The problem with trickle-down training in your downline and how to ensure repeatable success for every new team member.
If you’re a network marketer, having a productive and successful downline is the key to a fun and profitable business.
A successful downline boosts your income, positions you as a successful leader, and makes it easy to take time off for your family.
Traditionally, network marketers train the people they enrol individually.
And that works great when the people doing the training are experienced and effective teachers.
But consider this: each of your enrollees will grasp somewhere between 20-50% of everything you teach them.
That’s not a reflection of your training skills, it’s just how the human brain works.
Once you’ve spent the time training your enrollees and they’ve retained their (optimistically) 50%, they go on to enrol their own people and train them. Their enrollees also grasp between 20-50% of what they’ve been taught.
The problem is, their 50% isn’t coming from the 100% you gave your enrollee. It’s 50% of your enrollee’s 50%.
And on it goes. Eventually, the training that new people are getting is so watered down it's really next to nothing.
That’s a hard way to build a successful business. And perhaps more importantly, that’s not how you support your downline so that they can build successful businesses of their own.
Do you remember the childhood game “Telephone”?
Everyone would line up and the person at one end would whisper a phrase or sentence into their neighbour’s ear. They, in turn, would whisper it into their neighbour’s ear and on it would go down the line.
Nine times out of ten, when the message got to the end of the line it was completely different from what it was at the start of the line.
That’s exactly what happens to your downline when they’ve got multiple teachers teaching your message while adding their own twist to it and diluting information they don’t deem important.
It’s just human nature.
Create a streamlined and effective system for training new enrolments
You want your team members to learn as much as they can about the products and how to grow their business. You want to give them the tools they need to grasp 100% of what you teach them.
Which means you want a streamlined and effective system for training ALL new enrollments, not just the ones who signed up with you, but everyone who signs up with them.
And that would be exhausting without the right tools.
Start with a training system that every enrollee can access.
That’s not as difficult as it sounds and once it’s done, you don’t have to do it again.
Once it’s done, every single person in your downline will have all the information they need to achieve their goals and more.
Your training system doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to be effective.
You could create 10 videos for example, or 10 pdfs (or both!) that thoroughly explain each step of the business process.
For example, one video per week for their first 10 weeks that shows them exactly what to focus on that week.
Your enrollees can then keep returning to specific steps until they understand them all as clearly as you do.
When they have a question about any part of the process, you simply refer them to that week’s training. If they ask a question about something they’re not ready yet, you can let them know that’s coming up in the trainings, but they should finish the task in front of them before worrying about that.
No more answering the same questions over and over again in a Facebook group. No more having to train each new enrolment from scratch. No more feeling like you can’t go on vacation because someone always needs you!
Once you have this clear training system set up, the next step is to create a tight-knit community where new enrollees can connect with the rest of your downline and get the support they need.
People in your downline will talk to each other, ask questions, get support and you can get an even better idea of what they’re struggling with and what kind of issues they’re having as new business owners.
That helps you create your next training or even tweak the one you already have to make it more effective.
Passive income that feels truly passive
You’ve probably heard people complain that “passive income isn’t really passive.” And there’s a bit of truth to that, but every time I hear it, I have to wonder if they’re just doing things the hard way.
Passive income involves some initial setup and time. But, once you have something in place, it pretty much runs itself.
You stop wasting time answering the same questions over and over again and you start focusing on growing as a leader. You focus on helping your downline rise the ranks faster. You start showing them how to grow as a leader.
And no one is wasting time on onboarding and training new people. Your focus expands to your higher purpose!
Passive income is one of the top reasons for becoming a network marketer because we value time freedom as much as income. We want to be paid for our leadership skills, not our ability to work 40 hours every week.
A Clear System Inspires Confidence
Often when someone is new to network marketing they concentrate on learning about the products and selling them. That’s great! That’s exactly what you want them to do.
However, some people will be slow at bringing on new members due to a lack of confidence. They might feel that they don’t know enough about the products yet, or they don’t know enough about the business side of things to be able to teach someone else.
Having an onboarding system already in place takes some of that stress away. If your downline can show their new enrollees the training that you’ve already prepared and have already tested for its effectiveness, your downline won’t be shy about enrolling new members.
It also ensures that everything is being done the same way, if everyone is taught by the same person.
It ensures that you’re paid for effective leadership, not an hourly wage based on effort.
The right tools for an effective and easy onboarding system
You can keep battling away with trying to ensure that the 20-50% of information your new enrollee is retaining is the important stuff they really need to know.
Or you can create a training process that ensures everybody has the same information and the chance to repeat that information as many times as they need.
My favourite tool for onboarding new enrolments is an Inspired Impact website because it’s incredibly easy for you to set up and manage and easy for your downline to access and implement.
Every Inspired Impact website for team leaders comes with a members area built in, so each new enrollee will feel like they’ve just joined a professional team who really has their “shit” together. That not only positions you as a successful leader, but fills your new member with excitement.
Your new team member is most excited to get started at the beginning, but many fail to launch right away because of “buyer’s remorse” which often hits new members once they realize they have no idea what to do next.
Welcoming them into a fully branded and professional online experience that will show them how to repeat the success you’ve created will inspire them to get started right away.
Your Inspired Impact site helps you organise videos and PDFs, (and any other files you want to share) into a clear path from total beginner to more advanced topics.
Members can ask questions in the private forum right there on your site. You can include a FAQ at the beginning for common newbie questions.
Anytime someone in your downline asks a question that’s already been covered in one of the training's, you simply share the link instead of answering the same questions over and over again.
And the whole thing is searchable so they can find the topics they need easily without a lot of hand holding.
My clients have reduced the time they spend coaching new team members from as much as 15 hours a week to just 30 minutes a week! And a lot of that comes from members helping each other find the answers to their questions instead of booking a coaching call every time they need help.
Some clients stopped 1:1 coaching entirely and simply host a 30 minute call each week that includes connecting with all new members and answering questions that weren’t covered in the trainings.
My clients have also noticed that their team members hit higher ranks in less time after switching to an Inspired Impact site. Partly because new members start enrolling faster after joining, and partly because they’ve freed up their time to focus on growing their top leaders to higher levels.
I’m sure you can imagine what that did for their income! This type of repeatable success pays for the investment many times over.
If you’d like to see what an Inspired Impact website could do for your business, I invite you to book a free, no-strings attached call with me. I’ll give you a tour of the platform and we can chat about your unique team to see if this is indeed the right fit for you.
Book your free call with me below
x Jasmine