Early on in my career I quickly learned that success would be found in my ability to become very good at recruiting new distributors on a very regular basis. So I went to work learning how to become a top recruiter, and in today’s post I am going to share with you some of my best “Direct Sales Recruiting Tips” so you can as well.
Take this post very seriously because the fact is that recruiting is by far the most important skill set you need to get good to great at if you want success. 
It makes no difference if you are making $50 a month or $50,000 per month if you are not sponsoring new distributors into your downline on a monthly basis your business is going backwards will fail.
It is that important.
The Good News
Now the good news is that learning how to get good enough to personally sponsor 5 – 10 new distributors into your down line is not difficult.
Anyone and I really truly mean anyone who has the determination and drive to learn this important skill can do so.
When the realization of this first dawned on me I became very excited. When I realized that all of my dreams, goals and ambitions could come true if I simply got good at this one thing I got really fired up.
And you should also.
The only thing standing between you and the lifestyle of your dreams is you taking the time to learn a skill that you can most definitely learn.
That should get you excited.
On a side note before I get into the good stuff, direct sales goes by a few other names also, such as network marketing, MLM, and Multi-level marketing. You will see that I switch between all of these terms in my blog posts.
OK here we go…
Tip #1 – Numbers Game
The first thing to understand is that successful recruiting is pure and simply a numbers game.
The more people that you approach regarding your business opportunity the more people are going to join or buy your products.
In traditional sales they refer to this as a sales funnel.
One end of the funnel has a large opening and the other end of the funnel has a smaller opening. The more people you put in the large opening and work them through the sales process the more there will be that come out the smaller end and join your team.
It does not even matter if someone is better than you at sponsoring people, playing the numbers always works.
If you speak to higher numbers of people than they do you will beat them. If they enroll 4 people out of every 10 they speak with, and you only enroll 2 people for every 10 you speak to and they only speak to 20 people, but you speak to 50 you will beat them. You played the numbers!
As you get into action and consistently stay there your closing ratio is going to emerge.
You are going to figure out how many people monthly you will need to share your opportunity with in order to sponsor 5 – 10 people monthly. Then it simply becomes a matter of making sure you speak with that number of people each month.
Some of the next tips we are going to look at will help you to get the highest closing ratio you can, so you can work less numbers but get better results, this comes with experience and practice.
Tip #2 – 3rd Party Tools
This is one of the most important strategies you need to understand and immediately implement into your business building plan.
People are often under the wrong impression on how a successful organization is built. Although direct sales has “sales” in it’s name it is actually not a sales business at all. That is one reason why I prefer calling it network marketing.
We do not sell here.
Yes we are paid on the sales of product within our organization but the activities we perform to be successful are not selling activities, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.
Sales people actually come into this industry and struggle at first, because they attempt to use all of the techniques they have learned in their career and they simply do not work.
Here is why…
Let’s say I am a top level sales person, I join a direct sales business and I immediately start trying to sell my opportunity to everyone I know. I give them a super duper high-powered sales pitch, I mean I freaking nail it, I’m feeling good.
Do you know why my prospects are going to say?
“Robb wow man, that was incredible, you are going to absolutely crush this business, but it is not for me, I can’t sell, I am not a sales person”.
You see most people do not want to sell.
They do not want to become sales people. So as a result, if they see you selling to them they are going to think they have to also and as a result you will not get many people joining you.
The Magic of 3rd Party Tools
Instead of selling what you want to get your head around is that all we do is share.
We share the opportunity with prospects by providing them with a 3rd party tool that is designed to do all of the selling and telling for you.
3rd Party Tools are powerful because they remove you from the equation and they are created by experienced leaders who know how to present the opportunity the best.
A 3rd party tool could be a website, a webinar, a home meeting, a hotel meeting, a conference call or even a Facebook group.
All you do is ask someone if they are open to taking a look at an opportunity, if they are open you provide them with a 3rd
party tool and set a date and time to follow up.
When you use this strategy, your prospect will notice how simple it is.
And they will think to themselves: “All Robb did was provided me with a website and asked me to look at it. That is simple, I can do that”.
Notice the difference in your prospects reaction from when you tried to sell to them verses when you simply provided them with a 3rd
party tool.
This is a BIG deal!
One of the big pieces of the puzzle to doing this successfully is the follow up piece…
Tip #3 – Follow Up
I would wager that at least 70% of people who are asked to look at an opportunity and are given material to do so are NOT followed up with.
It blows my mind that someone would do all of the work of finding a prospect, building rapport with them, approaching them to look at the biz opportunity, providing them with a 3rd party tool but then completely neglect one of the most important pieces of the puzzle i.e. Following Up.
I’m not sure why this is but I believe people are afraid of rejection. They don’t want to hear someone tell them “No”.
They convince themselves in their minds that if someone is interested they will get back to them.
Don’t fall for this trap. That never happens.
