Be a Good Sponsor by Being a Good Leader

Hello NPN’ers,

I’ve recently had some concerns from members not getting good advice or information from their sponsors. Please listen to the video (audio) below for my take on being a good sponsor..

Text Version:
[toggle title=”Click Here for the (rough) text version..” style=”fancy”]I see this happening quite a bit in internet marketing..

One of our members will go to their sponsor with a question, and either their sponsor will ignore them because they don’t know the answer… or they’ll give them some answer that is probably bogus information that they have no idea whether it’s accurate or not, or they just answer with something because they feel they have to give them an answer – because they’re the sponsor.

If your referral asks you for help or advice. Don’t think that you have to have an answer for them – especially if you don’t know the right answer. You job as a leader is to help your team find the answers to the questions they have. For example, if they ask you what’s the best way to get word out about my business on facebook. Don’t give them some answer that you have no idea whether it works or not.

Your answer, as their leader, should be, “you know, facebook isn’t my area of expertise, let me find out what I can for you so I can point you in the right direction. I know a couple people that have been really successful with that type of marketing, let me do some research and get back to you.”

You don’t have to have the answers, but you need to assist in finding solutions. As you can imagine, I get lots of marketing questions from lots of different people, all with different skill sets and experience. And honestly i don’t have the answers to a lot of their questions, a lot of them I do, but with many of the questions, I might not be the right person to ask… but one thing I’m good at is I’m very proficient at finding solutions for people. So if I can’t answer a question directly, I can spend some time researching, and then I can point them in the right direction so they can find their answers themselves.

So I can do some research and answer their question this way, “I’m not the right person to ask, but check out this guy’s blog, he’s really knowledgable in what you’re trying to do and he has some great ideas and can point you towards some great resources that will help you accomplish what you’re trying to do.” or I can take it one step further and reply with “I did some checking for you, and here’s what I found out and this might answer your question..” and then I give them the information. It depends on what it is of course.

But the point is, that is part of how you lead and manage people. I used to manage an IT department at my former job, and this is a huge part of management as well. I suppose now I manage, or take part in managing thousands of pepole online. You don’t have to have the answers, and most of us don’t have all the answers, and you shouldn’t try to make it seem like you have all the answers. But you need to get good at helping people find solutions.

I guess it’s the difference between a supervisor and a manager. A supervisor is the person that should have all the answers because they’re the person that has done your job for a lot longer, so they should know. A manager doesn’t know all the answers, but knows where you should go to find out where to get the answers. It’s about finding solutions.

What do you think your referrals will appreciate more: Giving them some sort of a quick “off the cuff” answer that probably isn’t true, and you yourself have no idea whether it’s valuable information or not… or admitting you don’t really know, but being able to point your referral in the direction that will get them the right answer. What do you think is more valuable, particularly in the long run (which is what we’re all here for).

If you can provide leadership in that way, you will be able to build an organization that will stick around, and will appreciate the help and leadership that you’re able to provide.

So if you get a question that you don’t know the answer to from one of your referrals. Tell them “I’m not sure, but I will contact my sponsor, because I know she might have the answer or can point us in the right direction..”

If you do it that way, you’ll also be learning what the answer is yourself. So if you help someone find the answer, you will have the solution as well.

So that’s my advice for today..

Be a good sponsor by being a good leader.

I really hope this information has been of some value to you and your team and have yourselves a great day.[/toggle]

Thanks, have a great day! Feel free to comment..

– Geoff Stephen