Building a Strong Downline: Strategies for Recruiting in Multi-Level Marketing

Simply put, your downline is the network of members who join the MLM Company under your sponsorship. It is a symbiotic relationship where you recruit them into the company, and they contribute to your earnings through their sales and performance.

According to a report from the U.S. Small Business Administration in 2016, around 50% of small business owners quit within the first 5 years. Hence, managing a Network Marketing downline requires lots of skills, strategies, and dedication. To make your venture the next top multi-level marketing company, the complex process of managing the downline must be mastered.

Steps involved in building a strong downline:

1. Finding individuals who have the necessary interest, skills, and calibre to join and contribute to your MLM venture and cause.
2. Training and moulding the recruits in the product, sales techniques, and further recruitment to set them up for sustainable growth and success.
3. Supporting the downline through the grey areas of the business and providing resources, guidance, and clarity wherever required.
4. Keeping the downline motivated and level-headed by recognizing their success through incentives and appreciation, along with setting new goals and encouraging continuous learning and development.
5. Keeping the team posted (keeping the team informed) on new updates, innovations, workflow improvements, events, and promotions to make them feel as an essential part of the decision-making line.
6. Encouraging the downline to emulate the best practices in recruitment, training, and support by quoting existing successful examples in the business.
7. The effort for continuous improvement, through feedback, adaption, and innovation must be kept alive in all aspects of the business, especially in the downline, to avoid dead downlines which contribute very little to none towards the growth of the business.

The Integrated MLM Software’s inbuilt features enable streamlined recruitment, training, and maintenance of the organizational structure of different styles of MLM Businesses. Book a free demo, and download the Integrated MLM super app for free from App Store or Play Store and experience the ease of managing your Network Marketing venture.

Strategies in Downline Management:

1. Recruitment

In order to recruit the best fits for your downline, start by having a clear mind-map and understanding of your business and the target market. Methods like word-of-mouth, social media, events, and referrals can be used to capture the required attention. Potential recruits should be followed up with success testimonials, product quality and benefits, and a healthy compensation plan to persuade them, always without compromising your honesty or integrity.

• What are their needs, wants, challenges, and aspirations? What age group should they ideally belong to, and how can joining the company help them achieve their goals? Using the inputs that come from such brainstorming sessions, alter and frame your narrative to make it attractive for the prospects.
• Let the prospects be aware that without them bearing the astronomical cost of starting a new business in order to start their entrepreneurial journey, the MLM venture offers the same exciting experience at a much lower capital cost and through an already established market.
• You can contact your prospects through various channels such as events, referrals, email, social media, text, etc. Suit your mode of contact to your prospects.
• Clearly communicate with the recruits where they stand in the network as well as the organizational structure of the company for better self-assessment and personal goal-setting by the new recruits.

2. Training

Educate your downline on all aspects of the business, especially the intricacies of the product and the best sales techniques. This is a reliable method for setting the team up for success. Achievements of the team must be supported through appreciation, feedback, incentives, and bonuses. A thriving and sustainable work environment should be built through regular meetings, well-established communication channels, and continuous learning opportunities.

• For your prospects to consider you as a source of authority, you must provide them with information, guidance, and value. Providing value means sharing resources of information through free samples, ebooks, newsletters, podcasts, blogs, or any other medium that can educate and preferably entertain the prospects to increase their interest and curiosity around the company and the product.
• The three stages of the prospect are (1) cold, where they are unaware, (2) warm, where they are involved, and (3) hot, where they are ready to join. To turn your leads from cold to hot, you can use different types of offers and features along the way. During the stage where the prospect is just aware of the product, you can offer initial information about the product and other details. During the interest stage, they can be educated with testimonials, product quality, and other valuable information. During the ready to join stage, prospects can be encouraged using offers, a sense of urgency, discounts, etc., that may guide them to join the company.
• Active communication and follow-up not only generate a sense of responsibility and accessibility but also build trust and rapport between you and the prospect. This increases the chances of them becoming a part of the company.
• There must be regular training programs and workshops where the members can upskill and improve themselves. It is also important to test and correct the knowledge of the employees in professional aspects such as product or regulatory knowledge but also in personal aspects such as motivation and leadership qualities for their growth.
• Exhibit a supportive work environment based on trust, mutual respect, and appreciation, where the efforts of individuals must be acknowledged irrespective of their success or failure.
• Inspiring the members of the downline is not only through showcasing business achievements.

