Today, I want to share my top 10 MLM Recruiting Tips. These are valuable lessons I have learned through trial and error recruiting thousands of people personally over the past 18+ years in this amazing industry.
If you want to succeed in network marketing, you must learn how to recruit. Yes, selling the products is important, but the big money comes from building a team. Without recruiting, you will not experience the LEVERAGE our industry offers.
Recruiting is something most people struggle with. It’s a foreign concept to most people joining our industry because they’ve never done it before. Fortunately, recruiting is a learned skill. Anyone can learn how to recruit, if they take the time to develop and master their skills, over a period.
The Mindset of a Great MLM Recruiter
90% of recruiting is having the right mindset.
Great recruiters think differently than most reps. Great recruiters 100% BELIEVE in their company and its products. They believe in the industry. More importantly, they believe in themselves.
Great recruiters are not desperate. They have confidence and posture because they believe in what they are offering people. If you struggle with those four beliefs, focus on improving it.
Great recruiters are not good talkers. Instead, they are good at asking questions, listening, and solving problems. They serve others.
They find out what their prospect’s problem is and offer viable solutions. Great recruiters offer VALUE to their prospect. They know that people join people, not companies.
Great recruiters are emotionally detached from what their prospects say and do. They know it’s a numbers game, but also a game of skill and strategy. They talk with lots of people and constantly refine their skills and strategy.
Great recruiters seek knowledge. They study recruiting and sales and learn everything they can about it. They know that even one small lesson can dramatically improve their results.
This is the mindset of a great MLM Recruiter. As you work on your mindset, you can focus on my top 10 MLM Recruiting Tips to improve your results.
Top 10 MLM Recruiting Tips
Here are my top 10 MLM Recruiting Tips.
- Develop Your Recruiting Strategy
- Know Your Numbers
- Set Your Goals
- Plan Your Week
- Learn How to Generate Leads
- Follow up, Follow up, Follow up
- Master the Close
- Test, Track, Tweak & Improve
- Be Someone Worth Joining
- Focus on Better Quality Prospects
# 1: Develop Your Recruiting Strategy
All successful businesses, salespeople, and MLM Recruiters have a written recruiting strategy. Their strategy outlines their daily mode of operations, how they will get leads, and their recruiting system. The system is the SOLUTION. Without a system, you will struggle.
Your daily mode of operations outlines what you will do each day to grow your business. Your lead strategy outlines how and where you will find qualified prospects. Finally, your recruiting system outlines the steps you will filter each prospect through. I’ll provide an example of each of those things below to give you some perspective.
Your daily mode of operations
- Hand out 5 drop cards per day
- Mail 5 postcards per day
- Message 5 people on Facebook per day
- Text 5 people per day
- Post 1 Craigslist ad per week
- Follow-up with 5 people who previously looked, but haven’t decided yet
- Reach out to 3 active team members to offer help
- Reach out to 2 inactive team members to reactivate their business
How you will generate leads
Focus on two to five lead generation strategies at a time. No more, no less.
- Drop cards, postcards, texting, Facebook, Craigslist ads
Your recruiting system/process
- Meet prospect
- Use the curiosity approach
- Share a video or presentation
- Follow up within 24 to 48-hours
- Leverage coach/sponsor via 3-way call to close prospects
- Add prospect to contact manager
- Follow up weekly until prospect buys or joins or asks you not to
- Sign up new rep
- Launch new rep
# 2: Know Your Numbers
Recruiting should be PREDICTABLE. It’s critical to track everything you do and keep your statistics. As you talk with prospects, you will develop a success ratio. Your success ratio is this:
# Conversations = # Presentations Shared = # New Reps and Customers
For example, if you are new and unskilled, you might have to talk with 20 people to have 8 people watch a video or presentation, to find one new distributor. That’s okay.
Once you know your success formula, you will KNOW exactly how many people you must approach daily, weekly, and monthly to hit your recruiting goals.
Using the formula above, if you want to recruit 4 new distributors this month, you must approach 80 people to have 32 people watch a presentation to sign up four new distributors. If you do the math, that means you need to approach 2-3 people a day throughout the month. That’s something ANYONE can do.
Keep in mind, as your skills improve, so will your success ratio. The longer you do this, the fewer people you will need to approach to recruit new reps. Instead of signing up 1 in 10, you might get to the point where you sign up 3 in 10.
