How Network Marketing Success Is Like Coaching Kids Sports
Sunday, September 21, 2008 at 08:49PM In the best selling book, The Greatest Networker in the World, John Milton Fogg tells the story of a struggling distributor in network marketing about ready to give up on the industry.
Fortunately on the night before he quits he meets one of the top income earners in his company.
The top income earner, referred to as “The Greatest Networker” agrees to take the struggling distributor under his wing.
The story chronicles their experiences together.
The 4 Rules to Success in Network Marketing
The Greatest Networker reveals to the distributor the four rules for success in network marketing.
He gets these rules from a book on coaching kids sports. Here are the 4 rules.
1. Coach your team to have fun.
2. Teach your team the skills they need to succeed.
3. Help your team develop and grow first as individuals, then as members of a team.
4. Help them win when you can.
The Importance of Fun in Network Marketing
Art Williams, the founder of A.L. Williams, a network marketing company that sold term life insurance, says that you must have fun in your business.
On his CD set The Art of Recruiting he says, “People don’t like their jobs, they don’t like their bosses, they don’t like their fringe benefits.”
This is why it’s important that you create an environment of fun in your network marketing business.
A recent survey showed that more than 70% of employees were not happy on their jobs.
Create a fun environment to keep people around since you don’t have a guaranteed paycheck to keep them like a job.
The Importance of Good Network Marketing Training
Teaching your team the skills they need to succeed comes through network marketing training. Jeff Olson, the author of the book The Slight Edge says there are four ways that people learn in this business. They are…
1. Learned Knowledge
2. Activity Knowledge
3. Modeling Knowledge
4. Teaching Knowledge
All of these forms of knowledge are acquired by training. Classroom training and training on conference calls and webinars allow your team to learn the skills necessary for network marketing success.
The Importance of Personal Development in Network Marketing
Personal development allows your team to develop and grow both as individuals and as members of a team. By pursuing personal development, your team will improve themselves and will provide more value to the marketplace.
There are four steps you can take to grow using personal development.
1. Read personal development books.
2. Listen to or watch personal development audios or videos.
3. Attend live personal development seminars and events.
4. Associate with other people who are also on a path of personal development.
Help Your Team Win the Game of Network Marketing When You Can
The bottom line is network marketing is a for profit business. Therefore, you want to help your team make money when at all possible.
However, it’s important to note that everyone is different and will have different abilities and skill sets.
There are some people who simply don’t have what it takes to succeed in network marketing. That is ok. Hopefully you have them on a program of personal development so that they get value out of it regardless.
By following the 4 rules to network marketing success, you too can become one of the “greatest networkers in the world.”
To get the help you need to grow your business, click for step-by-step Internet Network Marketing Training.
Reader Comments (3)
Mike you hit it on the head with this one,network marketing success is exactly like teaching kids to play sports.Kids and Adults for that matter will always have a need to be coached,taught and trained.I can remember several years back when I coached my sons baseball and football teams that the first couple of weeks were always the hardest.
Each kid had different skill levels and personalities that had to be addressed in the beginning.Once I identified these individual differences it was much easier to place them in positions according to their skill level and abilities.From this point it was just a matter of teaching the skills of each individual position to bring the team together as a whole.
Once this was accomplished and everyone understood their individual importance to the team,creating a wining environment was a snap.My kids actually liked coming to Practice,and I always stressed the fact that its not always about wining and losing its how you play the game,that matters the most.And to me Network Marketing is no different.
Its all about the training and developing an abundance mentality.
There is so much truth to this article. I have spent many years coaching youth baseball. And recently have started to build my networking team. I use the same approach.
1. Have fun with the business
2. Get skills to learn and apply for success
3. Personal development for the sake of personal development, not just because you're a network marketer
4. Encourage and assist them to win
There isn't much else to it than that. At least, I try not to over think it too much. I've seen some uplines want to do it all for their downlines, and I've seen others who are completely absent. I think there is a happy medium that can be found. It doesn't have to be stressful or overbearing, but indeed, it takes responsibility and preparation - just like being a baseball coach.
I identify with this article, thanks.
I actually didn't write this article. I wonder who did!? It's a great one. One of the content contributors provided this, and did so without branding (so no name attached). Good stuff!