When we work with clients who are trying to focus on recruiting, we always ask them to first explain their sales processes and systems. And many times, their answer feels a bit fuzzy. They don't have a sales funnel, or sometimes they don't know what a sales funnel is.

Too often, direct sellers start their business and sign on with a company thinking that people can simply find and buy from them in whatever way is best or easiest for the customer. So the new direct seller will set up a Facebook Page, and an Instagram profile, maybe get up onto Twitter and Pinterest. They scattershot their marketing across every channel thinking this will reach the most people and then hoping that people on every channel will find them and make a purchase.

The thought behind this isn't necessarily a bad one: it's much easier to meet your customers where they're at rather than trying to drag your customers over to where you're at. So it makes sense to set up a presence at various places you think your ideal client may already have a presence.

However, setting up a presence to cross-post a scattershot social media presence is a huge waste of time. And it leaves too much to chance. Simply spraying your message across every channel puts the control of your goals into the consumers' hands and you'll fail to achieve the ultimate goal of that step in your funnel: to lead them to the next step.

Your business needs to be more strategic – more tactical – and that starts with understanding how a sales funnel works for direct sales and, specifically, in attraction marketing.

The Basic Sales Funnel for Direct Sellers

In attraction marketing, our sales funnel works like this – in a very linear way:

Prospects –> Guests –> Customers –> Hostesses –> Recruits

We meet people, get to know, like, and trust them, and then we decide we want to shop, host, and join. And each step of that process has systems built around it designed to help people find the next step:

• Invite the prospect to become a guest
• Invite the guest to become a customer
• Invite the customer to become a hostess
• Invite the hostess to join your team

No matter what point someone is at in your funnel, you should be able to answer the question “what's the next step?” And your systems should be set up in such a way that it makes it easy for someone to take that step

If you are focused on recruiting, study your sales systems first. You should be able to show your team members how to replicate your funnel systems.

Specifically, look at how you invite people to join you at the next step. Not everyone will move forward in your funnel. Some guests will simply never become customers, and some customers will never want to host a party. But don't leave anyone behind who might. We all know of a story (perhaps our own) of someone who joined elsewhere simply because they were the first person to ask.

#EmpowerSocial