Starting today, track everything you do. Keep track of how many people you prospect, how many presentations you give, and how many new customers and reps sign up. Do that with 100-200 people and you will know your ratio, which makes this business predictable.
The formula is straightforward. The more people you talk with about your network marketing business, the higher your chances are of getting some deals sealed. Even if you need to connect with 100 people offline or online each day and get to promote your MLM business to them and only five of them actually get started, it’s a day well-spent.
Source: Ezines
# 3: Set Your Goals
Once you know your numbers, it’s easy to set goals.
Top recruiters are goal oriented. They have written monthly, weekly, and daily goals. They know how many people they will prospect and follow up with daily, to hit their monthly goals. Your goals will determine the amount of activity with your daily mode of operations.
Here’s an example:
Monthly Goals
- Approach 90 prospects
- Share 30 presentations
- Follow up with 90 people
- Sign up 4 new distributors and 4 new customers
Weekly Goals
- Approach 20-25 prospects
- Share 6-8 presentations
- Follow-up with 20-25 prospects
- Sign up 1 new distributor and 1 new customer
Daily Goals
- Approach 3 new prospects
- Share 1 presentation
- Follow up with 3 prospects
Can you see how this makes recruiting doable for anyone? I hope so.
The 13% who had goals, on average, were making twice as much money as the 87% who did not.
Source: EliteMarketingPRO
# 4: Plan Your Week
Failing to plan is planning to fail. I learned that lesson in the military. It holds true in network marketing.
You must plan out your work week, ahead of time. Go somewhere quiet for an hour and take out your day planner. Schedule in your job and family time first. Once you do that, identify pockets of time each day for you to work your business. An hour a day is more than enough.
Determine what days and what times you will work your business. Create a “to do” list for each workday, so you know exactly what you will do.
No sick days are allowed. If you went to your job for the day, you must work your business that day. That’s the commitment level you need.
Finally, you must have the self-discipline to do everything on your business “to do” list that day before you go to bed for the night.
If you can follow this simple process, you’ll quickly discover that you can be more productive working your business 7-hours per week than most people who work their business 20 to 30-hours per week.
# 5: Learn How to Generate Leads
Leads are the lifeblood of your business. Without a constant, fresh supply of leads your business is doomed.
There are hundreds of ways to generate leads. Some of the common methods include:
- Warm market
- Postcards
- YouTube videos
- Social media
- Home parties
- Live events
- Drop cards
- Advertising
- Emails
- Texting
- Buying leads
There is not a right way or wrong way to get leads. Ultimately, you must find and maintain 2-5 good lead generation strategies that work for you, so you always have fresh leads coming in.
Always keep your sales pipeline full. When you have lots of prospects and leads, you aren’t worried about who gets in and who doesn’t.
Ideally, want to generate 2-10 leads per day, based upon your goals. If you’re constantly adding new people to your pipeline daily, you will sign up new reps each week.
Study lead generation, marketing, and advertising. Pick a few strategies you want to focus on and learn everything you can about them. Become a master of those strategies and do not try other things for at least 12-months. Focus is key with lead generation.
# 6: Follow Up, Follow Up, Follow Up
The fortune is in the follow up. You already know that. People need to be warmed up to you and the opportunity.
Most people will need MINIMUM 7 to 20 follow ups before they will buy or join. Only a small percentage of the people who do join will do so on the initial exposure. Have realistic expectations about this, so you aren’t disappointed.
Remember that every prospect is a prospect for life. Keep a database of every prospect you ever talk with. Stay in touch with every prospect at least 1-3 times per month until they BUY or DIE or TELL YOU NOT TO.
Leverage tools such as a contact manager or autoresponder to stay in touch with your prospects. Have a series of steps for follow up and track your results.
Remember, people buy or join when the timing is right for them, not when you want them to.
Out of all of my MLM Recruiting Tips, this one tip will have the biggest impact on your success.
Finally, the fruits of your labor generally do not show up on the first contact. Moving a lead from lukewarm to hot requires work. This means sending follow up emails, making multiple phone calls, forwarding additional information, and other follow-up activities.
Timely follow-ups are reliable ways to build a relationship and demonstrate your determination and trustworthiness. Anything – from casual “just checking in” or a “thank you” note, to sending a draft proposal or product specs on time – goes a long way in increasing your chances of making a sale.