Even the most interested prospect 9 times out of 10 will not get back to you with their decision, you must follow up with them and collect their decision, is it for them or not or do they need more information to make a decision?
Do not neglect this my friend.
Set a time to follow up with your prospect immediately after they have agreed to looking at your 3rd party tool.
Just simply ask them when they will have had the time to look at the material and advise them you will call them than. If they say I can watch it tonight at 6pm, you would say OK great, so I will call you back at 7pm to see what you think.
That is it, simple to do…
The following are two additional quick tips associated with what I just covered:
Use the Phone
People love to avoid using the phone when prospecting. They want to relay on private messages on social media and text messages. People are fearful of the phone. You must get over this.
The fact is if you get on the phone and speak with your prospects, your success rate will increase dramatically.
As much as you can use the internet to help you build your business you cannot forget that this is a person to person business.
The phone makes the process much more personable. It is much easier to ignore someone and not reply to a text message or a private message. It is much harder to ignore someone when they have spoken on the phone.
Use the phone!
How to Close a Prospect
I do buy into the thought process that you should learn and use fancy dance sales closing techniques.
I don’t believe they work well in this business for many of the same reasons I used to explain why selling does not work here.
However, there is 1 technique I do recommend, because it is so simple and it works very well.
When you follow up with someone who has looked at your 3rd
party tool, do NOT ask them what they think about it.
If you do they will tell you precisely what they think. People love to sling mud and you will then have to try and counter all of the negative stuff they say about the business.
Instead you want to use this 2 step closing process:
First ask the person “What Did You Like”?
Example:
YOU: Hey jo-jo did you look at the material?
Jo-Jo: Yes I did.
YOU: Excellent, that is great, “What Did You Like About It?”
It’s a great question to ask, let them go on and on about what they liked, do not interrupt them and whatever they liked agree with them that it is a great feature and that you liked it also.
Then say…
“Sounds to me like you are ready to get started”
Now say nothing!!
There will be a short uncomfortable moment of awkward silence in many cases. Do not break the silence let them break it.
Some people might say they are ready, other people may say that they need more information and others might tell you it is not for them.
But this strategy will also have more people saying they are ready to get started or need more information.
It works great!
OK so far I have given you some great trips on how to present your opportunity to your prospects, follow up and close them. Now let us look at where and how to get prospects.
Tip #4 – Your Warm Market
When you first start building your business it is crucial to your future success that you start out by focusing your recruiting activities on the people you already know.
This is referred to as your warm market.
It is a smart business decision and one that is not exclusive to network marketing.
Realtors, financial planners and many service businesses start out by approaching the people they know first before expanding to cold market techniques.
There are a whole host of reasons why it is important that you do this:
=> It is easy. No question the easiest thing you can do is approach the people you know to see if they are “open” to looking at your opportunity.
=> More people will be open. The people who know you hopefully also like you and as a result will do you a favor and actually be open to taking a look at what you are doing just because of who you are to them
=> It is great for practice. Prospecting is not difficult, and learning to do so is quite simple, but it does take some practice. Your warm market is the best group of people to practice on; they will go the easiest on you and be more forgiving then a stranger from the cold market.
=> It works well. Success in MLM has and always will be a result of people sharing their opportunity with people they know. The largest and most stable organizations within this industry have been built on this premise. I know it works well if done right because I was able to create a 6 figure income going to my warm market.
=> It duplicates. And this is the biggest reason it is so important. What you do your team is going to do. This is called duplication and is a crucial success factor.
Anyone and everyone on your team has the ability to learn the skill set of sharing their opportunity with the people they already know. Not everyone will be comfortable working the cold market. So in order to grow a long and stable business it is important to have warm marketing recruiting as the corner stone of your business.
Then you can move into cold market, which leads to the next tip…
If you want to learn how to get the incredible results from your warm market that I was able to you can check out this blog post!
Tip #5 Cold Market Recruiting
There is no doubt in my humble opinion that if you are diligent with prospecting you will run out of the people you know, to share your opportunity with.
This is exactly what happened to me.
As great as my upline was they were not advocates of the cold market. They believed no one truly ran out of people they knew. And they would never train on it at all. I could not comprehend this as I had spoken to everyone I knew about my biz at least 3 times. There literally was nobody else left.
And since my upline was not helpful with cold market; I had to take the initiative and head out and learn this method of recruiting on my own.
To say this was a long and painful experience would be an understatement.
There are all kinds of scams, and supposed gurus out there who will try and sell you on their cold marketing technique in order to take your hard earned money from you. I’m pretty sure I’ve run into and tried them all.
I tried all of the games and gimmicks out there, I spent thousands and thousands of dollars trying to figure out what worked and what did not.
In the end I only ever recommend 3 cold marketing techniques, the rest are a waste of time.
I am now going to briefly cover the 3 that work and then I will point you to other training on this blog if you wish to learn more about each of them.
