In This Chapter

Knowing best practices for different types of opportunity events

Recruiting in a group

Staging and planning events

Group recruiting requires a different approach than one-on-one recruiting does, but the great news is that it can be exponentially more effective. Group recruiting is when you share your company’s products, profits, and programs with a group of people. Here’s the exciting part: The group of people don’t have to be, and actually would rarely be, all your own prospects.

You can do group recruiting at any number of different events, for your entire team to bring guests to. This means that your newest team members — those who are the most excited, the most scared, and the least knowledgeable — can bring their prospects to the event and leave with a new team member (see Chapter 16 for much more on working with new team members).

As a direct selling leader, you’ll hold various kinds of events: team meetings, product launches, host-appreciation events, and take-a-looks (just to name a few). The next section talks more about these.

Encourage team members to bring a guest with them to every opportunity event, and you’ll start to see your downline team growing exponentially.

One thing I discovered when I ran my team was that if I planned an “opportunity night,” then team members who didn’t have anyone to bring simply didn’t show up. But when I included the opportunity in our regularly scheduled meetings and encouraged team members to bring a guest, we had a more exciting evening. Representatives felt confident enough to bring their leads to a meeting, and people who didn’t have any leads still felt comfortable coming and participating. This meant more bodies in the room and a lot more energy. As a leader, you want your team to come to your events feeling confident about recruiting because they know that you are there to help.

Independent representatives often have a fear of recruiting when they start their businesses. They say things like, “I don’t know enough yet,” and, “I haven’t read through the entire compensation plan, nor do I understand it enough to answer questions,” and, “I’m still so new, I can’t be a leader.”

It’s your job as a leader to make sure your new reps understand that you’re there to help them every step of the way. Your new team members will feel more secure in attending opportunity events if they know that for the most part you will be doing the recruiting for them. That is, you will be doing the recruiting talk, discussing the company, and answering any questions. Remind your reps that you will continue to be with them and their new recruits every step of the way until they feel more confident in their abilities.

Creating this kind of encouraging space for your reps helps create momentum for your entire team.

Looking at the Best Types of Opportunity Events

The best types of events are where enthusiasm and excitement are built through recognizing achievements, sharing tips on how to succeed in direct sales, reinforcing individual goals and vision, and talking about the amazing benefits of this opportunity.

There are several types of opportunity events that you can hold:

• Take-a-look: These types of events can be done weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly in your home. Take-a-looks are evenings when representatives on your team can come with their potential leads to learn more about the opportunity. Take-a-looks are casual events, often held right after work. You will have a kit set up and serve light food such as pizza or vegetables and dip, cheese and crackers, salad, and so on.

  The first part of the take-a-look is the meet and greet, where people mingle and get to know each other. After they have eaten and networked, you go over the kit, talk about what direct selling means, and share the benefits of your company’s business opportunity.

  If you have a team spread across the country, you can also do this on the phone using a conference line. The main objective is to create a casual atmosphere where your team can bring their leads to learn more about starting a business of their own.

• Team meeting: Depending on your company culture, this may be a weekly or monthly gathering. I always encouraged everyone to bring along potential recruits. The reps would get to stand and introduce their guests, which served as recognition. Having guests at team meetings is a great way for them to see a variety of different representatives that they can relate to, see a meeting in action, and envision what it would be like to be a part of your organization.

• Host-appreciation events: These are most exciting when you make them team-wide events, inviting anyone who hosted a party for any member of your team. On the invitation and promotions, be sure to mention that there will be prizes for the top sales, best-attended party, and any other category appropriate to your company. Hosts are always your best recruiting candidates, and a room full of them is super exciting. You can use the time to honor the hosts by saying something like this:

  “Thank you all so much for supporting our representatives. We certainly do value and appreciate you. Many of us started out as hosts just like you.” Then go on with your regular opportunity talk.