Source: SuperOffice
# 7: Master the Close
Always ask for the sale. You will miss 100% of the sales you don’t ask for. Even if someone wants to buy or join, they normally won’t do so unless you specifically ask them to.
Learn the common objections and how to overcome them. Fortunately, there are only five to ten common objections to overcome. Have a rebuttal for each objection so you know how to respond.
Expecting someone to just sign up on their own leads to disappointment and failure.
Every time you talk with your prospect, ask them to buy or join. For example, say something such as:
“What questions do you need me to answer before we get you started today?”
To clarify, closing is not about pressure or hype or hard selling. There’s no need to do any of those things. Your job is to lead people to a decision.
Ordinarily, the close will occur at the conclusion of your presentation, but it can happen at any time. In the middle of your presentation, you may sense your prospect is quite interested in a particular product. At that time, it is completely appropriate to say “I agree with you. This item is one of the best we have. Let’s make a note on the order pad right now so we don’t forget it during the remainder of the presentation.”
The key to closing the sale is taking advantage of the right time. Don’t delay. Many salespeople don’t believe they’ve closed a sale that quickly, so they keep talking–and actually talk themselves right out of the sale. If the prospect makes comments like “Maybe I should,” “Perhaps I could,” or “It sure looks good,” stop talking and start writing, or risk losing the sale.
Source: Entrepreneur
# 8: Test, Track, Tweak, & Improve
Keep a record of your results and stats. You won’t know how well things work (or don’t) if you don’t track it. If you don’t track it, you can’t improve it.
Experiment with new things. Try different strategies and approaches. Try out new advertising methods. Don’t be scared to fail. You will make mistakes, just make sure you learn from them.
Keep testing different things until you find out what works best for you. Make small improvements as needed. Do this for a year or two and you will be a fine-tuned recruiting machine!
Evaluate your recruiting process every 90-days. Step back and look at everything from the outside in. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What am I doing that I shouldn’t be doing?
- What am I not doing that I should be doing?
- What can do I more of?
- What can I do better?
The answers to these questions will give you some great insights.
# 9: Be Someone Worth Joining
Be the type of person you want to sponsor. Be someone worth joining.
Work on your skills, mindset, and attitude. Always maintain a Positive Mental Attitude. People join people, not businesses. Be someone worth joining.
Work harder on yourself than you do on your business. Your business will only grow as much as you do.
The more VALUE you offer your prospect, the more VALUABLE you are to them. The quickest way to increase your value is to increase your skills.
Be all in, 100% committed to your business. Be part-time with a full-time attitude.
Study sales, recruiting, and lead generation. Learn everything you can about these subjects.
Work on your people skills. Become more likable.
Learn everything you can about your company and the industry. Be a student of the industry.
Treat this like a PROFESSION. Be as serious about your business as a traditional business owner is about their business.
Set big goals and focus on getting better daily. Focus on constant, never ending improvement.
There’s an old saying about the difference between a manager and a leader, “Managers do things right. Leaders do the right things.” (It’s best to be both a manager and a leader – they’re just different processes.)
As a leader, part of your job is to inspire the people around you to push themselves – and, in turn, the company – to greatness. To do this, you must show them the way by doing it yourself.
Source: MindTools
# 10: Focus on Better Quality Prospects
Not everyone is a potential prospect. Every business has a target market. Network marketing is no different.
Focus on better quality prospects. Talk to people who can AFFORD to buy the products. Talk to people who already use similar products or have done so in the past.
Look for people with network marketing experience. These are your best prospects. They are already sold on the industry.
Reach out to PROFESSIONALS, entrepreneurs, and salespeople. These people understand working on commission, investing in a business, and being patient to start and grow a business. They also have a lot of credibility and influence.
Look for INFLUENCERS. These are people with a large following. When they talk, others listen!
Remember, quality people lead you to quality people! Focus on quality, not quantity.
Conclusion
In conclusion, these are my top 10 MLM Recruiting Tips. None of this is rocket science. Many of these things are easy to do and easy not to do. I hope you will take some time and evaluate yourself in each area and identify opportunities for improvement.
What are your thoughts about my top 10 MLM Recruiting Tips? Leave a comment below to let me know what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.
Chuck Holmes
20+ Year Network Marketing Professional
Top Earner & Top Recruiter
Email: mrchuckholmes@gmail.com
P.S. Learn how to grow a successful network marketing business. Secret tips, training, and practical ideas. Free training delivered by email.
