by Sajin Rajan, founder and director of Epixel MLM Software
Network marketing always stays ahead of any marketing business models established in the world. The only factor that diminishes its impact is the entry of “scams”, often called as pyramid schemes that make people lose their faith in network marketing. However, the prominence can be brought back with hard work, and leadership plays a key role in it.
Being a leader in network marketing is not just about bringing people’s trust back, it’s more than that and there are certain points to take care of. Find the leadership skills that exist in yourself and nurture them to become a prominent one.
According to studies, if a person doesn’t possess certain skills it doesn’t mean they can’t achieve it. Skills are acquired by learning and practicing a process multiple times. A person unskilled to sing a song will sing better if he/she is given continuous training for a certain time period. At least, a small change will possess in their voice or singing pattern. Leadership is no different and it can be nurtured with proper step-by-step training.
1. Learn & understand the success mantra.
“Building the network is the ultimate aim of network marketing and a distributor has to understand this basic fact.” The success mantra of network marketing is about understanding this logic.
So, how to get it done?
- Customer-to-distributor conversion is the primary task that a leader must follow and make into reality
- Other than the usual compensation, distributors can earn yet another income and that will be ‘retail profit’
- Make everyone aware of such opportunities as a leader of the group and spread the word to the new recruits
- The leadership qualities can help companies to increase their sales with motivation, customer engagements, providing the team with parties, and much more
As a leader, you must show your downlines how network marketing can help them to achieve personal milestones.
Always remember one thing – stick with basics and learn to improve yourself. Never lose your activeness and leadership skills in any scenario.
2. A much wider distributor network.
Just like I mentioned, things aren’t simple as it looks like, to establish a product selling business, the network needs to spread out as far as possible. As a leader, the team must be encouraged to expand and skills must be developed.
Leadership skills are to be developed and practiced to expand the distributor network. One must see a potential leader among everyone in the network. It’s obviously a concern and things won’t be interesting if there ain’t any leaders who spread it among others.
Yes, everyone has the potential and people just have to realize that. Do the necessary training which will be discussed below this article. A distributor can achieve the goals once they can become a leader and make other distributors find their leadership skills.
3. Testing the real potential of your network.
Testing the potential of your network is needed as it’s the only way to measure the skill set. The two possible plots will be:
- You and only you – The only thing that matters will be your effort and business earnings will be based on these efforts
- The effort to maximize the team potential by developing the leadership skills of your team. The first plot will take a serious bit of time and yet the personal gain will be too low. In network marketing, the solo effort won’t do it and if you’re still happy with your own effort may be direct selling is the right choice. Yes, there is a difference between direct selling and network marketing.
If your team doesn’t perform well as you do, then your efforts won’t be converted in the form of income. Years of effort go away in vain.
Instead, here go for the second plot where you can make people real leaders and with such confidence, they can recruit more members and earn well. Making their leadership skills on a higher note is the most successful strategy they can pull out. Together, we’re strong and unbreakable!
4. Confidence meter to check.
Confidence is the key and not every distributor does have the same kind of mindset. Ask some questions to your newbie’s (newly joined distributors) and check their confidence level.
You can ask them – Can you achieve the desired set of goals? Do you have the confidence to assure a profitable business time?
The three results from the confidence meter are:
- Low: The new members are having trouble saying yes to the above questions. They lack confidence and the future doesn’t look good. This falls under the “low” profile!
- Medium: If the distributors are happy to at least try then there is a win-win situation ahead and the confidence meter reads it as “medium”.
- High: If they find it achievable and have enough assurance about what they can achieve then their readings always fall under “high”.
Always focus on being the best leader and spreading it all over the network.
5. A super-duper plan to proceed further.
Having a plan is the basic thing and everything else is performed on the basis of this plan. A super-duper plan must be prepared at the beginning itself. The plan should be a solution for the following concerns,
- Make your team understand the need for a leadership role
- Recruit more people for expanding network and sales
- Complaints and acquiring new downline members
- Take care of Internal politics that exist within the business network
- Stay strong throughout the business network during thick and thin
- Motivate the team and making them comfortable
- Understand your network and do the necessary things to help them
All these concerns must be addressed in the compensation plan and just as I said earlier – stick with basics and focus!
