So, Gentle Reader, You probably don't need to be told what it's like to work with people who are basically volunteers and can quit anytime they like. That's the truth of Network marketting recruits. They sign up for many reasons. My job is to help them know their reasons and develop a commitment to themselves and their Why?
There is lovely Annie (not her real name), my age exactly, who asked a friend if she knew anyone who sold Shaklee. My phone rings and there she is, full of excitement and enthusiasm for beginning a sales career with the Shaklee products. She gets a wholesale buying membership and some of our Vita Lea. Two weeks and many phone calls later, she turns her membership into a Gold and spends the money for a kit of our premier products and 3 months of a free web site. Now Annie doesn't have a computer and isn't going to get one. I am copying her manual and her prospecting materials for her and mailing them to California. Am I crazy? She is so excited. So it seems like the right thing to do.
Then she calls and says her husband, who is in his late 90's and really wants her at his side all the time, doesn't want her to have a business. I take it away and tell her this probably isn't the business for her. She wants it so badly, she tells her husband she's going to do it anyway.
We call her first 25 names on her warm market list and only one person is interested. Annie isn't too discouraged because she has done Fuller Brush, Mary Kay, and has a few loyal Avon customers, so she knows how people are. She says her area is depressed anyway. She has homework, a manual to understand and a way to track everyone she and I are calling. It is challenging. I'm thinking maybe this really isn't for her. Then on Sunday, she called to say she was definitely going to quit. Man. I have so much invested in this lady. Three different packages of printed material, a check to cover postage to mail back a product her one customer asked for and then didn't want, lots of time and energy. Am I crazy to keep this up?
I've been waiting for years for someone to show up with this much excitement in their voice, this willingness to give me her top 20 reasons and her list of names and call me several times a day to tell me who she's met that might be a prospect. She is so eager. Exactly what Dale Calvert calls "Ignorance on Fire". I love this lady. We laugh, make calls, comment on the people, and have a really good time. I'm loving this collaboration. And now she says her husband insists she quit.
My husband was sick and dying when I was building my business years ago. I worked it hard because I knew when he was gone, I'd want the income and the community this business provides in the customers and the builders I'd be working with. I explain this to her. I encourage her to sit with her husband, to make no phone calls for a couple days, do be by his side, but not to make a decision yet.
Do I cut my losses? Do I say we're done? Do I just wait to see what happens next? I have her names.
What a rollercoaster. What would Dale Calvert do? He'd say "Next!" And I am saying that too.
I took time to play-- go to the ballet with my daughter and enjoy having a couple grandsons spend the night. Life is good, really good in spite of the volunteer business ups and downs. And my sales are very good this month. Shaklee just dropped a big check in my bank account, nearly $3000 which will help pay for a couple trips I'm taking with my grandson in the early Spring. All is well.
Thanks for reading, Betsy
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