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4 Ways to Overcome Leadership Challenges and Build a Strong Direct Sales Team
Online Ways
As a direct sales company owner, team leader or direct sales
manager, there are many leadership challenges you will need to overcome
to build a successful direct sales business. While these include topics
such as recruiting, training, marketing, recognizing your team,
prospecting, and a variety of others; this article will provide
strategies to assist you with successful direct sales team building.
# 1 - Leadership Challenge: Analyze Team Behavior Traits.
The results you gain through adequately supporting your team (advice, training, and goal setting) highly depends upon the individual's behavioral style. Does your team member prefer sales strategies to be broken down systematically? Alternatively, would your team member prefer to create steps herself to accomplish a team goal? Does she thrive by jumping in and figuring it out as she goes? Is she bogged down by details? Does your team as a whole lean into the strengths of each member? These are the questions to ask to ensure that your support strategy compliments your support recipients.
# 2 - Leadership Challenge: Prevent Your Team from Running Hot and Cold.
Some team members expend all their energy in bursts, followed by none of their energy in bursts. This is a common and vicious cycle, as the energy crash can negatively affect sales bookings, home parties scheduled, and recruiting results, and ultimately lead to personal discouragement. As a team leader, you can better support your team by creating a higher level of consistency in your team's daily, weekly and monthly direct sales routines. Coach your team to be self paced and to recognize and create consistency.
# 3 - Leadership Challenge: Keep the Ball Moving Forward.
After holiday home parties and New Year's resolutions begin to fade, your recruits may do the same. Team motivation is one of the most important leadership challenges that each direct sales leader will address. As a strong leader, we must be proactive to keep our team engaged and to encourage them to not only meet, but to also exceed their sales goals. Remember to frequently remind your team to check in with their "WHY." Why are they doing this? Why are they in this business? Why are they connected to their team? Lastly, keep the business fresh and fun. Humor reduces stress.
# 4 - Leadership Challenge: Bingo! Running Effective Team Meetings and Retreats.
Do your team members often leave your team meetings or team conference calls motivated only to become quickly deflated later? Does your direct sales team go home sounding charged up, but post-meeting produce little to no change? What went wrong?
Ultimately, this is a case of goals being too distant and not concrete. The actions were not defined and specific. The problem with a lack of concrete ideas is that it leads to disengaged team members.
Alternatively, is it also possible that you are saying the same message over and over and having a numbing effect?
The team might begin to play what I call, "meeting bingo" based upon what the leader says repeatedly at every meeting. This is not very different from the drinking games played at political speeches, where audience members take a shot or sip when a buzzword is repeated. Similarly, what we get with the repetition of empty buzzwords untethered to a measurable action step is a short-term shot of feeling good and nothing but a hangover the next day!
There is a big difference between saying "increase home party bookings", "increase sales to meet your monthly goals or to advance in the compensation plan", and a statement with measurable action and meaning such as, "meet a quarterly goal of 10 new home party bookings and become a Team Leader by April 30th." As you recite motivating objectives for each meeting, be sure to include a monthly or weekly plan to break down that goal into manageable bites.
By proactively preparing for and overcoming these direct sales leadership challenges. You are on your way to building a successful sales team and to growing your home party business!
The results you gain through adequately supporting your team (advice, training, and goal setting) highly depends upon the individual's behavioral style. Does your team member prefer sales strategies to be broken down systematically? Alternatively, would your team member prefer to create steps herself to accomplish a team goal? Does she thrive by jumping in and figuring it out as she goes? Is she bogged down by details? Does your team as a whole lean into the strengths of each member? These are the questions to ask to ensure that your support strategy compliments your support recipients.
# 2 - Leadership Challenge: Prevent Your Team from Running Hot and Cold.
Some team members expend all their energy in bursts, followed by none of their energy in bursts. This is a common and vicious cycle, as the energy crash can negatively affect sales bookings, home parties scheduled, and recruiting results, and ultimately lead to personal discouragement. As a team leader, you can better support your team by creating a higher level of consistency in your team's daily, weekly and monthly direct sales routines. Coach your team to be self paced and to recognize and create consistency.
# 3 - Leadership Challenge: Keep the Ball Moving Forward.
After holiday home parties and New Year's resolutions begin to fade, your recruits may do the same. Team motivation is one of the most important leadership challenges that each direct sales leader will address. As a strong leader, we must be proactive to keep our team engaged and to encourage them to not only meet, but to also exceed their sales goals. Remember to frequently remind your team to check in with their "WHY." Why are they doing this? Why are they in this business? Why are they connected to their team? Lastly, keep the business fresh and fun. Humor reduces stress.
# 4 - Leadership Challenge: Bingo! Running Effective Team Meetings and Retreats.
Do your team members often leave your team meetings or team conference calls motivated only to become quickly deflated later? Does your direct sales team go home sounding charged up, but post-meeting produce little to no change? What went wrong?
Ultimately, this is a case of goals being too distant and not concrete. The actions were not defined and specific. The problem with a lack of concrete ideas is that it leads to disengaged team members.
Alternatively, is it also possible that you are saying the same message over and over and having a numbing effect?
The team might begin to play what I call, "meeting bingo" based upon what the leader says repeatedly at every meeting. This is not very different from the drinking games played at political speeches, where audience members take a shot or sip when a buzzword is repeated. Similarly, what we get with the repetition of empty buzzwords untethered to a measurable action step is a short-term shot of feeling good and nothing but a hangover the next day!
There is a big difference between saying "increase home party bookings", "increase sales to meet your monthly goals or to advance in the compensation plan", and a statement with measurable action and meaning such as, "meet a quarterly goal of 10 new home party bookings and become a Team Leader by April 30th." As you recite motivating objectives for each meeting, be sure to include a monthly or weekly plan to break down that goal into manageable bites.
By proactively preparing for and overcoming these direct sales leadership challenges. You are on your way to building a successful sales team and to growing your home party business!
© 2014 All Rights Reserved. Barb Girson Original Work
Barb Girson, International Direct Selling Industry expert, trainer and coach, is a highly interactive, creative speaker and author offering professional skill development programs for workshops, leader retreats, annual conventions and teleclass sales training programs. To contact Barb, sign up for her FREE sales training teleclass and get her Sales Strategies Ezine go to http://www.MySalesTactics.com.
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http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barb_Girson Barb Girson, International Direct Selling Industry expert, trainer and coach, is a highly interactive, creative speaker and author offering professional skill development programs for workshops, leader retreats, annual conventions and teleclass sales training programs. To contact Barb, sign up for her FREE sales training teleclass and get her Sales Strategies Ezine go to http://www.MySalesTactics.com.
By Barb Girson
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