Three of the most common issues in network marketing are ?retention?, ?motivation? and ?training? and as you will see, all three are interrelated. Once you have built a good downline, how do you keep them motivated to stay in the business and work the program? Because the last thing you want is an unmotivated, lazy downline.



The success of any MLM is built on interdependent relationships. Just as you depend on your downline's performance, as it is directly tied to your profits, likewise, your downline depends on YOU to teach them how to duplicate your success. This is crucial to the success of any network marketing business. Your dowline wants the big bucks as much as you do, however, they will quickly despair of achieving this goal if they can't see a clear path towards it.

A large part of motivating your donwline depends on training your downline. This means giving them real skills that will lead to measurable results. This is one of the biggest problems in network marketing ? ineffective, incomplete and sometimes even non-existent training for new downline members.

Educating your recruits about the program and its commission structure is a good first, but this is not enough. You need to train them in the execution of a real marketing system. If the benefit of doing this isn't immediately obvious, then take a moment to consider the most frequent complaints that upline members hear from their downline.

?I don't know where or how to find leads.?

?No one is joining under me.?

?I've been working at this forever, and I'm still not making enough money.?

Each of these complaints is symptomatic of inadequate training, and the lack of a clear marketing system. Don't blame your downline or tell them they ?just aren't motivated enough.? They want to succeed as much as you do ? that's why they joined you. Without a clear path to success, they WILL lose motivation and there is really no point in building a program if you can't get it to work.

What type of skills does your downline require?

This depends on their experience level, and one of the first things you should do with new downlines is to survey them to find out what knowledge they need in order to succeed, especially since some of them may be totally new to multi-level-marketing. What your downline needs is for you to teach them what YOU did to achieve success. You may not even realise that you used a marketing system, especially if getting results comes second-nature to you. However, if you'll sit down and think about the steps you've taken, you'll realise you do have a marketing system. Write these steps down as they come to you:

What do I do to generate leads?

What do I do to follow up with them?

How is it that I get those leads to convert at the rate that they do?

Remember that MLM is a business of duplication therefore you should offer these to your downline via an easy-to-follow marketing system. You must show them how to execute this system effectively as it is critical to helping them duplicate your results. This should be done in a step-by-step system that covers lead generation, follow-up and conversion because those are the three most important elements in marketing any MLM.

Do not despair, training does not have to be time-consuming. If you can get your downline onto an e-mail list, you can automate the training. You'll only have to write out the training materials just once. After that, you can deliver these materials via an e-mail 'autoresponder'.

It is so simple, but it can make such a huge difference to your business and your downline. So if you want to improve your results across the board, don't shirk your responsibilities. Provide your downline with the proper network marketing training by showing them how to set up a real marketing system for success. Once their training is complete, a good portion of your downline should be able to achieve fairly good results, which will result in them being very happy to be in the program ? that's your ?retention? issue resolved.

After your downline has achieved success, don't allow them to fall into a comfort zone and rest on their laurels. Don't let them settle for 100 sales per month when they could easily make 200 sales per month. Some people are just naturally not very competitive so you need to entice them by appealing to their ego. Capitalise on the desire for reward and recognition.

If you have (and you should) established e-mail communication with your downline, you can offer up a little 'public praise' by featuring downline member success stories in a monthly newsletter. You may even want to offer up rewards for milestone achievements. For example, you could purchase a tool that will help in improving business, such as a course on copy writing, and give it away free to the ?most improved? downline member. There are endless possibilities on the rewards you can offer.

Ultimately, keeping your dowline motivated means treating them as respected members of your team. Let them know that you care about their success as much your own, and show it by helping them in any way you can.