a plan to achieve it. Offer your direct sales teammates as much information and support as possible. Their success is your success.

Training your team members helps them feel more confident, which will increase their success. That in turn motivates them to work harder and sell more.

Team training should cover every aspect of direct sales success you can think of. This might include business promotion, building their own sales team, telephone tips, turning “no” into “yes” and more.

There are a variety of ways to present team training. Consider weekly emails, conference calls, local meetings in a business office or restaurant, online chats, tip sheets, or even one-on-one. All of these approaches will work in different circumstances, so try them out and choose the ones that are most effective for you and your team.

Encourage your team to attend company conferences together or take your team to a sales training conference or seminar. In addition to the training your team will get, attending together builds team unity and creates an opportunity for team members to bond.

If your local team is large enough, you could invite a guest speaker to one of your team meetings. There are a number of professionals who offer this service for a fee, or ask your upline director or a company executive. Often, if they’re free, these people are glad to share their knowledge and insight to help newer reps build their businesses.

Subscribe to a direct sales magazine or organization for your team members. Possibilities include Direct Selling News or the Direct Selling Association. You might even consider a subscription as a prize for top sellers during the month.

Create and use a simple training system for new team members. This might involve a few sessions where you meet in person, talk via the telephone, or chat via the Internet. Each session can provide a separate training theme such as booking the first show, getting past family and friends, how to deal with rejection, and other tips for getting started. Set up a sessions in a clearly defined order with specific topics you’ll cover in each one. Then use your beginners training session with every new recruit you sign on.

You can also create a more advanced training system, or an on-going one, that you use for team members who stick with the company. These sessions could involve more advanced sales techniques, building a profitable website, finding the first recruit, and more. These ongoing sessions can be sent via email using an autoresponder service or provided by teleseminar or webinar.

In addition to improving skills and confidence, team training is a highly effective strategy for motivating your team.

Without regular communication with your direct sales team it’s almost impossible to build a successful team. Communication helps keep your team motivated to build their own businesses which in turn helps build yours.

Begin with a commitment to regular, consistent contact with your team. Make communication a part of your daily routine. You can use email, phone calls, and mail to check in with your team and to send company news, tips and resources, success quotes, motivational thoughts, or reminders of deadlines. Consistent communication might include a weekly newsletter, a blog that is updated regularly, note cards, or text messages. Your messages don’t have to be long or profound; the idea is to stay in touch so your team knows you’re available and are committed to communicating with them.

Make notes to yourself on your planner or set up an automated system on your computer so you will remember to send out birthday or anniversary cards to team members. Call your consultants to congratulate them on their first party, sales goal, recruit, or any other important milestone.

Your messages don’t have to be perfect, but try to communicate clearly. Team members need to know that you have valuable information to share with them, and that you can help them succeed. This is much simpler when you can express yourself well and communicate your message clearly, whether on the phone or in writing. If your communications are hard to understand, poorly written, sloppy or simply disorganized, they won’t be nearly effective as clear, concise communication with your team. When writing, keep your sentences short, use spelling and grammar checkers, and proofread before sending. These simple task will take only minutes, but will pay off greatly in building rapport with your team. If writing and grammar are not your strong points, enlist the help of a proof reader.

With so many communication tools and options at our disposal these days, there is no excuse for lack of communication with your team. Make sure you never have to apologize for being out of touch. Communicating with your team will help keep them interested and motivated.

As your recruiting campaigns begin resulting in more prospects and team members as a result of your recruiting campaigns, you’ll be thinking, “great, my efforts are paying off.” And you’ll be motivated to continue using all the same recruiting methods. But if you aren’t tracking your results, you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Tracking your recruiting efforts will help you focus on the most successful and profitable strategies and allow you to stop wasting resources on the methods that aren’t working.

What kind of tracking system should you use? There are many ways to track your recruiting efforts from sophisticated programs to simple paper and pencil notes. The system isn’t all that important. What’s important is that you use it consistently to track your efforts and results.

One way you can track results from online methods is to use a different website link or email address for each promotion. You will then know exactly how many responses you get to an ad or posting and how many team members join as a result. If you are using a giveaway promotion you can use coupon codes in the same way. You can even track mail-in responses by assigning an attention line or suite number to your address for each promotion.

A lot of things happen when you track your direct sales recruiting efforts. To begin, tracking lets you see a realistic picture of how many prospecting conversations you have every week. It’s easy to say, “I talked to a lot of people about my business this week,” when in reality, you may have talked to a lot fewer than you think.

When you write down the details of your prospecting conversations you will see exactly how many people you spoke with, how many you planned to speak to, or how many you called that you never connected with. Now, you have a clear picture of what you intended to do versus what actually got done.

Tracking gives you a visual reminder of your accomplishments. You know when you create a to-do list and check off items done, you feel like you’ve accomplished more in a day. Tracking your recruiting results works the same way. You know exactly how much you’ve accomplished and whether or not it’s enough to help you reach your goals.

In addition, tracking is a tremendous tool to help ensure you follow up with every contact made. Relying on your memory can fail you, but having contacts listed with follow-up dates recorded in black and white will let you see at a glance who you need to follow-up with.

