For new people...

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If you consider the years since I graduated from college, I've been in networking for 87% of my life. Scary, isn't it? The bases for my success have been strategy, leadership, hard work and service. The Shaklee group I started 37 years ago still produces millions of dollars worth of business each year, and the EQ business I started in 1995 is #1 in the company.

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From all these years of experience, one strategic concept stands out as being very important and very misunderstood...

 

Group width...........................................................................

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I dedicate this essay to new people.

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If your goals are to be highly successful and highly profitable, it is important to develop as much width as possible very early in your career. Width has to do with the number of people you personally recruit and the number of working legs that result from your recruiting. .

Repeated for emphasis:

It is vitally important to understand width

and to develop as much width as possible

very early in your career.

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A doctor would measure width by his number of patients. A printer would measure width by his number of clients. Could a doctor get by with only a few patients? No, some would move, change doctors or die...or they might rarely visit their doctor. Likewise, many of a printer's clients will go out of business, buy their own high-speed copy machine or switch to another printer. The only way to be secure in any business is to have lots of width.

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We refer to our good EcoQuest accounts as Working Legs, and we track them on a Leg Chart (check out Leg Charting on Chippynews.com).

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Now we will discuss a concept that is hard for some people to accept: 

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Go Wide Immediately!

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I've been a networker for 4 decades. The concept of going wide immediately is more important than you can possibly imagine and yet it is resisted by 99% of all who join EcoQuest. There is a tendency for people to think they can get by on building only a few legs at time. If I get too wide, they theorize, I won't have time to take care of all my legs. I'll be spreading myself too thin.

 

Go Wide, Go Wide, Go Wide

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Here are some reasons to go wide from the very beginning:

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1. There's a thing called new enthusiasm. New people have it for a while and eventually it fades (the pixie dust blows away). Recruiting is easier and more infectious during that initial period. The lifespan of new enthusiasm is 3 to 12 months.

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2. As a new person, you are not encumbered with a leadership workload. You have more time to recruit and the ability to focus better on recruiting.

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3. No amount of width is too much. If you had a way to recruit 100 people in your first month, that would be great. Consider this hypothetical: A famous celebrity runs a recruiting ad and signs up 1,000 people in a month. Could we take care of 1,000 new people? Yes! We'd write training essays and send them by mail or email to all 1,000. We'd post our updates Online. People who needed more help would call, and we'd help them individually. Life would become very exciting.

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4. It's easier to work with new people when you, yourself, are also new. Your thinking is better aligned with theirs. Veteran recruiters have trouble relating to the issues that are of interest to their new recruits. Conclusion: build as much width as possible in the beginning.

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5. Rapid recruiting is a leadership statement. The most important thing you can do for your people is to set a bold and exciting example. If your plan is to recruit only 3 and work with them until they are strong before you recruit more, you are putting the skids on your whole downline. Everyone thinks in terms of "recruiting only 3." That's not healthy.

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6. Attrition has to be considered. If you are relying on just a few legs, what will you do if one or more of them disappears? My friend Bob Ewen had 4 Supervisors in Shaklee. He was making a comfortable income and had a bonus car. One morning Supervisor Corky Landanno pulled onto a highway near Victoria, Texas, and was killed in a head-on collision. Corky's group all but disappeared over the next 90 days. A month later, Supervisor Celia Huerta from Alice, Texas, died in a head-on crash. Her people spoke Spanish and were totally dependent on Celia. Bob lost half the power in his group through these fatalities. Groups are lost through sickness, marital problems, bad weather, bad economic conditions, competing job offers and many other factors. Two or three clients in a row can complain about service and those small disappointments can be the final straws for a guy who is already harboring doubts about his business. Three legs just aren't enough.

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7. Times of inactivity have to be considered. Managers who stop recruiting generate business through the sales and recruiting activities of others (called leverage). They work by phone and email. They promote sales campaigns, recruiting campaigns, trade shows. company events, conference calls, local meetings and what have you. They rely on their working legs and a few up-and-comers. But what if their big leaders all go on vacation during the same month? Even the national convention creates a work stoppage for one week. What does a leader do if a hurricane or ice storm closes down the business activity in the area where his people live? Leverage cannot be applied if all the workers are on hold. Conclusion: a healthy group must have lots of width and a healthy amount of geographical dispersion (an important concept that is not covered in this email).

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8. Leaders tend to fall in love with being leaders. They actually lose some of their zest for recruiting. Consequently, it is strategically crucial for a leader to build width, width, width while he is still in a "new" frame of mind. It's hard for a newcomer to believe that his recruiting instincts will dim as the years go by, but this does happen. And, believe it or not, the recruits an EcoQuester gets in his later years tend to be less career motivated that the recruits he gets in the early days. Why? The pixie dust is missing. I'm not being flippant. This is a real thing.

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9. Sales Plan qualifications are another consideration. Width is needed for rank, for contests and for qualifying to earn overrides. I urge all serious EcoQuesters to reject any advice that instructs them to build their group 3 legs at a time.

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10. Income is a consideration. I analyzed the sales plan, just as you should. Here's what you will see:

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On 1,000 PV from a new Dealer you make $420.

On 1,000 PV from a Senior Dealer you make $360.

On 1,000 PV from a Master Dealer you make $300.

On 1,000 PV from a Fast Start Distributor you make $240.

On 1,000 PV from an Associate Manager you make $200.

On 1,000 PV from a breakaway Manager you make $80.

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This income analysis makes it clear that it is not wise to rely on a small number of legs. For reasons already cited, they might not always be productive. And if they are, they'll soon "break away" and the upline makes only $80 per 1,000 PV. The plan, itself, taught me to go wide. 

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My analysis of the sales plan (done in 1995) convinced me to get to 12 working legs (see leg charting) ASAP and to keep pushing ahead until I had 20. That's what I also taught to my early leaders: James & Jennifer Clendenin, Gordon & Dorothy Brodine, John & Jo Clements, JK & Becky Baker and Bill & Mattie Perry. Before long, we were all making money hand over foot.

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At the end of my 17th month I had 20 working legs and I decided to hang up my recruiting spurs. Strategically speaking, it was a bad decision. Over the next 12 months my personal recruiting moratorium leaked down through my leaders. Most of the others weren't wide enough to slow down. Previously, they had been inspired by me. Now that effect was gone. They stopped growing and my income stalled out at $60,000 per month.

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That's not a bad place to stall, you might say. And you're right! My income has occasionally gone up in the past 10 years, but it has hovered around that point. I say it was a bad decision because of the impact it had on my downline. I don't think any of them blame me for slowing them down. They might not even agree that I had that much influence over them. But I'm giving you my take.

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In summary, Go Wide, Go Wide, Go Wide...and keep going wide until all your main groups are up around the Executive Master Manager level (very happy campers). By then, your open group should have some serious staying power. You'll be able to keep all your qualifications up for years to come.

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It is harder for a veteran to set new aggressive new recruiting goals, but it is possible. Master Manager Kristin MacPherson is in this mode. If you want to come out of the doldrums and build a fresh new group, set a goal to recruit 30 new first level people. Don't even think about recruiting "a few." That just won't do.

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Sincerely and enthusiastically,

Bob Giddens