[powerpress]
How the heck do you motivate your team?
This is part three of a three part series based on interviews I did with various network marketers in different companies, and at different points in their business. In the first part, I covered what motivates network marketers. In the second part, I talked about the most common challenges and how to overcome them. Today, I’m going to tackle the #1 leadership problem I heard: how to motivate your team members.
I think it’s valuable to recap quickly the three biggest motivators for network marketers because they really play in here: flexibility, they love the product, and helping people.
What stands out here is that although many people said they wanted to earn income, it was not their primary motivator. Certainly the idea of becoming incredibly wealthy didn’t come up once. Crazy, huh? Income did come up, but was in line with the overall purpose of supporting their family. Not wealth for wealth’s sake. Well, this correlates with the current compelling research on motivation as explained by sociologist Daniel Pink in his book, Drive. I could not even begin to give his summary justice, so I’m going to play it here so you can hear it right from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. This is the audio stripped from a 10-minute video. After the video, I’m going to talk about how you can infuse these concepts into your team culture so that you are creating the most motivating environment possible for your team.
Autonomy, mastery, and purpose. That makes sense and lines up with the core motivators as described by my interviews: flexibility which is like autonomy, and purpose which has to do with love of the products and helping people. A few people had cited the challenge of personal growth as a motivator. While this one didn’t come top of mind for people, I see it all the time in my training and coaching. Once I teach concept and one of my students does it, and does it well, she is excited to do it again, and learn something new. Let’s face it, we are all learning junkies when it comes to the topics that give us a sense of purpose.
So let’s talk about a basic team meeting format that you can use to create a motivating culture on your team. You will need to decide how often you have these team meetings. Weekly, biweekly, monthly, that’s up to you. Maybe you already have a time set up. Here is a format that I’ve personally found to work very well over the years, and as a bonus it’s backed by scientific research.
Topic #1: Customer success stories or team member success stories.
Have a few people share how the products have impacted someone’s overall life. I love this to be customers since they are the center of the mission. You can simply open it up for a couple of people to share success stories, or prep them beforehand and this is the first thing you can share in your meeting.
Topic #2: You are the leader of the team, and it’s quite effective to set a team goal that your team works toward.
This also gives them a greater purpose, to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Set a goal for the month, and share progress towards it. This needs to be an overall sales goal for the group, not your personal goal to hit a bonus or reach the next rank. This is about them, not about you.
Topic #3: Product highlight.
Have someone else on your team (let’s get people involved) share on one of their favorite products to keep everyone’s education up to date and spark that motivation about the excellence of the products, and their purpose of helping people.
Topic #4: Share a best practice.
Again, this is someone else sharing a best practice, not you. Pick an area of your sales funnel- setting appointments, closing, referrals, recruiting, leading or whatever, and have someone prepare. This increases their own mastery of the concept since they have to teach it, and contributes to the mastery of the group. Tons of activity when you are unskilled is incredibly demotivating and it is your duty as the leader to develop the skills of the team.
I’m going to stop there for today and hopefully I’ve been able to shift your mindset around leadership and motivation to better equip you to lead your team to success. Go to the show notes at emergesalestraining.com/47 to watch the video again, and grab a copy of the book, Drive. Again, thank you to everyone who was a part of the interviews and this project, and to Daniel Pink for sharing this information with the world. Talk to you next week!
Tasha