Business is not easy. You can’t get too cocky with your victories because a lump on the head is right around the corner. You can’t get too down with a defeat because a win is coming. However, defeats can become too frequent and cause you to spiral downward if you do not learn to enable the right people and let go of the wrong people.

My current business has been profitable from day one, but our revenue goals are much greater than what we are currently experiencing.  I believe that to achieve the lofty aspirations we currently desire, we must have the right people on our team. Unfortunately that means making some difficult decisions concerning personnel. Finding the right people and releasing the wrong people is something that has been difficult for me, because I have never wanted to hurt my people. However, as I have become a better manager that insists on accountability and performance, I have realized that keeping the wrong person on my team is not helping them or me. It is far better to release them and hope they will learn for their next venture or find an environment that better suits their skills. (Releasing a team member in Direct Sales may be as simple as moving on to another, more motivated person. I do not encourage removing them from your team, but instead, refocusing attention to someone else.)

Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, says great companies, “don’t “motivate” people—their people are self-motivated. There’s no evidence of a connection between money and change mastery. And fear doesn’t drive change—but it does perpetuate mediocrity.” Concerning change within an organization, he says, “…dramatic results do not come from dramatic process—not if you want them to last, anyway. A serious revolution, one that feels like a revolution to those going through it, is highly unlikely to bring about a sustainable leap from being good to being great.”

Collins says that leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” Collins compares a company to a bus and filling the seats with people. He says that companies should start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances.

You should find the right people who can be motivated by excellence and are excited to make your business better. These people don’t work just for more money, but they work first for the satisfaction of accomplishment and the ability to be creative. Although this may seem obvious, few businesses make the right personnel decisions. Many so called leaders say they want self-motivated people who will work for the betterment of the business, but in reality, many business people have too fragile of egos to have a team member have a contrasting opinion. They are really looking for obedience to their word, not creativity and independence.

When you find the right people and release the wrong people, freedom to work within creative boundaries, and giving your people the freedom to make choices can be a very powerful tool. Freedom of choice is inherent in the spirit of man. Without waxing too political or religious, the agency to choose is our inherited and inalienable right. When your business reaches the point where your leaders are free to make creative choices within a mutually desired direction, greatness erupts. I believe in this and I am becoming more and more vigilant of this within my own company. I am confident it will take us from profitability to greatness.

The world’s greatest leaders have based their leadership on the principle of freedom or agency. Although poor decisions have consequences, such as loss of trust or dismissal from a team, the best leaders do not advocate forcing anybody to follow. They invite others to join them through living what they are preaching.

It is the responsibility of your team members to choose their own path to success.  You cannot force your path to success upon anyone. You will find that by concentrating on rewarding those who produce and releasing those who don’t, your business will achieve levels never possible with the wrong people.

Business leaders with large teams constantly receive calls from team members with problems that have more to do with emotional needs than figuring out how to make larger bonuses and commissions.  The bonuses and commissions that leaders make has very much to do with the state of mind of their team. As a part of developing a smarter team, self-reliance and the ability to solve issues outside of business can become a very important issue in developing a sustainable and profitable business.

Your role as a leader is not and should not constantly be a shoulder to cry on. Although it is necessary to understand your team and occasionally help them work through some of life’s problems, you cannot become your team’s psychoanalyst.  Your job and main responsibility it to help people help themselves. If you cannot develop needy people into strong, self-reliant members of your team, you will never grow a large and sustainable business.

As an entrepreneur and business owner, you may sometimes feel like a church priest or bishop rather than a capitalist. You will see in a short period of time as a business owner, that anybody who has a struggling personal life will be affected in the business. It is a rare person that can be going through a personal hell and still be unaffected in business. Understand that you will be thrust into the personal lives of your team members, but how you handle those situations is vital if you really expect to help them out.

Whether you are a manager in a traditional business, or you are a network marketer that is beginning to see his or her team member grow, understand that you should be proactively encouraging your people to participate in personal growth activities and studies. You cannot be expected to constantly help an individual who is looking for a quick handout or personal counseling system. You simply cannot grow a large and productive team by constantly taking a careful inventory of all personal outside influences to their lives.

