Are you appreciating your distributors? While many companies are focusing on getting the ‘heavy hitter’, many aren’t paying enough attention to new distributors that will be the ‘heavy hitters’ of the future.

What can you do to show these people, new to the business, that they are an appreciated part of your organization?

What Can You Do To Appreciate Your Distributors?

Here are a few examples:

Sponsored company events.
Restaurant visits.
Free movie tickets.
Free coupon for massage or spa visit.

On a more personal level:

An appreciative email or phone call to an individual.
The act of stopping by to offer appreciative comments about their work contribution or achievements. It is the small things that are most important.

A group dinner can be a tremendous morale booster as it gives distributors an attractive setting to interact with each other. This provides an opportunity to relax and have fun while also allowing them to share information about what methods of operation are most successful for them.

On an individual level, the simple comments given privately can be most effective because it directly impacts the individual’s feelings. Phrase appreciative comments with words like “thank you”, “I appreciate you”, “you’re great”, “you’ve been very helpful”, “you did a good job”, etc.

You may feel that compensation bonuses are reward enough, however, in most these are bonuses distributors knew they would receive if they met certain guidelines and for them, it doesn’t feel so much as appreciation as it does payment due for their work.

Go out of your way to recognize your distributors individually. Not just the heavy hitters but the new distributors with your company that may be struggling and learning now but will become the heavy hitters of the future. You don’t want to find yourself losing what will become top distributors to another organization because they didn’t feel appreciated by yours.

What is appreciation and why does it matter?

At its most simple, appreciation is an attitude and ability to recognize people for who they are, what they are, and how they impact your life. This involves recognizing the good qualities of someone or something.

A Towers Watson worldwide study found that engagement by workers depended on their feelings of whether supervisors and managers were genuinely interested in their wellbeing.

The researcher Marcial Losada found that high performing teams rated positive feedback from management higher than negative feedback by a ratio of 5.6: 1. The ratio for low performing teams was reversed at a ratio of 0.36:1. It illustrates the point that negative feedback is a toxic substance that has a corrosive impact on others.

Essentially, if you want to see better results, reinforce the positive.

On an individual level, at our core, we want to know that; we matter, we contribute value, and are recognized for it. This is a feeling that applies as much in family structures as it does in the working environment.