These are all great ideas to recruit more people into the business. Recruiting sounds so hard. I know most people don’t like to sell so I can see why so few people are interested in network marketing.
I hear that a lot. I don’t like to sell. The truth is, we are all salespeople. We just don’t think of it that way. We sell our ideas and viewpoint every day of our life. That is selling. I’ve found that if someone can invest some time and money to learn some basic sales skills, most people will come around and warm up to the idea.
This article is one of the best I’ve come across that gives a detailed account of the recruitment process. It discusses issues relating to requirements and the right attitude of an entrepreneur as a whole.
One of my key takeaways from this post is the mindset of the person conducting the recruitment. The person understands the job as well as the company in question.
Another great point is the belief that a person is not joining the company but the team of workers in the company.
The last and also one of the essential points is the knowledge of the recruiter. Like in most activities, the role of knowledge cannot be comprised. Great recruiters are known to be highly knowledgeable. Therefore, they are worthy of being joined. Thanks for sharing this; it is highly informative.
That’s, I’m glad you enjoyed my article about recruiting. What was your number one biggest takeaway?
I’ve always found the best recruiters were friendly and confident. They would ask questions, listen attentively and guide their prospect to a decision, just like a good salesperson does.
Yes, just like the best salespeople. They believe in what they are doing. They are knowledgeable about their product line. And they like people and know how to interact with people.
So much to learn from you, Chuck! This one hits all the right spots. I completely agree with you when you recommend following up as an integral part of recruiting. What we forget is that unless we go back and check on the people you spoke to earlier, not much will happen.
Keeping track and improving your strategies is also part of the big game. I’d bookmark this information revisit it after a few months to see what I missed out on. Fingers crossed.
Yes, most of the people I personally sponsor I follow up with at least 10-20 times before they buy or join, and that happens over a several month window. Patience and persistence are key.
I know a lot of introverts or just shy people who struggle with this. Talking to people on a daily basis and trying to recruit them must be hard, how do you gain confidence to do this? What do you think these people should do to be more comfortable with recruiting?
“Developing your Recruiting Strategy” must be vital, you need to have a general systematic plan besides the everyday operations. Also to “Know Your numbers” you have to keep some kind of record and be patient plus constant. If you are an unskilled recruiter with time you are going to get better for sure.
Nothing wrong with being shy. If someone is shy, they simply need to learn marketing, advertising, and lead generation to get people to approach them first. It works for me and I know it will work for you.
Formulating a well-defined recruiting strategy can be exhausting and time-consuming but this article really helped me to identify the key factors which I must include in my recruiting strategy. I really liked how you gave an example of setting monthly, weekly and daily goals. It was very insightful. Also, focusing on quality leads rather than just mindlessly reaching out to thousands of people is really a game changer and has a better conversion rate. All these steps and ideas make the process of recruiting look way easier to carry out. I’m looking forward to implement all these tips into my recruiting procedure. Thank you for this article!
Setting goals is really important. It will help keep you on track.
To be honest with you, recruiting into this industry is very hard to do, especially for people who don’t know how to do it. Recruitment is no doubt an important thing in this industry but if not done well your efforts might not yield your desire goals. You have written great tips and my favorite is “being someone worth joining”. This is what everyone in the industry should work towards. The best thing is to be the type of person you want to sponsor.
I’d argue that no one is born a good recruiter or a good network marketer. No one is born a good anything. Instead, people decide, and learn how to do something. Anyone can learn to be a good recruiter, but it does take time, money, patience, and hard work. Sadly, most people don’t stick around our industry long enough to learn the ropes and master those skills.
Yes, good recruiting is the key to the big successful business. Without it we will not reach full benefits and heights in the industry. It is a foreign concept to most who have not worked in HR, but yes, they can pickup the skill with some training and work. With offering value, listening, asking questions, and solving problems it’s pretty easy to at least become proficient if you try. I like your description of recruiting process, it has everything that it should have and it goes in great detail in what should be done in order for process to be successful. It takes some time to improve the process but its very easy to do it after you start it.
Most people joining our industry, or starting a new business of any kind, do not have sales, marketing, or entrepreneurship experience. This can definitely hold them back until they learn these skills or hire someone who has these skills, to help them. When it comes to MLM, most companies offer a good training program to teach people the basic fundamentals of building a business, to include retailing, recruiting, and leadership. It’s just the person’s job to attend that training and apply what they learn. Sadly, most people don’t stick around long enough to make that happen. Instead, they quit the business in 90 days or less.
