Business Building Corner

According to Dale Carnegie, noted author and expert on salesmanship, without proper rewards or recognition, a sales team can quickly become unmotivated. Incentives are essential to keep an organization inspired and engaged. Because each individual team member has specific and varying wants and needs, it’s crucial to make sure that the recognition or reward is aligned with their achievements and personalities.

In network marketing, recognition is the primary way to ensure not only consistent sales, but more importantly, ongoing recruitment and sponsorship. In fact, the network marketing business model is built upon bonuses, incentives, special achievement awards and acknowledgement in front of peers. As the saying goes, “people will work harder for praises than raises”.

At LifePharm Global Network, once an Independent Business Owner reaches the rank of Silver Director, you are considered a business builder. As such, you not only are a member of your upline organization, but you also become a team leader. As such, you have the responsibility to motivate your downline and new enrollees, and as they rise through the ranks, to teach them to duplicate your recognition efforts.

Here are five tips from the Dale Carnegie Training method to ensure a sales team receives the appropriate type of recognition and/or incentive:

• Keep a record. Pay attention to each success on the team and recognize individual efforts. Identify top performers and reward their achievements accordingly.
• Make recognition sincere. Ensure that the recognition being given is coming from a genuine place and comes across that way. Be specific with praise, because vague compliments come off as insincere.
• Match the reward to the achievement. It’s important to scale your rewards – better rewards for bigger accomplishments. If the same reward is given for minor and major successes alike, it can breed discontent and hurt motivation.
• Be spontaneous. When rewards become too predictable or expected, it diminishes their effectiveness. Provide top performers with a surprise lunch or gift card to their favorite store to keep them happy and engaged.
• Hold yourself accountable. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to keep your team motivated and engaged. Put in the time to learn about each of your team members so that you know what incentives and rewards are most attractive to them. When the time comes, provide successful employees with recognition and rewards that are specific to them.