Garage Sale Recruiting

Will Brake for Garage Sales

Some independent direct sales consultants have a garage sale mentality when it comes to recruiting new team members. See if you are one of them:

• You either target particular garage sales, yard sales, church sales, neighborhood sales or estate sales based on ads you’ve seen on Craig’s List or other advertising platforms – or as you are just headed down the street you stumble upon a sale.
• You evaluate the signage. If it is large and brightly colored, you decide it might be a good sale. If it is small and looks like chicken scratch, you figure it was just thrown together and probably won’t be very good.
• When you see the sign, you slow down to look down the street to see if the sale is visible or if you’ll have to venture down the street to seek out the location.
• When you get to the sale you slow down to look from your car to determine if it looks good enough to get out.
• If you see baby items out front, and you are not in the market for any baby items, you decide it must not contain any good treasures in which you have any interest, so you keep going.
• If the sale is staged well or if you see some big items that catch your eye from the street you decide to park and get your bum out of the car.
• If you do get out only finding there was nothing of interest to you, you silently curse to yourself that it was a waste of your time and energy to go look at that junk.

Do you recognize yourself in any of those descriptions? I sure do. Even though I am well aware that by making such unfounded judgments I am probably missing out on some gem that was available to me, I still repeatedly engage in some of these actions.

Judging Recruits from Afar

Judging garage sales based on silly factors such as signage or my ability to see a shiny object from my vehicle isn’t a smart way to treasure hunt. Although, using this method to find new team members for your direct selling business can cause your business to be stagnant or worse yet, send you right out of business.

• How many times have you decided that someone you stumble upon won’t be interested in your business opportunity?
• How many times have you decided because the potential recruit isn’t computer literate or doesn’t seem to have much business acumen, therefore he or she won’t be worth your time to recruit, train and mentor?
• How many times have you not called an interested party back because “you’re not a phone person” and you’d rather text or email, but the caller didn’t leave that contact information?
• How many times have you not bothered to get off your main street, and seek out treasures that may be hiding down a winding road (or another city, state or country)?

Ouch!

It may sound harsh, but if you are engaging in any of these biases it’s because you don’t want to work that hard. You want the treasures to come to you or be readily available without much effort.

If you miss out on a DVD or snazzy handbag because you opted not to get out of your car to look for the treasure, it’s not a big deal. You’ll survive.  However if you miss out on a team member who turns out to be a fabulous gem, your business will not survive – certainly not in the long run.

New Start

See you at the top!If you identified that you may have a bit of garage sale mentality when it comes to your recruiting practices, commit to a fresh start today. Decide that you will go out of your way to probe further, because you just may hit the jackpot. Even if you don’t hit the jackpot, it’s still win/win: you’re getting into the habit of not prejudging and not all recruits will be gems, but everyone who contributes anything to your team matters.

See you at the top!

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About the Author: Laurie Ayers is a Michigan work from home mom and a Superstar Director with Scentsy Wickless Candles. She enjoys helping men and women start and maintain a home based business in the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Germany, Ireland, UK, France, Austria and Spain. To download a FREE Start Up Guide which provides more details about how to start a home business as well as to learn about our compensation plan go to www.thrivingcandlebusiness.com/how-to-start-a-candle-business/ 

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