Recruitment is the hardest part of MLM by far. While a lot of MLM professionals are extroverted and well-suited for the job, there are some (like me!) who are introverted and find recruitment to be an absolute nightmare.
Mercifully, I’ve stumbled upon another one of your articles and this one covers recruiting, which is what I’ve been trying to master! You read my mind again.
Anyways, reading through what you have to say on the matter, I’ve started to realize what my problem is: I don’t have a go-to recruitment strategy. I tend to just go with the flow and, unsurprisingly, it hasn’t been working as well as I’d like.
I’m going to implement #1, 3, and 6 for sure. I’m also going to continue working on developing my lead generation skills. One can never be too good at generating leads, right?
Here’s hoping that realizing my need for a strategy is the first step to growing my business!
There is hope for introverts. I am one of them. You just need to find a strategy that aligns with your personality and style. For introverts, I would tell them to use marketing to get people to contact them first. That way they can simply answer the phone and answer the person’s questions. Those are fun conversations.
This has got to be one of the most challenging parts of MLM. While some find working with people, recruiting, following up, easy and natural, to others this is a complete nightmare (I’m talking about you, introverts!). This is where this article comes in handy, because it’s a detailed guide to recruiting with explanations for many actions and tips which generally might be self-explanatory for some. I like #10 the most, quality over quantity. One hard worker who fits well in the team and is a good fit for you personally, is worth more than 5 unreliable, lazy and unprofessional ones. The real trick is finding that worker, and recognizing him if you meet him!
Quality over quantity every day. Sadly, we don’t know who the quality person will end up being. More often than not people fool you.
I look for people with leadership qualities. If they have a good attitude and they are already successful in life, that is a good start. If they have a bad self-image or are just “average” I leave them alone.
If you are new to these ideas about an MLM business, this post will give you some tips to help make your recruiting efforts yield more shekels. It’s hard to know how to convince people, and you really need to be in this industry for a while to understand all the juicy nuances.
Convincing someone why it’s worth their time is essential, but the first step is to make sure you are talking with people who can actually buy your products will make your life easy peasy.
What I like to do is sort people. I ask a lot of questions. I let the other person talk. I do this to collect information and determine if they would even be a good prospect for my product or business. If I determine they are, I lead them to a favorable decision. My goal is to show them how my product or business is a SOLUTION to one or more of their PROBLEMS. If after talking with someone I determine they are not a good fit, I can move on. I never try to convince or pressure anyone. I look for people who are qualified and looking.
Recruiting is always a big step as I don’t know who will be the right fit. You are right, must build a team or I won’t enjoy the leverage the industry offers. When recruiting, I will definitely keep these tips in my mind. I really liked the tip where you explained about focusing on better quality prospects. Focus on better prospects through talking to various people and attracting them to buy the products seems like the best approach. I will look for people with network marketing experience, including entrepreneurs, salespeople, and professionals, to get the best out of it.
Focusing on high quality prospects is one of my best recruiting tips. Most people do the exact opposite. They only approach at their level of financial success and below. Instead, they should be approaching high quality prospects who have a good self-image, a positive attitude, credibility, a large sphere of contacts, and a desire to develop a residual income.
My favorite tip in this article is creating a daily mode and following through with a plan. Setting goals for the month, week, or day is what I need to start implementing in my own life and business. If I make goals for recruiting new people I can make sure I have done all I can every day to find new people and customers. Following up is definitely the most important tip because people love when you care about them as a person and are not just focused on their business.
Yes, goals are vitally important. Most network marketers “wing it” and then wonder why they don’t get the results they desire. When you work from a plan, you position yourself for success. You know exactly what you need to do and when. This makes the business simple: plan your work and work your plan.
Well this article came at the right time, I am currently working on becoming a MLM Jedi Master! I have set my goals for the week, month, an upcoming 90 days over the weekend. I also have set up a tracking system. I think those 2 things are quite important if you want to really make an impact in your business. I think the best tip you gave though, is finding better quality prospects. I am going to get out of my comfort zone, and find people in that category to talk about my business with.
Awesome. When it comes to the opportunity, look for people with prior MLM Experience. Or look for professionals. This could include small business owners, lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. These folks typically have a lot of credibility, a large sphere of influence, and they are burnt out looking for a Plan B.