You just told someone about your product, and they want to learn more. Now you’re so excited!…but you’re also terrified. Why??
Because you are hoping the one question they don’t ask is, “How will I get paid?”
If your network marketing compensation plan makes your head hurt… you are definitely not alone. I have an MBA and I’ve never seen a network marketing compensation plan that didn’t make my head hurt… I also have very successful clients who avoid business conversations because they don’t know how to explain compensation.
One client told me… “I don’t know how we get paid, I just know that we do.”
“Whoa! Hold on a second,” I said to her and started asking her some questions to show her that she does know how to get paid:
“What happens when you sell something?”
I get paid
“What happens when customers reorder?”
I get paid
“What happens when you launch a new builder?”
I get paid
“What happens if you duplicate this type of thing 3, 4, 5 levels up?”
I get paid
“Ok good, so you do know how you get paid. What is trickier is how the calculator calculates all these things.”
However, that is probably not the most important thing a new business builder that joins your team really wants to know.
What they do want to know are the things they need to do to in order to be successful.
All compensation plans don’t really matter. What most companies, (whether it be a network marketing company or a traditional business), are saying with their compensation plan is:
This is the behavior that we care about and want you to do, so we are going to pay you to do it.
It’s that simple.
There are typically 4 or 5 different compensation plans network marketing companies use regardless of the company. Instead of going over the percentages and how everything gets calculated perfectly, I am going to offer you a different way to explain it so that you are actually making agreements with your new business builder on what activities they are going to do in order to maximize the way they get paid.
Here is what you can say to your friend, family, or customer who is asking you about how your company’s compensation plan works:
“Do you want a super-detailed explanation? Or a simple one?”
Most people are going to want a simple explanation. If they want the super-detailed version, it would be best to refer them to your company’s video or page on compensation. I would still also give them a simple explanation so that they are able to connect the dots easier.
Usually what I’ll do is break it down into short term and long term and say, “Short term is 20% for new customers, and we’ll focus on that for the first 2-3 months. For long term, you are going to get additional bonuses and commissions based on what customers continue to buy, and, if you decide to build a team, you will get paid on what your team sells, just like any other business.”
You can also use this additional verbiage to explain compensation as well as explain what they need to be doing:
“All businesses are trying to find a problem, solve a problem, and get paid. You can get paid by helping customers, and, if you decide to build a team, there is a separate compensation structure for doing that.”
“On the business builder side, there is a bonus for creating, basically, a word-of-mouth movement with each person starting to build their own business. All of these business builders are helping customers. Advancing ranks within your company is a leadership bonus to develop leaders.”
This is helpful because it is using normal language that people would understand, but it is also a good review for your business builders. I often coach people who are frustrated that they aren’t hitting higher ranks (leadership bonus) that it is because they are spending time with new customer volume.
We have to understand that what we must do is break up our schedule and allocate time to each of these different pieces of compensation and maximize them. Business builders don’t need to understand every single way the computer calculates things… what they need to know is what to do in order to get paid. When the focus is on activities, the paychecks start showing up.
Try explaining this new way of explaining to your existing builders. I hope this helps increase your confidence in recruiting and retaining your existing builders.
P.S. If you aren’t launching builders every single month and want to… then join me on July 30th for my 9-week coaching group, Recruit Like a Boss. You can grab the details and Register Here. There are only 2 spots left so don’t delay! (have an account with us? Just send an email to team@emergesalestraining.com with “add me” in the subject line and we will register you :).
P.P.S. You are invited to join me on August 3 at 9:00am PT for the $27 live workshop, “How to Double the Size of Your Team Without Being Overwhelmed”. Simply send an email to team@emergesalestraining.com with the subject “add me” and we will add this to your account, or grab the details and register HERE.
If you would like to check out our other coaching options, here are a few ways we can work together further…
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