Upline Reviews and Recommends
Coaching for High Performance -
By Bob Davies, MEd, CPPC
 Are you the kind of sponsor who knows how to consistently train leaders? Do you have a lesson plan in coaching others to their own success? If your answer is "no" to either question (and you want to change it to "yes"), pick up this clear, easy-to-read guide. Although it isn't specifically focused on Network Marketing, Coaching for High Performance covers the basics you need to support your downline, and yourself, in achieving powerful goals.
If you've been in Networking for even a little while, you've probably already encountered the first two of Davies' Eighteen Essential Elements of Coaching:
1. Let clients solve their own problems.
2. The question is the answer.
Sound familiar? These two tenets of good prospecting continue into the ongoing sponsoring process. Bob Davies says they need to be followed by practice in telling the truth, asking empowering questions, and coaching for balance, flexibility, and process. In addition to written explanations, Bob provides his own forms and tools which he has developed for use with clients, so you can put his advice immediately into action.
As preparation for a first coaching call, Bob does what he calls The Intake-- an information-gathering session where he becomes acquainted with his client's personality, situation, goals, and values. For Network Marketers, this is a fabulous demonstration of the initial relationship-building techniques so vital to success in our industry. By keeping a detailed record of the values and goals of each distributor, you can more easily practice Essential Element #3: Follow the client's agenda, not your own. You will know what makes your downline team tick and be able to coach them more effectively because of that.
Bob recommends that all Network Marketers put their downlines, sales teams, and support staff into some form of coaching. His reasoning is that we humans often need help getting past our personalized negative programming. A coach helps us do that. We tend to seek comfort-- to the point of missing opportunities-- so coaching offers accountability and discipline. Collaboration frequently brings out a higher level of creativity, and a coach not only elicits fresh ideas, but also keeps the focus on goals and action.
Coaching for High Performance provides simultaneous training and duplication-- while you are getting coached to your own success, you are learning to be a coach for your downline. This is a must-read for anyone looking to either step into leadership or to train effective downline leaders. -- TH
Ordering info: 949-830-9192
Learn By Doing - By Gary Molatore
 Think do diligence. No, that's not a typo-- Learn By Doing is all about action. If you have the commitment to fully do every action this book recommends, you will achieve success. That said, I need to give you a heads-up on a couple of things.
First, the detail and level of the instruction is just short of "go over to the phone, dial, wait for the person to answer...." It assumes that the reader knows absolutely nothing about Network Marketing, and the little cartoon illustrations and captions provide a sort of Romper Room for Networkers. If you have a prospect who thrives on intense research, or a new distributor who prefers exhaustive detail and guidance, this book is perfect. It will save you the time and frustration of recounting industry history, while it fully provides both information and structured activity.
For those who don't need quite so much explanation and theory, skim the text and move straight to the workbook exercises. They promote active, duplicatable business-building. Since Learn By Doing is laid out in distinct action phases, you can structure your coaching schedule around which sections a distributor has completed.
Second, the actual typeface is small and dense, making it heavy going to read the book straight through. If you give this book as a primer for new distributors, work with them on it to the point where they can gain the value without getting bored or frustrated. Fortunately, the table of contents is fairly detailed, so you or your distributors can quickly look up only what you need at any given time, and save the rest for later.
Gary Molatore has put years, experience, and effort into this project in hope that other Networkers can, instead of learning the hard way, Learn By Doing. -- Sue Fogg
Ordering info: 888-444-1700, www.learnbydoing.com
Sell Yourself!
501 Ways to Get Them to Buy From You - By Fred Burns
 We've all heard people say that your prospects don't buy your products or your opportunity-- they buy you. If you don't like the phrase "sell yourself," then think "promote yourself" or "present yourself in the best possible way" or "become irresistibly attractive" or "become the ideal business partner" or "accentuate the positive about who you are and what you do." Whichever fits for you, that's what this book is about. And that's not to be facetious-- the book really is about all of these things, and in fact, I think the somewhat aggressive selling tone of the title is probably just to sell more books. It doesn't characterize the interior.
Sell Yourself! fits the development philosophy that it's you, more than anything you are offering a prospect, that will influence their attraction and interest in it-- or lack thereof. Whether you are perpetually timid, shy, self-deprecating, hesitant to talk about yourself, compelled to talk about yourself uncontrollably, or any variation along these themes, Fred Burns can assist you in developing a coherent, inoffensive, memorable and impressive way to present yourself based on who you already are.
The book isn't written to a Network Marketing-specific audience, so there are times during the read when it's obvious that certain tips apply more to the person who's building a career as a professional speaker or something of that kind. However, most of the tips are dynamite for anyone seeking to increase their circle of influence and pool of prospects. Tom Schreiter says most people don't have nearly enough prospects as it stands, and few on the horizon. Marketing, he says, is what many Networkers do far too little of. If this describes you, but you don't have a big marketing budget, the suggestions Burns offers for gaining personal exposure could prove to be very lucrative for you indeed. Some are simple but creative ways of keeping in touch with the people in your pipeline in no-pressure ways, while others, for the shy in the bunch, may involve some prerequisite development. If you have days when you aren't feeling particularly creative about ways to build your business, this book could be quite a friend.
Burke Hedges and Brian Biro, among others, assert that as a Networker you need to think and act like the CEO of your own business. If you subscribe to those ideas, this book provides wonderful coaching for shifting into the powerful, independent, self-motivated, and self-respecting stance required. Not that all CEO's fit that description, but you will, right? I recommend Sell Yourself! for the people who are ready to step out and succeed in a public, no-holds-barred, massive-action way. And for those who are almost ready. -- UO
Ordering info: 888-665-5505
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Reprinted with permission from Upline, Reviews and Recommends - July/August 1999, 888-UPLINE-1, http://www.upline.com
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