Party On! Part 3

Recognition

Party Plan businesses have usually been great at recognition of accomplishment and commitment in their businesses. They understand the power of recognition of new distributor performance. That it builds loyalty and consistency. They recognize that it is a simple acknowledgement, not big contests or cash awards that will build the sense of pride, appreciation, and participation significance that counters the challenges of the business and the busyness of life and encourages performance consistency.

The impact of simple, grassroots recognition increases when distributors feel recognized for who they are, not just what they did. Herein is a golden key for your recognition programs: Help the distributor discover and determine who they are at a core level. Give them the opportunity to become who they want to be, before they become what they want to be, personally and in their business. Focus on core values and character traits. This will guide them into being powerful leaders in the business, once they have learned the doing of the business.

Personal development training may be one of the most important success elements that the Mary Kays of the business understood so well and yet may have been overlooked or lost along the way for relative new comers to Party Plan businesses. It is certainly a success catalyst not to be overlooked or missed in the development of new Party Plan businesses.

Training
Training in your specific party plan, sales plan, career plan, compensation plan, incentive plan and all other strategies that might be labeled as “plans” must include consultant training for the development of “My Plan.” Often corporate sponsored training stops short of this vital and dynamic aspect of training. Corporate training often focuses on the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of the business, without effectively developing the personal ‘why’ that is at the core of the participant’s “My Plan” clarity and commitment.

The “So what? Now what?” must be asked and developed after the what and the how training of product knowledge, sales prospecting, pitching and closing and career plan strategy, and it must bring the distributor to a decision and commitment of action. It is this personal “I get it, I want it!” “I can do it!” “I am doing it!” step that I believe can ignite natural leadership, speed up latent ability and turn even mediocre commitment into a personal and internal force that moves the distributor forward.

Leadership
I believe that all direct selling success can be accelerated by understanding, defining, and teaching leaders the principles that leadership is essentially these three things…

Real leaders must:

• Inspire: Create the understanding of the possibilities with such clarity that the prospect or distributor says, “I get it, and I want it!”
• Instruct: Create belief in the understanding of how to get it so that the distributor says, “I understand it—I can do it!”
•  Motivate: Create the commitment that encourages the development of the “My Plan” approach where the distributor says, “I will—I am doing it!

Embracing and applying these strategies effectively and consistently, with full internal support and priority, from the top down, can assure you that the Party Plan is not dead and you too can party on with confidence and success!