At the beginning of each week, or month, set a goal of how many recruits you would like to join your team for that period. If you figure you have to talk to ten people for every one who joins, and your goal is five new recruits every month, then you know you need to talk to at least fifty people each month to reach your goal. Your tracking system will help you focus so you can reach that number more easily.

Using a tracking system allows you to make better use of your time and helps ensure you are meeting your goals and growing your business. It doesn’t have to be a complex system; a simple system that you consistently follow will help you succeed.

Free Resources:

• You can track clicks to your website using the free URL shortening service Bit.ly.
  (Note: your data will be publicly available)
• Adapt these free forms from Entrepreneur.com and DocStoc.com:

Client/Prospect Contact Log –

Client-Prospect Call Log –

prospecting sheet Free Office Form Template –

Post image courtesy of goh-wz.livejournal.com

Earlier this month (February 2011) the direct sales party plan company Thirty One Gifts instituted a consultant recruiting freeze. While consultants may continue to market the opportunity, there is essentially a waiting list for new consultants to join at a later date.

The company reportedly added 6000 new consultants in January, 2011 and put the freeze in place to avoid severe back-orders and shipping delays that might result from continued expansion at that pace. The freeze will also give the company time to expand its physical plant, technology, and staff needed to handle this growth.

Most of the online buzz I’ve seen about the freeze has been positive. Consultants are excited about the company’s growth and future potential. I suppose the only potential negative is that prospects may be anxious to get started in direct sales and will therefore look for a different company so they don’t have to wait. But I would think that those who did wait might be more committed to the product line.

If you are a Thirty One consultant, how has the freeze affected you? If you are with another company that temporarily halted recruiting, was the outcome positive for you? Please leave your comments.

Click the link to get information about the company and find a Thirty One Gifts direct sales consultant who will help you start your home business.

Image courtesy of dominiqs.

When building a direct sales team, asking the right questions will help you find quality prospects who are more likely to become successful. Knowing what your prospects are looking for in a business opportunity will help ensure that neither they, nor you, are wasting time discussing the opportunity.

When approaching someone, first determine whether she is actually a potential team member by asking questions like, “Are you in need of additional money?” and “Have you ever wanted to start your own business?”

Other questions will help you determine motivation. For example, “Do you have children?” or “How does your spouse feel about you working?” and even statements such as “Wouldn’t you love working your own hours?” will give you a feel for what your prospect wants and how to best meet her needs.

When recruiting current customers, or someone who has contacted you specifically to become a recruit, you might ask, “What first interested you in this company?” or “What’s your favorite part about this particular product or company?”

If you’re not convinced your opportunity suits a potential recruit asking question like “Why do you think you’d make a good consultant with this company?” or “What would be your goals as a consultant on my team?” might help clarify things for both of you.

You’ll want to ask each recruit how she plans to promote the business. Will she work primarily online or host parties and shows in her community? How many hours a week can she work the business? These types of questions will help you and your recruits gain a better idea of what they want from the company, and how successful they can hope to be.

Also be sure to give your potential team member time to think about and ask her questions, even if it requires a second meeting time.

Once you both have all your questions answered and you’ve decided it’s a good match, ask “Are you ready to join?” or say something like “If you’re ready to sign up, can we order your kit and get you started.”

Asking the right questions helps ensure that the most new recruits are good matches for your company and your team, leading to a more successful and productive team.

Please comment and share other questions do you ask potential team members. Have the answers ever caused you to discourage someone from joining your company?

While you may be having success building your direct sales team online, recruiting new team members in your local area can also be very successful. Here are a few ideas for promoting your business, and hopefully gaining new recruits, around your own community:

Newspaper Ads
Small classified ads in your local newspaper or community shopper are very affordable and can pay for themselves with just one new recruit. Using classifieds helps get the word out about your business opportunity every week.

Flyers
Many local businesses such as laundromats, thrift shops, and grocery stores, provide community bulletin boards where you can post information about your opportunity. Create a small flyer or a page with tear-off tabs containing your contact information and post them where permitted. You might also get permission to leave flyers at your local library, trade schools, daycare, and coffee shops. Be sure to keep track of where you posted your information and check back regularly to replenish them.

Networking Groups
Join local networking groups, including your chamber of commerce. If you can’t find a local networking group, start your own. They’re easy to operate and you may be surprised how many other small and home-based business owners might be looking for just such an opportunity to promote their own businesses.

Community Job Fairs
Community job fairs are usually well-attended. Set up a booth where you can hand out brochures, answer questions about your business opportunity, and collect contact information and email addresses for you mailing list. Consider holding a drawing for a free gift as a means of gathering potential leads to add to your mailing list and to create goodwill.

Create Interesting Recruiting Bags and Gifts
Fill a clear plastic bag or gift bag with a few fun and informative items such as a brochure, an opportunity CD or DVD, a sample product and your business card. You might also add other clever items such as a $100,000 or Payday candy bar or a copy of your last commission check. Add some colorful shredded paper and seal the bag with a decorative label that lists your contact information. Always keep a few recruiting gift bags with you to hand out to prospective recruits at networking events, home parties, and any other time you can.

Always be on the look out for opportunities to share your business and build your team.

How do you recruit in your local community? Please leave a comment to share your ideas.