Team Building

Team building is not simply a matter of offering your company’s opportunity to a lot of people, signing some of them up and training them, and keeping in touch.

Yes, those things must happen, but the bigger task here is to build a community. What do I mean by a community?

Most companies in network marketing and direct sales sell great products but is it really the products that keep team members staying with the business?

I believe it is a mix of great products and a sense of community among team members.

I believe people want to have fun and be part of something. They want to have great examples to follow. They want leaders to care about them, not just about how much they earn off their efforts.

When you are building your team, try to find ways to bring people together whether that be online or in person. Help people on your team connect with other people on your team that live near each other or that have common interests.

Create a Facebook group team page and have regular zoom meetings and/or meetings in person so that your team members can have an opportunity to meet new people and share ideas.

I know I have colleagues in my company that are best friends of mine, and we are not in each other’s downline.

We regularly get together and exchange ideas and just have fun. We even have had “Mastermind Weekends” full of fun and shenanigans. None of us want to quit the company, even during challenging times, because we have a bond with all these other people who are also in the company. We also all want to continue earning the company trips each year so we can vacation together and have the company pay for it.

Let me give you an example of something we did with a recent company incentive.

At our company, once your team has a million dollars in sales, you earn your Diamond Club title. With that comes a one-time allowance of $5,000 to spend on your team. Some leaders chose to take their top people for a weekend or send out gifts, which is great, but I felt I wanted to see just how many of our team I could touch with this experience. So, I organized a pig roast in my backyard. I hired a caterer to do the pig roast and we also had a lot of fun things for people to do such as requesting songs from the DJ, taking photos in the photo booth, and signing the signing wall. We also had a white elephant table where people could purchase tickets and put them in their choice of prizes and all the proceeds from the table got divided among our team members that were participating in the Breast Cancer Walk the company sponsors.

We arranged for a drone to come and take pictures of the party and did a big group shot with all the participants. There was even a make-your-own sundae station and lawn games to play. We had about 70 people come to the pig roast, some driving from as far away as Florida and Delaware! (I live in New Hampshire) It was a great time and people talk about it often.

Building a community doesn’t have to be all about a big party or incentive, either.

Just injecting some fun into your regular activities can make people want to be involved and stay. On our weekly team zoom meeting that I call TEAM TIME TUESDAY, we don’t do PowerPoints. We do share ideas and testimonials, but it is not in a meeting-type format. We crack jokes and ask about each other’s families. When I draw the door prizes, I wear funny glasses and hats and we always pick out a semi-naughty name for the wheel.

On our Facebook group team page, I’ll post stories about successes our team is having and pictures of team members that are doing a great job. I’ll ask them to share posts of things they are doing, too.

On the team page, I always emphasize that when someone posts a question or needs help, there are 3,000 of us there so someone is bound to answer quickly and that almost always happens. And it’s not usually me! The team group page is definitely a team effort!

Building a big, profitable team in network marketing is going to take a lot of effort. You are going to need to continuously add new team members. Your team will grow and prosper faster, in my opinion, if you also grow a sense of community so everyone feels like they belong and that you are all doing something together.