I think that role playing with your downline distributors is a wonderful way to teach them how to build their network marketing business the right way. Most people learn best by seeing, hearing AND participating. You can give your new team members a training manual, training email, or basic instructions, but that won’t be anywhere near as effective as combining it with “hands on” training.
What you really want to do is role play with your team members. Role playing is nothing more than “acting out a particular role.” Basically, it’s when you pretend to be someone else. For example, you might pretend to be a prospect, a new customer or a new team member. There are several ways you can do role playing with your team.
The best way to do that is to have them listen in to your calls. Let them be the silent person in the background so they can hear you talking with your prospect on the phone. Another thing you can do is bring them with you when you do a one-on-one, a group presentation or in home party. Let them sit in the back of the room and learn by observing.
In addition, you can pretend that you are their prospect and have them show you a business presentation. Or pretend that you are interested in learning more about the products and ask them a bunch of questions. This will give them some training and experience on how to talk to people.
As you train the person, switch roles. You do it first, to show them what right looks like and then have them do it to you. This is extremely effective. Any time one of your team members has a problem or concern, use role-playing to teach them the answer.
Ideally, you want to do this role playing one-on-one with everyone you personally sponsor (who lets you do it). Even if you can just invest one to three hours with the person, it can pay huge dividends. After all, if your team members know what to say and do, and they feel COMFORTABLE and CONFIDENT talking to people, there is a good chance they will build their network marketing business.
Another great role playing tip is to make some videos that your new team member could watch. For example, you could record yourself doing any of the following things:
- Prospecting someone
- Showing the plan
- Following up
- Asking for the order
- Getting someone started
- Answering objections
- Training a new team member
- Making calls
- Or anything else!
After you finished recording what you are doing, you could post these videos on YouTube, and then email the videos to your team members. This would free up some of your time and allow you to leverage yourself. You could also create your own training website for your team and embed the videos in your website.
Once again, I believe that it’s vital to invest some one-on-one quality time with your new team members, especially in their first few weeks in the business. Role playing is a great way to do that.
You don’t want to invest lots of time with the wrong people, but you should invest some time with everyone. Find the people you think are serious and work with them first. Make sure that you judge people by their actions; not by what they say. You should try to work with everyone for their first 30 days, and after that, spend your time working with the people who are actually doing something.
Final Thoughts
In summary, role playing with your new team members is a great way to transfer your knowledge, teach your team, and start building a relationship with your team. I do it in my network marketing business and think you should do the same thing in your business.
What are your thoughts? What do you think about role playing? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts. 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.
Role playing is one of the best training tools there is. It is my opinion that you should attempt to first role play as if you are the prospect. You should then have them listen to your calls, or even sidekick with on a demonstration.
The one thing that I suggest is to be honest in the role playing. Make difficult situations and use hard objections so that your prospect will see the reality.
It is good to role play, and I believe that even when we get experienced, it still is helpful to keep role playing at times.
I think role playing is a great way to learn. People can learn a lot by watching you and by doing.
I really like this idea. It is something I have never thought of before. People do generally learn best when they can participate and I think these sorts of exercises can be great learning tools to help people not only get better, but more confident. And we all know that a person who is confident performs much better in their role. I will have to implement this with a few people and see what the outcome is, though I suspect it will be positive.
I’ve always found that role playing works best for my new team members.
I couldn’t agree more – role playing is one of the essential tools for developing and strengthening your downline distributors. Tossing a training manual or some books at a distributor might give them some insight into MLM, but understanding the real-world application of that insight can only be attained by doing. Moreover, a training program that hinges on manuals and books is pretty solitary and won’t help build relationships. Role-playing is interactive, gets team members to communicate, and helps forge strong team bonds. It would be interesting to conduct a study where half the distributors only have training manuals and the other half learn through role-play.
Personally, I am a hands on guy. I can learn from a book, but nothing beats doing it. If I can have a mentor spend a few minutes teaching me the ropes I am good to go.
I believe we will always find a mix of those who learn by reading and listening to tapes, and others that learn better by the hands on approach. This is where it takes good judgement when you have a new person as to discovering which zone they fall in. Personally, I learn easier by just doing it. I learn quite quickly from mistakes, but sometimes that isn’t an option. It is good if we all learn how to learn in different ways too.
So true. People learn differently. You have to train your team members in a way that helps them. Some folks are hands on. Some learn by reading. Do a combination of these things and watch your team grow.