Sometimes we get questions on Facebook and Twitter about how to contact your upline. You can see our previous post on this here. One of the best ways to avoid upline problems is to educate our affiliates on ways to be a good upline resource in the first place, so the education and best practices spread. Read on for a few great tips to be a great upline.

Be available

Don’t go AWOL. Once you have someone secured in your downline, that is not the end of the process. Network Marketing is about building a network. You need to work to maintain relationships and ensure you and your network are successful. If your downline emails, calls or reaches out, it is in your best interest to respond and help them in order to continue to successfully build your downline.

Be open

Aside from just being available, be open about that fact! Tell your downline and your network that you are available and encourage them to reach out to you if needed. You want to establish a level of comfort that ensures everyone in your network  can achieve their full potential.

Offer Help

Try to offer help and guidance even before it is needed. All affiliates experience the same process and tend to share many of the same highs and lows. Everyone, even our most successful affiliates, had to start somewhere. Take the time to share some of the important lessons and experiences that helped to make your GDI business a success. Is there a pitfall that you experienced, but now understand how to avoid? Share the knowledge!

It All Comes Down to Relationships

Success in Network Marketing and with GDI, like many things in life, comes down to your ability to build and maintain relationships. Building a network takes time and effort and a little extra work in the beginning. Establish open lines of communication and relationships with your downline and you will ensure everyone in your network has a chance for success.

What are your tips for being a great sponsor?

Many of you are lucky enough to know Bart Dangerfield as that ever helpful voice from our webinars. To offer even more to our GDI users, Bart was kind enough to share some advice one a common question.

The misconceptions about our industry continue to baffle me. In a world that’s been trained to “trade time for money” with 9-5 jobs, sometimes it’s difficult to get someone to see the benefits of building cooperative teams.

A few years ago when I was in business school, I was given the assignment to make a presentation about a controversial subject and take questions at the end. The most controversial subject I could think of would be discussing the benefits of multi-level compensation, since there were all kinds of misconceptions in my class about what I did.

At the end of my presentation, one of my classmates, a very cynical engineer, asked, “Let’s be honest … isn’t this just a pyramid scheme?” Perhaps you’ve heard this objection or concern a time or two before. Perhaps you’d be interested in my answer!

I simply said, “It depends on what you mean by a ‘pyramid.’ If you’re referring to an illegal ponzi scheme, then the answer is ‘no’ since we offer a real product that delivers real value for the money paid.”

Then I smiled and explained, “But if you’re referring to the structure of the organization, then yes, we are a pyramid; with one guy at the top … like a CEO … and expanding levels of others underneath him. And those who get in early make the most money. Is this the kind of pyramid you’re talking about?”

My point? The only difference between a network marketing model and the standard corporate structure of any business today is that YOU are your own CEO. You start at the top and build down, helping others do the same.

Don’t ever forget, treat your business like a business (with you as CEO) and you’ll earn “business income.” Treat it like a hobby, and you’ll earn “hobby income.” The choice is yours!

How do you respond to questions  like these?