• Service seminars: These are great to invite the general public to. They can be more than just events for team members who didn’t attend the annual conference. These events can be set up as seminars where you discuss things like the latest fashion trends, how to perfect your spring cleaning, eat healthier, become a label detective, and so on. Have team members invite guests, because the value added by the information creates an exciting atmosphere for ending the presentation with a recruiting talk. This causes people to become interested in learning more about the business, and you can continue with a recruiting talk.
• Product launches: These events show off your new products. Depending on the company, there may be a couple opportunities for these, such as when your company launches a new catalog or additional seasonal products. These can be a lot of fun. Invite your past hosts and guests to preview the new products. Product launches are perfect opportunities to get new bookings, as well as turn those hosts and guests into new recruits.

Recruiting at Events

Once you establish that you will be giving recruiting talks at all your events, you’ll discover that team members are likely to bring recruiting leads. Your talks boost their confidence. And because you’re recruiting to help your team members succeed, you’ll find that you become more confident when delivering your recruiting talk as well.

This dynamic lends itself to great recruiting results. I remember how I felt when I heard team members telling each other, “If you bring them, she’ll get them to join!” It really was one of the highlights of my week.

Don’t be concerned that these recruits won’t be your “personal” or “frontline” recruits. They will help your team members, and ultimately you, build a very solid and successful business.

Planning and Staging Events

Events are part of creating excitement and motivation for a direct selling team. They don’t have to be expensive, but they do need to be well thought out. Follow this checklist to execute the perfect opportunity event:

• Pick a location and facility to host the event in a central location for you, your team, and your attendees. It could be a banquet hall, hotel, restaurant, coffee shop, or even your home, depending on your budget and size of attendees.
• You and your team should invite all past leads with an invitation, an email, and a phone call. Send invitations at least two weeks before the event and invite more guests as you meet them and get closer to the date.
• Always ask for an RSVP and reconfirm the day before the event with a reminder call, email, or text.
• Promote your opportunity event at all your other events, including home parties, online parties, and one-on-one appointments.
• Keep a master RSVP list so you know how many guests to plan for.
• Have each recruiter confirm their leads’ attendance with you one to two days prior to the event.
• Have a check-in table with a master list of attendees. You can assign someone on your team to help with this.
• Have a sign-in sheet that asks for name, contact information, and name of person who invited them. Use this as a follow-up sheet.
• Have them fill out a customer information slip in exchange for a chance at a door prize. The survey should include space for their name, contact information, and what their interests are (purchasing product, hosting a party, or starting a business).
• Have recruiting packets, host packets, catalogs, and any other promotional material ready to pass on to interested attendees.
• Have a business starter kit on display. You should also have an additional kit of all the products or if you are doing a product launch, have a section featuring the newest products.
• Offer light refreshments like cookies, water, coffee, fruit, and so on.
• Create an agenda. Go over the industry, products, profits, and programs, and so on.
• Present testimonials. Select some members from your team to give short one- or two-minute presentations about their success with the business. Try to have three of these planned — one from every walk of the business. Someone new, a stay-at-home mom, someone who does the business as a full-time career, a working woman, and so on. Additional testimonials could be a host who had an outstanding party and wants to share how great of an experience it was.
• Ask each leader who is participating in the event to bring a product for the door prizes. Confirm these ahead of time.
• Sell raffle tickets for door prizes donated by the leaders. This will help you cover the expenses you incurred for the meeting. (Be sure to check for municipal gambling regulations. You can typically find this information online.)
• Assign and delegate tasks to your team such as meet and greet, registration, people to set up displays, tear down, and so on.
• Make a list of materials that you may need. Assign volunteers to help collect these items: name tags, pens, music, starter kit, prizes, host packets, recruiting packets, catalogs, and so on.

You’re not going to use all these methods every time. For smaller events, you may take a different approach than your larger events. Assess the size of your venue, the size of your team, and how many guests will be attending.

When you create a venue for people to bring their guests so that they can learn more about the business opportunity, you can start signing team members for the entire organization, helping people achieve their promotions week after week.