Living Your Life
This is a simply strategy and one that only makes sense that everyone in the industry incorporates into their plan of action.
Living life is exactly as it sounds. Just get out in your community and live your life.
Whether that is going to work, the gym, chamber of commerce functions, parties, sporting events, church, or kids activities, etc.
Basically the things that you are already doing.
But now you want to do them with a purpose. You want to get to know people. You want to meet people. And you want to develop relationships (friendships) with them.
Notice I did not say should hit them up with your business opportunity? You don’t want to meet someone and automatically transition into trying to recruit them.
Be normal, make a friendship and add them as a friend on social media.
Then when and only when the relationship has developed to the point that you are comfortable asking them if they are “open” to taking a look at your opportunity, do so.
It is a simple thing to easily add 10 – 30 new prospects monthly into your pipeline doing this.
Social Media Recruiting
Social Media sites like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn have become an absolute game changer for people in the multi-level marketing industry.
Never before has it become so simple for a person to be able to recruit new distributors and build a successful downline.
If you use social media the right way, it is very possible to be able to make at least 5 – 10 new friends each and every day. How would having 300 – 600 new prospects monthly change things for your business?
The key is you have to do this the right way.
But like everything else network marketers love to mess everything up. As a result, they are using social media all wrong and are failing miserably at it.
Most people are using these type of platforms as their own personal spam machines and are spamming and annoying the heck out of people, giving themselves no shot at success and making a bad name for the industry as a whole.
It’s Called Social Media for a Reason
People get on these type of sites to be social and have fun. They like to have conversations, be entertained and informed. They are not on these sites to be sold to.
You want to look at the time you spend on social media like you are going to a party.
Let’s say a friend of yours invites you to a party.
You would not bust into the party and immediately start trying to solicit people about your business. If you did you would most likely be asked to leave and never be invited back again.
No you would act like a normal person.
You would smile, you would say hi to people, you would meet new people, you would join in on conversations, you would laugh and joke, you would have a good time and simply get to know people.
This is precisely what you want to do on social media. It’s called making friends and we all learned how to do this as children.
Go make friends. Then when and only when the relationship has developed ask them if they are “open” to looking at your opportunity.
It’s a great recruiting strategy and will get you results.
Now there are definitely specific step by step things you can implement to maximize your results, but doing just what I just explained you will get good results.
If you want to learn more on how to use this method here is a blog post to get you started
And this is another good one to read: The top 3 network marketing recruiting systems revealed!
Attraction Marketing
Attraction marketing is using the internet to create systems that basically attract prospects to you passively.
The best way to explain this strategy is by giving you examples.
Let’s say you want to target people who are actively researching how to make money from home.
They are now your target market.
You could set up systems such as a blog, a YouTube channel or a Facebook business page and start creating content to target them.
You would do this by having the content you create help them in their search of learning how to make money from home.
You could write a blog post daily reviewing all of the different home based businesses available to them to choose from.
You can do a video on the same topic of your blog post and upload it to your YouTube channel.
You could run ads from your Facebook group to people on Facebook promoting a free report on them same topic.
Over time as you continue to help people understand the options they have available to them to make money and the best ways to do it you will become seen as an expert or a guru on the subject.
Everyone wants to work with the expert or guru.
And of course part of your marketing funnel is going to include details on your opportunity and why you recommend it over the rest of them. Why it is your followers best shot at success.
Over time many of the people you are targeting are going to come to the realization that their best shot at success is to partner with you in your business.
It Is Not For Everyone
It’s a very powerful strategy and I do recommend it to serious go getters, but not to everyone.
The reason I do not recommend it to everyone is that it does take a significant amount of time before you will see any results, there is also a steep learning curve associated with it and it can cost money.
For these reasons, it is only for people who are serious go-getters and want to add this as a component of their action plan.
It is important to understand that this technique should never replace the other methods we discussed but it is a nice addition if you can handle the fact that it will take time, effort and money before you see any results.
If you want to learn more about this technique, you can check out these blog posts:
How to Grow Your Network Marketing Business Online
How to Build a Network Marketing Internet Business
And here is a link to the best platform I have come across to teach you this method.
Click Here for the system I recommend!
My Last Tip
By far the best tip I can ever give you is don’t quit.
Make the rock solid commitment to yourself that you are going to see this journey to its end. If others have been successful doing this there is no reason why you cannot either.
The only way you can fail is by quitting.
Success in this industry is a learned skill that anyone, including you can master if you put your mind to it.
I trust you found these direct sales recruiting tips helpful and if I can help you out be sure to let me know in the comment section below my friend.
Cheers to YOUR Success
Robb Corbett
P.S. Recruiting is the key to your success there is no doubt about it. If you are serious about crushing your business I have put together a FREE prospecting boot camp for you. It will show you all of the skills to become a massive success. Get signed up for free today. Sign up is on the side of the blog.
Leave a Reply