When it comes to recruiting new team members for your Direct Sales team, it’s not about signing up every Tom, Dick, Harry, Jane and Sue. Sure, You can bring in twelve new members every month, but how many of those members will work the business? How many of them will stay with the business and become successful with it?

I have been in Direct Sales for over 20 years now and I often see consultants too focused on adding massive numbers of teammates to their teams. If you are looking at quantity and not quality in regards to your recruiting efforts, you will be tempted to hype, mislead, brag and make it all seem too easy to your prospect. Sure, they will often join your company…However, they quickly become frustrated, lose interest and move on to something else.

If you want to build a strong and healthy team, you need to look at quality and not quantity. Personally, I would rather recruit two new team members a month who are serious about building a business, who are hard workers and go-getters, compared to ten team members who are in it just for a little pocket change.

One way you can find serious business builders for your home business is by interviewing your prospects. When it comes to the interviewing process, you need to be honest with them. You need to let them know that this type of business is not a cake walk, customers do not magically find you and that this type of business takes a lot of hard work. Let your prospect’s know that you are serious about your business and they will need to be serious about theirs.

A strong and healthy Direct Sales team is built on quality team members and career business builders. Any seasoned professional will tell you that Direct Sales is not for everyone. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. Take your time when it comes to building a team and concentrate on adding quality business builders and watch your team succeed to it’s fullest potential.

Shelly Hill has been working from home in Direct Sales since 1989 and is a Manager with Tupperware. Shelly believes that team building is more about adding quality members than quantity of members. You can visit Shelly’s work at home business options site at http://www.workathomebusinessoptions.com for Direct Sales articles and home business tips.

Direct Sales Team Training Newsletter

Deb Bixler has just launched another sweepstakes at the CashFlowShow.com. This time she is giving away her training content for direct sales professionals already formatted into an awesome newsletter service. The grand prize winner of the Jingle Bells Sweepstakes will win a $240 retail value newsletter service and can get Deb’s training content (or other niche newsletter content) in preformatted newsletters ready to send out to their team! Enter the direct sales sweepstakes!

Newsletter Service Direct Sales Friendly

This is a direct sales freindly newsletter service in that they have build in features for downline training and also for potential consultant and customer newsletters. In addtion they do not discriminate against any direct sales company and welcome all product lines.

Enter To Win Direct Sales Newsletters

The Jingle Bells direct sales sweepstakes is giving away a $240 value grand prize of an annual My Newsletter Builder service account with Deb’s (or other niche) content preformatted in your account!! That is 12 professionally designed newsletters with awesome direct sales training and 52 sales tips ready to send to your team.Enter the direct sales sweepstakes! through January 1st 2011 at midnight.

In direct sales leadership mindset is one of the critical factors to success. The right mindset can move you quickly through the ranks toward upper-level leadership. Developing the proper mindset takes work. And most often we as leaders fall short in teh critical area of setting boundaries and expectations.

In previous articles, I’ve talked about the power of setting expectations with your hosts. As a direct sales leader, it is equally important to set expectations with your personal recruits as well as other team members. Failing to set healthy boundaries in your business can often result in being pushed to do too much hand-holding, and is often at the expense of your own personal book of direct sales business.

Here are “the don’ts” – five of my top ten tips for setting clear expectations with your direct sales team:

1. Don’t waffle. As leaders, we want to help our teams be successful. In as much as we need to be firm with expectations when communicating with our hosts, so too must we be firm with the expectations we set with our teams. Adhere to your call-in hours, and when someone tries to violate them, be firm, and clear. Respect their time, and they will learn to respect yours.

2. Don’t coddle. Hand-holding is not doing your consultants any favors. You are actually enabling them, and they will come to you for everything – including the resources they could easily find on their own. Quality leadership means training your team to know where to go to get their questions answered. You should only be the last resort resource and the go-to for new training, tools and advice. Require your team to understand the consultant manual, order entry, presentation basics and how to hold a recruiting interview. While it’s a nice ego boost to be asked to assist on a recruiting call, it’s hardly the best use of your time if you could be holding your own appointments in that time slot.