6. Finding out leaders among the pack.
Not everyone is a leader and finding them is a hard task. As a leader, you must check the confidence meter and other important factors. In a network marketing business, there exist 1000+ distributors and filtering leaders out, you can realize that for sure.
The leadership skills are not a result of pressure exerted on people or concrete skills to develop. It’s there inside the people and can be analyzed using the results of testing mode where distributor potential is calculated.
The result must be positive for a certain number of people and with proper training, they will become long term assets. The desired result can be drawn from these selected people and yes, in network marketing everyone must find their tone as a leader. Like blockchain, everyone in the network is interlinked to each other and dependency is high.
So, find the leaders among your group, shape their skills, and make sure you never force them during the training session. If the rest of them don’t have that ability then, try to help them to advance their skills. If at all they aren’t skilled then it’s best to get rid of them as they may become a lagging factor in the future.
7. The role of presentation and communication skills.
To achieve the sales goals – communication and presentation skills matter the most. Just like the basic plan, these sets of skills are vital and rest depends on it.
- A good distributor need not be a good leader as the skills vary among them
- A good leader is always a good distributor
- Leadership and distributions skills are well two streams that must be aligned together to strengthen up the core
If a distributor can’t lead the team and make other leaders then they are not meant for network marketing. Everyone must find their chances to recruit more people alongside sales. So, a leader can find opportunities among others and train them to become a leader.
As I mentioned in the third point, if you’re a distributor with good presentation skills and just want to look after your sales then go for direct selling but not network marketing or MLM.
Get committed to your work and improve the communication skill with practice and understand how much a distributor must give value on his job role.
8. Training distributors and lead the way.
If the distributors are found to have enough potential then the next thing would be training. The above set of communication and presentation skills can be developed in training time. The leadership part will also be covered in the training session.
A properly trained network marketing professional can become proactive himself/herself as well as help the team to become proactive. These leaders can effectively handle the training sessions and create awareness about the company & its products.
The training session of a network marketing distributor covers the following details,
- Company products
- Company details
- How to build a network of people
- Presentation style
- Communication training
- Spreading positive environment among the complete network
- Compensation plan consulting
- Retail profit & other additional income-driven training
- Information about joining packages and the criteria’s
- Work-life balance
- Company culture and much more
Get trained well fellows!
9. Problem management – Battle with difficult times.
What if your team is not performing well? What if there exist certain disputes? What if a certain number of people decide to go off from the network?
There are many such problems to face in the network marketing industry and everyone had their difficult times. Getting over it in a pleasant manner is a good habit to follow and what you can do is,
- Understand what are the common problems happening around the network
- Face problems instead of hiding away in the shades
- Does your team have the ability to solve it?
- Make leaders develop with a new set of skills
- Teach distributors on how to become leaders and stay ahead in business
Basically, if there exists a problem then try to find a solution. If you can’t find a solution then you won’t be able to get past it. Always try to remember one thing, the problem does occur and you just need to solve it and move on.
As a team, you can simply overcome any of the issues easily. Unity is always a front-line strength and using your leadership skills to manage the issues. Try to acquire such skills, and problem management is an important skill to upgrade for every distributor.
10. Personal identity and achievements matter.
As a leader and the sponsor of your downlines, you must have good identity and be an idol for your team. They must find the fire in you and become a motivating leader that everyone loves to be. Alongside the team achievements, you must focus on personal milestones too.
You must become the favorite of the network and they must admire your passion for marketing. A leader is an ideal person who perfectly sets out to make things right and make others right too.
So that’s it, the 10 important things one must follow to earn and improve leadership skills. These 10 ways help people to find and nurture leadership skills in the network marketing business. A better network marketing world is always a dream and I hope things get far better in the coming days.
Sajin Rajan, founder and director of Epixel MLM Software has more than 10 years of experience in the Network Marketing industry, working with clients, analyzing their needs and resources, and helping them to meet their business objectives and goals. He is an accomplished IT team leader with a passion for technology, offering years of experience in providing software solutions. He has been successful in implementing data-driven technological strategies to enhance businesses.
