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.

Recruiting online is a popular and successful way to build your direct sales team. Knowing how to use the Internet to locate new recruits will save you time and effort. Here are some tips for successful online recruiting for your direct sales team:

1. First, develop a landing page specifically designed for online recruiting. This is the page you direct prospective recruits to, so it needs to specifically address the information potential team members will want. Focus on them, not on yourself. Answer questions a new recruit might ask and invite them to contact you for more information.
2. Define measurable goals and be sure to track your efforts. Know what is working and what is not working so you can focus your efforts where you get the most results.
3. Social networking can be very effective in online recruiting. Use popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to post bits of information that will entice potential recruits into visiting your site to learn more. It’s a fine line between promoting yourself on social media and spamming social media, so carefully develop a strategy to interact and provide value; don’t just post ads.
4. While possibly taking a back seat to social networking, discussion forums can still be a great location for finding new direct sales recruits. Search the term WAHM discussion forum and you’ll come up with plenty of possibilities. Visit the most likely results and see which ones appeal to you. Understand that you’ll be looking for people interested in a work-at-home opportunity or a way to earn extra money rather than those that deal specifically with directs sales. You’re looking for places that attract people who want to earn money, not a forum filled with other company reps.

   Again, be very careful not to spam the boards with ads. Instead, become a valuable part of the community by interacting and providing value. Most forums have specific rules about advertising and the use of signature lines in your posts. Be sure to read, understand, and follow the rules or you may find yourself banned. Becoming a trusted member of a forum can be very beneficial to your business.

   Be creative in the use of your signature line. Rather than just using the name of your company, use a tag line that will interest potential team members and get them to click your link.

5. The use of a signature file on all your outgoing email can also be effective in attracting visitors to your website. Depending on your email client the tools, options, or preferences section usually has a way to set up a signature that is automatically added to all outgoing messages.
6. Carefully placed Craigslist ads can net good results. Again, be sure to follow the rules. Use the correct business slot, or under the employment ads that apply to commission only jobs. Don’t be surprised or discouraged if your ad gets kicked off a few times, even if you followed the rules. Sometimes people will flag what they consider a competing business opportunity simply to get rid of the competition. Keep an eye on the site and if your ad disappears, simply post it again.
7. Be very careful to avoid using spam in all your online recruiting and team building efforts. Even if a method isn’t strictly defined as spam legally or by the online resource you use, the community may consider it spam. Before you jump in to any online community, spend some time observing how others interact and react. Anything that appears to be spam can hurt your reputation and get you kicked off forums, dropped from lists, and banned quicker than you can say “I’m sorry!”

While there can be a lot of competition in online recruiting and team building, the right strategy will be successful. Your strategy doesn’t have to be complicated; with specific goals and persistent effort you will gain new team members and build your business.

Not everyone who visits a website is ready to make a purchase or join your opportunity. Most of the time, customers and prospects will comparison shop, visiting several times before making a decision. So even for sites that are primarily sales oriented, an equally important purpose of the website is to generate leads.

Everyone loves getting something for free. Giving something away is a great way to generate website traffic and qualified leads.

Creating an ezine or newsletter is a common “freebie”. Subscribers opt in, which means they provide minimal personal information in order to receive the newsletter. Each new subscriber becomes another lead. The result over time is a large mailing list of qualified prospects. In addition to the newsletter, business owners email announcements of new products or services to this custom-made pool of potential buyers.
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