One of the most important parts of the retention process is helping the new team member survive the “change in thinking” that must accompany building any long term business.  Almost everyone is conditioned to immediate gratification situations like the microwave oven, drive through restaurants, and weekly paychecks.  The reality of a slow growth, start at the bottom and build type of income is alien to their lifestyle and their understanding of what owning a business actually includes.  They have joined your company and now they own their own business.  To them, that decision automatically involved risk.  With risk, they experience fear.  Fear paralyzes them.  With paralysis comes inactivity.  In the absence of activity, there is no growth.  Since no growth occurs, no product volume is created.  Without product volume, no commission is generated.  And without team members earning commission checks, network marketing retention suffers.

The only way to overcome their fear is to eliminate their feeling of risk.  In order to abolish the emotion of risk, you must help the team member change the way they think.

Now comes the tricky part.  You must be able to identify, based upon the personality of the team member and their particular circumstances, the best strategy to bring about this change in thinking.

There are many types of change strategies, but here we are only going to focus on two of them, incremental and transformational.  Neither is superior to the other and often times both are needed in order to bring about the personal growth necessary for the new team member to understand long term growth.

A scholarly definition of incremental change is a slow but steady, step by step process most often following a recognized program that presents small unrecognizable variations of change within an existing framework.  A more down to earth definition of incremental change is a process involving an identifiable goal and then taking the path that requires the least amount of dramatic change to get there.

Transformational change is entirely different.  Major leaps from known processes into areas of the unknown usually accompany this type of change.  In a nutshell, this type of change requires a complete paradigm shift and a preparedness to meet the challenges associated with it.

It is always best to begin with an incremental approach to change with new team members.  Here’s a suggested approach:

To create a better picture of starting a new team member, here’s an example:

Your 4 year old son can easily sit on your exercise bike and ride with no feeling of fear at all.  In order to progress to riding a bike solo, we must take them through several steps.  We’ve identified the starting point and we have identified the goal, now let’s put a game plan into effect.  The flow works like this:

 
Riskless
Rides Stationary Exercise Bike
Cautious
Rides Bicycle With Training Wheels
Daring
Rides Bicycle No Training Wheels But Dad Holding Handle Bars and Seat
Risky
Rides Bicycle No Training Wheels Solo
By following this process, over time, the risky (riding the bike with no training wheels and no Dad) activity becomes riskless (riding the exercise bike in the home).  The same occurs with the network marketing team member,  what was once risky becomes riskless because of the mental change from wage thinking to wealth thinking.
You can find more information about network marketing, direct sales, and team member retention at Propreneurs.com.