How to Recruit New Team Members Online

Yesterday, a video created by Kurt Tasche caught my attention. The title was "How to Recruit More Independent Beauty Consultants Into Your Mary Kay Business" ... of course that got my attention.  Mary Kay is a company that has been in business for 50 years with an excellent business model which is taught at Harvard University.  However, this model works best offline rather than online. This couldn't come at a better time as I've recently decided to reinvent my Mary Kay business at least 75% online.  I've been slowly chugging through it these past couple of months and what Kurt's video taught was a little golden nugget for me and can be applied to ANY online business.


Since I work in the Information Technology industry, have a web design background and have dabbled in my own SEO (search engine optimization); I know the importance of optimizing my website for search engines. However, when you are part of a company that provides you with a cookie cutter website (every person gets the same exact website) it is difficult to optimize because you do not have the access to change the back-end code of the website. This makes it even harder as a business owner to stand out in the crowd. How do we get around this curve?

I've also noticed, majority of us (especially newbies) are being taught to post their website links embedded into their social media posts.  Here is what is wrong with these methods:

1. In many cases it is consider bad social media etiquette to constantly include marketing links in your posts. Eventually, your readers will begin to ignore your posts, unfriend you or unlike your fan page. In some cases your content can be marked as spam and you could potentially get blocked or terminated from the social media tool.  This is the type of negative feedback we want to avoid.
2. If a person was to click on your website link from a post, how would you know?  At most your back office might keep track of the number of hits to your website.  You will never know who was interested or how to contact them and talk to them further.  This will not help us to convert our leads to sales and this is always our ultimate goal.

So how do we address these key issues?

START A BLOG! This made me laugh because I had been contemplating on whether or not this is necessary for my network marketing and taking my Mary Kay business online. After watching the video, I quickly realized how essential it is to set this up. Yes, it may be time consuming ... and yet one more thing to add to your marketing toolbox, but it now ranks as top priority for the following reasons:

• Search engines LOVE blog content!  By using a blog you have the flexibility to optimize your blog for search engines. I will talk more about SEO for your blog in a later article (too much to cover in this article).
• Most blogs can automatically share your blog posts to social media!! This is a great feature as it will eliminate the need to post links to your marketing website in your posts.  Thus providing valuable and engaging content for your fans.

• A blog can help you create a unique identity. For example, this blog is helping me to brand myself as the IBO Mommy.  You can come up with any idea or content for your blog to help yourself stand out in a crowd.

INCLUDE A SALES FUNNEL
A sales funnel is a tool used to capture lead information such as names, emails, telephone numbers, etc. A person usually clicks on a link and opts in to receive additional information. These are also called Lead Capture Pages. I'm sure you have done this a few times in your life. Once you are opted in, a system usually will automatically send you emails with the information you requested; these are called auto-responders.  These auto-responders usually run as a campaign for a specified period of time. Some companies provide these tools for you and others don't. However, there are 3rd party tools you can use to create a sales funnel for your business.

So let's envision this for a second...and apply this to what we just learned above.  Here is what the process would look like.

A visitor reads your blog post.

• They like what the read and click on a link to opt in (provide e-mail) for more information about your opportunity.
• They receive an automatic email with information about the company and your contact info should be included and perhaps, a link to website or video, etc.  (they may read it but do nothing).
• Seven days later they receive another email with additional information, maybe a link to your website, video, etc. (this may continue for a specified amount of time as in most cases you can customize the campaign length and content)
• At some point the leads become prospects, then prospects become customers or team members (as shown below).  Take note that the top of the funnel starts with 1,000 leads, but the ones that turn into the customers/team members or only 10!  This is important to note, as success of the sales funnel comes with quantity as well as quality.

Sample Sales Funnel Process

I hope this article has given you an idea on how to incorporate these sales tools into your business. I have been working with The Conversion Pros software and I'm really impressed. I would definiately recommend this tool to all serious IBOs. It's easy to use and no technical skills required to implement. I got my first one setup in about an hour.

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