3. Support and Communication

 Building the downline is easier compared to sustaining it. Continuous support, monitoring, and resolution of challenges are required to keep the team motivated. Assurance of support through regular communication helps build trust and reliability within the team. It is important to attract prospects to join the company who are motivated, enthusiastic, and willing to learn. But it is crucial to keep them that way throughout their journey with the venture.

• To reduce the attrition rate, the downline must be well supported and loyal. Their concerns and queries must be promptly addressed. They must be led by example through professional, honest, responsible leadership. Good judgment and sound reasoning with apt innovation by the leader, during events of uncertainty, can steer the business away from tragedies and hence guide the downline members to adopt a similar approach during challenging times.
• Talent retained is talent attracted. With more members trusting and staying with boosted morale, more talented people will be attracted towards the company.
• Stay away from false promises and setting unrealistic expectations. This will ultimately erode the internal trust between the company and the employees, leading to mass churn rates. Prospects should be encouraged to join the company under realistic expectations and for the invaluable entrepreneurial experience the firm offers.
• Provide new recruits with all necessary resources such as flyers, business cards, brochures, as well as access to online forums where they can communicate with leaders and learn from them. Train them in the essentials as well as the top strategies from sales to customer service. Customize the training sessions to fit their goals and learning preferences.
• The team must also be delegated rational responsibility and independence. This will give them ground to innovate and use their unique skills and talents to bring positive changes to different aspects of your MLM business and organizational growth.
• Support is impossible without proper communication channels. If your downline doesn’t find you accessible or approachable, chances are high that the downline may go dysfunctional. Communication methods must also be such that they suit the preferences of both parties involved. The semi-formal work environment in which MLM Ventures functions might blur the lines between personal and workspace. However, it is important to respect the privacy, work-life balance, and interests of the members of your downline while getting in touch with them.
• To avoid random and unexpected communication, you must establish channels of consistent communication. Monthly catch-up and feedback sessions with your team or one-to-one sessions on a monthly basis can set expectations and provide a stage to address concerns and foster healthy communication.

4. Feedback and Monitoring

Sound career growth cannot happen without honest feedback and appreciation. Use the method of positive reinforcement to applaud and appreciate the efforts taken by the team, provide regular feedback for constant improvement, and keep a friendly eye for mistakes which are to be addressed and rectified promptly.

• Feedback must be regular and clear to set expectations clearly. Recognize and reward achievements and incentivize exceptional leadership skills and efforts.
• Members of the downline can be monitored through tracking and analyzing their performance. This can be done with the help of robust Multi-Level Marketing software or tools that obtain, process, store, analyze, and learn from the data in order to establish trends and produce reports of individual performance with greatly reduced chances of manual error.
• The Integrated MLM Software is the one of best multi-level marketing software among the lot with an interactive dashboard showing various key metrics and indicators that display the performance of the downline, including various information such as active and inactive members, churn and retention rate, revenue and sales, and many other important aspects of the business.
• The reports generated with this data can help you easily analyse the trend of the business and hence, provide data-backed feedback, appraisals, or incentivization that motivate and encourage the downline and promote business growth.

5. Conflicts

The network marketing business is a melting pot of people from a spectrum of different cultural and educational backgrounds. Disagreements and disputes must be handled with understanding, mutual respect, a willingness to learn and cooperate, as well as prompt resolution. 

• To ensure smooth resolution of conflicts, an internal complaints resolution committee can be set up. The decisions made should be based on facts and data rather than uninformed reactions. Probable bottlenecks in the workflow that may affect the downline must be identified and addressed before they become tangible problems.