By developing a sales team or networking marketing downline, you have chosen to be a part of people’s lives.  However, you are also in business, and it is not an unkind or an unfeeling business leader who requires a team member to buck up and become a little more self-reliant before you can spend too much time in their business development activities that are devoid of momentum.

Personal independence and self-reliance is a sustaining need for your business to grow. If you rob your team members of their ability to figure out their own problems, how will they ever become leaders themselves?  How can they ever have the strength to grow if you are not around? Worst of all, how will you ever have time to spend time with the people who are willing to be more self-reliant?

Don’t be afraid to let your team members make a mistake. Don’t be afraid to let them mess up a presentation.  We live in a fast food society that demands gratification. If we think that we can solve the problems for our team and still develop leaders, we are kidding ourselves. A new team member is going to feel some disappointment, fear, anxiety and failure. Not every call will result in a presentation. Not every presentation will result in a sale. Teach your team that a miserable experience now and then may just be a part of a profitable business. Help them understand that just because they are taking lumps now, that things will get better if they continue to self-improve and get better

There is enormous personal growth that your team members will obtain when they learn to overcome their obstacles. There is great power in becoming self-reliant. Becoming self-reliant will be fundamental to developing a strong team and ultimately a fulfilled life.

If you want your team to overcome excuses and help them grow your business, you need to teach them accountability and self-reliance.

Self-esteem can be a powerful tool for both good and bad.  A member of your team with a poor self-esteem is not likely to ever be a big producer for you or ever fulfill his or her own personal goals.  In order to make it in any commission-based activity, money and self-confidence are forever blended together.  For many people, the inability to earn commissions or bonuses is directly related to their inability to believe in themselves. I don’t believe members of your team will be self-reliant until they learn to look at the mirror without wincing or constantly second-guessing their decisions. Doubt can truly cause a downward spiral and needs to be overcome.

Any true business leader understands that lasting profitability and growth comes from empowering people to become self-reliant. Having a bunch of robots that won’t function without exact instructions becomes exhausting.

To become self-reliant and to truly make money as an entrepreneur requires a person to understand something very basic: We are the masters of our own fate. We choose our path and we choose our destination. Our decisions determine our destiny. If you have a member of your team who never takes responsibility for his or her own success, you will likely need to move past that person and find somebody who will.

Each of us has an internal compass and the tools we need to succeed. Rarely is there a person born with perfect people skills or sales ability.  However, each of us was born with gifts and tools that will propel us to success. The truly successful people are the ones who accept the responsibility that they are the ones who must hone and sharpen their own skills.

When we accept the fact that we are our own agent, and that our success relies upon our own decisions, only then we will have the right stuff to overcome our inabilities. Before you can mentor a person successfully, that person must first understand that he or she must internalize and implement what is being taught, and that you cannot do it for them. Self-reliance can only start to grow when a person truly understands he or she is the captain of their ship, not you.

Success and self-reliance are fundamentally connected. To think otherwise invites short term wins at best. The first step to building a smarter team is to find people who will own their space and take responsibilities for their own personal development and not constantly shift blame to others.

A team that understands people and knows how to bond with prospects will always outperform the team that memorizes their presentation.  Building a smart and nimble team can take time, but if you want a business that can withstand hard times and flourish in good times, you must be bullheaded with your determination to train and mentor people to think and listen instead of just memorizing facts.

In the Ultimate Sales Machine, Holmes gives us 6 steps to set you up for great follow-up after getting a client or enlisting a new member to your team. The 6 steps below are inspired by Holmes.

1 – Create rapport.  What professional goals did you note during the first meeting? How can you help prospects achieve those goals? What personal tidbit, common interest, or funny story can you refer to later to remind them of your bond?

2 – Qualify and establish need. Do you understand prospects’ needs and objectives? What are the dreams and aspirations of your prospect? What are their most pressing problems and how can you solve them?