3. Don’t give up your own book of business. See number two above. If you’re spending all your time working with consultants, when do you have time to work your own book of business? Make your own business a priority and lead by example. A healthy calendar full of appointments that serve your own business is just as important as coaching and training time with your team.

4. Don’t give up your life. The only thing perhaps more important than number three above is to make time for your personal needs and your personal life. Direct Sales is a vehicle to make your dreams come true, but if you’re bogged down in the grunt work of your business, you’ll never have time to live that dream. Delegate the non-essentials to your team or an assistant (see number 5).

5. Don’t do it alone. Whether you have family support, team support or a personal assistant for your business, know your limits, and find qualified help to handle the rest. A true leader focuses on what I call IPA – Important Personal Activies or Income Producing Activities. When you step into a leadership role, it’s silly to try to keep all the plates spinning by yourself. You’ve earned the right to have help. Ask for it!

These five tips are foundational to a healthy set of boundaries as a direct sales leader. Without them, you’ll spend too much time not making money. That’s a sure fire way to go out of business fast.

Lisa Robbin Young offers direct sales coaching and training to direct sales professionals looking to grow their business like a real business instead of an expensive hobby. Sign up for her free weekly ezine at http://www.homepartysolution.com.

When it comes to recruiting in Direct Sales, not everyone is a born leader or recruiter. To become efficient with leading and recruiting, you need to first educate yourself on what it takes to lead a quality Direct Sales team.

In this article, I would like to discuss and point out what I think it takes to be a Direct Sales Recruiter and Team Leader.

1. Lead By Example: You will need to lead your team by setting a good professional example. Where the leader goes, the team will follow. What the leaders does, the team will do.

You can not expect your team to be out doing home parties, selling products, recruiting and doing fundraisers if you yourself are not out doing them.

You need to lead your team and set an example of what they should be doing.

2. Time Management: When it comes to managing a Direct Sales team, you will need to set aside time every day to assist your team. You will need to answer emails, take phone calls, do team training, and hold team meetings.

When you bring in new members to your team, it is not solely your uplines responsibility to train them, some of the responsibility also falls upon the person who has recruited them.

Ask yourself, Do I have time to take on new team members at this point and time? If you are leading a really busy life, then perhaps you should refrain from recruiting, at least at this particular time.

3. Knowledge: If you are going to start recruiting new team members into your Direct Sales business, you need to first educate yourself on your Direct Sales Company policies. You should know the policy inside and out before recruiting new teammates.

New team members will be full of questions for you before and after they join your team. It will be your job to answer these questions.

Way too often, I see people join a Direct Sales Business and immediately (within days) are out advertising and trying to recruit new team members, often times before their consultant business kit has been delivered to them. There is no possible way that this recruiter knows enough about the company to provide correct information to any of their newly recruited consultants.

4. Experience: Being a successful team leader also deals with experience. You will be responsible for teaching your new teammates how to demonstrate products, how to advertise their businesses, how to deal with their customers, how to manage their consultant web sites and more.

I recommend that before you go out and start recruiting that you take time out to gain some experience and to educate yourself on all of these business areas before recruiting new teammates. When it comes to business, experience does count!

5. Longevity: How long do you foresee yourself in this business? Is this a short term or long term business for you? If you are in it for the long term, then yes, you should be recruiting. If you are doing your business just as a short term thing to earn some pocket change, then no, you should not be recruiting.

When new consultants join a Direct Sales business, they want to be joining a team that will be there for the long run. As a consultant, there is nothing more irritating than being shoved around from team to team because their previous leader(s) have left the business.

6. People Person: Do you enjoy being around people? Are you outgoing? Do you enjoy talking to people? Helping people?

As a Direct Sales team leader, you will be communicating with people every day, so if you have a shy and reserved personality, then maybe recruiting and leading a team isn’t for you.

There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to recruiting and being a team leader, today I have only scratched the surface. I hope it has given you a few things to think about before you start building your team.

Shelly Hill

Shelly has been working from home in Direct Sales since 1989. Shelly is a Manager with Tupperware. You can contact Shelly at:
Web: http://www.classybusinesswomen.com
Recipe Blog: http://wahmshelly.blogspot.com