How to work with your new distributors?

I was sitting in my office this morning (Starbucks) after a 1 hour work out and as I was bringing in a new distributor, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Why do we always tell people to do it our way? What if this guy only has 1 or 2 hours per day to build his business? You see not everyone is going to build the same. What if the person hates the telephone, but loves face to face interaction? What if the person feels more comfortable leading with the product vs. the business? These are just things to think about when you bring a new person into your organization. If the guy has no budget to work with, obviously you can't have him go set up a pay per click account immediately.

So where do you begin? Personally, I would never ever have anyone doing any cold market marketing until they have at least hit their warm market (Yes Social Media, Pay Per Click, Classified Ads are cold)? Why? 2 examples: At store the other day with my son selling popcorn for Cub Scouts, we sold 2 bags of popcorn to people we knew effortlessly, but the rest of the people weren't as easy. Unless you have lots of sales experience you will fall flat on your face hitting a cold market early on. So regardless of how you come into an organization, you must hit your warm market first.

This is why I really really really like people who have some skill-set (sales, marketing, real estate, etc.), but have never done network marketing before. Their warm market is ripe. And once we go through that we can transition into cold and they will not have much of a problem with it. If your new person has been in multiple programs, they have more than likely exhausted their warm market, and will be forced into the cold. Which regardless of what you hear from all the so called guru's is tougher to build quickly and takes way more skill-set.

So where am I going? Nobody you bring on your team learns how to market to the cold world until they first go through their warm market. Secondly, treat each new distributor differently in terms of their time. Find out whether they are more comfortable face to face or on the phone. Find out what their schedule is. If your prospect works in a factory from 6AM - 6PM, you may need to have them just do marketing for you and your leaders. Again, find out and create a team. This isn't you against them, but a team. You build it, and you need to know your teams strength and weaknesses. But never let anyone off the hook from going after their warm market first. If they refuse to go after their warm market, I hope they have lots of sales and marketing experience.