Dealing with Lazy Teammates in your Network Marketing Business

Dealing with Lazy Teammates in your Network Marketing Business

Do you have lazy teammates in your network marketing team?

Here’s how to deal with them and actually help them out and increasing their chances to become productive.

How do you coach lazy builders?

First of all, I would highly encourage you to strike from your memory banks the term “lazy builder,” because our language whenever we speak is manifested in reality. If I say, “Ah, here comes my grumpy neighbor,” that neighbor has to fill my description. They have to be grumpy. If I say, “Oh, I hope I don’t see my grumpy neighbor,” they’re not going to come prancing by with a basket of flowers and just say, “Here you go, Shannon. Have an amazing Friday.”

Be careful the language that you use to describe anybody and using absolutes. Any time you use the terms like “always” or “never,” usually those are bad ideas. I would switch the term “lazy builders,” and I would say “potential builders.” Nice little ring to it. There’s possibility in the language of potential builder. There’s no possibility in a lazy builder. You’re not going to have someone that in your head you call lazy builder and all of a sudden blows it up. Just not going to happen. Potential builders, and maybe these are potential builders that aren’t actively building, but they’re still potential. As long as there’s blood pumping through their veins, they’re potential builders.

What you want to do is you do want to, as you indicated in your question, you do want to differentiate your time. Most network marketers get very, very frustrated with their team. They think that it’s like socialism, so every person in my team needs to get two and a half hours every week and that’s the way it goes, and that’s why they don’t have a large team, because you DO need to differentiate between performance.

Now that doesn’t mean that you ignore potential builders, doesn’t mean that you don’t call potential builders back, doesn’t mean you don’t love potential builders. You love them. You love them, you believe in them, you see possibility, you see potential. Fantastic, right? Who you spend your personal time with are people that are willing to do the work, that are taking action, that are showing up to events, etc.

If you have someone that hasn’t been a builder historically but indicates they want to be a builder, give them some homework. If someone says, “Hey, I’ve been inactive,” or, “I haven’t been doing much but I really want to build this thing,” say, “Okay, cool. Tell you what, go out and prospect ten people and report back to me your results. Let me know how it goes, what objections you hear, this or that.” Now most people, you give them that homework, they’re probably not going to come back to you. Just saying, because they’re not willing to go and do the work, and that’s okay.

Now another thing that’s totally okay, customers. I would encourage you in your team training, your group training that you’re going to invite all potential builders to, all customers can join in too, always indicate in your training that, “Hey, if you’re just a customer, we love you. it’s totally cool.” Do not create the thought that someone is disappointing you if they’re not taking massive action. The reason is, if you talk to the largest builders in network marketing that have teams of hundreds of thousands of people, the majority of their team aren’t builders. There’s probably five-ten percent of their team that are actual builders, but there’s probably seventy-eighty percent that are customers that love it.

I don’t mean just customers, but people that are happy. They’re showing up to events. Maybe they’re not making money, but they’re happy. They’re part of the club, they’re part of the community, they’re part of the tribe. They’re loving it, unless you make them feel bad. If they feel like they’re a lazy builder, if they feel like they’re disappointing you, they won’t stand for it. They will quit. They’ll cancel their auto-ship. They’ll go to another company that does make them feel good.

Make sure your potential builders, your customers, your people that just show up to events every single time but they’re not making any money, love them. Surround them with love, surround them with belief, surround them with the, “I believe in you and I’m ready. Whenever you’re ready to run, I’m here for you.” Surround them with that. The people that are building, those are the people you need to pick up the phone with and say, “Hey, how can I best help you? I see that you’re rocking. I see that you just recruited a whole bunch of people. How can I help you out?”