3 – Build Value. What do they consider valuable? What benefits or addons would appeal to them and build the value around your product or service?

4 – Create desire. What are their hot buttons that can increase their desire? What is the pain point that you can use to remind them of why they bought and why they will want to keep buying from you? Remember that people naturally gravitate away from problems toward solutions. Is their current career matching up to their dreams and goals?

5 – Overcome objections. What are their objections and how can you put them to rest? Do they really want to join your team or buy your product but a small obstacle is keeping them from doing so?

6 – Close. What closed them or caused them to join your team? Do you remind them with regular contact or product updates?

Most businesses teach their people to be stupid. Yes, being stupid is actually encouraged. I have heard many people even say, “It does not matter if it works, only if it is duplicatable.” What? So if something is working for you and your unique personality, stop doing it because the next guy can’t copy what you are doing? It is time we get something straight, unless we focus on teaching leadership and thinking, we are teaching the people of our organization to be mindless followers, not productive leaders.

The great book Linchpin talks about how the robber baron millionaires from the early 20^th century used uneducated people in their sweatshops to make themselves rich. Andrew Carnegie even decided that education caused violent strikes and hurt his business.  The robber barons decided about 100 years ago that if they wanted to be really really rich, they needed compliant uneducated factory workers.  Workers who will be productive and willing to work for less than the value that their productivity creates.  This system worked for a long time, but today, the factory system is breaking down, just ask General Motors.

Linchpin says that schools should teach two things:

1. Solve Interesting problems
2. Lead

Memorizing is what is taught in school today, not problem solving or leadership. The whole education system is based upon passing an exam, not creating leadership skills or decision-making abilities.

Leaders in direct sales organizations have been teaching their “factory” workers for years to say the same things, memorize little sayings and get together once a month for a shot of enthusiasm to keep them from quitting too early before they can sell them some more presentation tools or product.  Many entrepreneurs and members of direct sales organizations mock traditional education. Let me tell you, direct sales has a failing grade in real education too. It is time to start teaching our people to solve real problems and lead, not just memorize if we want to thrive in the new economy.

Times are changing my friends, we live in the new economy of an information age. Just teaching a budding sales person or field marketer to follow an easy presentation will not build that person into a leader. Entrepreneurs who are taught to memorize a certain pattern and copy it exactly are no better off in the long run, and neither is your business.  If you want to keep churning people, teach them to follow a set, non-thinking presentation. If you want to build a business that lasts, teach them to think.

Supplement sales are up in direct sales, unless you are in network marketing. In my last blog post I guessed that network-marketing supplement sales were down as a result of much lower traffic to their websites, but I wanted to find out if I was off or not. It turns out that lower traffic to network marketing websites has definitely resulted in lower sales.

If sales are up everywhere else for nutritional products, besides price, what else could be wrong with network marketing? Why would sales be down for network marketers if they were up everywhere else? Is there something wrong with the leadership in network marketing for sales to be lower across so many companies?

According to Nutrition Business Journal the Internet and other non-network-marketing direct sales companies had a banner year in 2009. As people lost their job and benefits, they turned to preventative health, which means increases in supplements. So, once again, why are sales for nutritional supplements down for network marketing?

There are many network marketers who claim that when the economy is slow, network marketing booms.  In 2008 MLM author, Rod Cook, wrote, “When recession hits the economy, network marketing booms.” Cook even claims that during past recessions network marketing showed explosive growth.  Not so in today’s recession.

I am a small business entrepreneur.  I have made money in ventures inside and outside of network marketing.  I have many friends involved in network marketing and I am a major stakeholder in a network marketing company. I do not write this article to try to hurt network marketing. I write it to show that network marketing is not currently capturing the hearts and minds of consumers. If this trend continues, network marketing will be set back many years.

In my next post I will explore some of what I have seen across multiple companies that I believe to be hurting network marketing. I believe that government agencies can try to stop bad practices all they want, but in the end, the market corrects itself and that is what I see happening right now.