As your SFI business grows, you'll eventually be faced with varying leadership roles for the Affiliates in your expanding team. Mastering the differences among these roles—Sponsor, upline leader, and Co-Sponsor—is essential to building a profitable SFI business and maximizing your commissions.
Before we delve into these varying roles, however, here's one overriding rule of SFI leadership in general:
Being an effective SFI leader means knowing where to focus your limited time and energy for the BEST results. For example, wise leaders accept and acknowledge that at least half of their affiliates will NOT become successful. That's not a reflection of you or SFI. It's just a hard, cold reality that most people never make the commitment and refuse do the work necessary to succeed. Successful SFI-ers support their team, but they don't waste time trying to get clearly unmotivated people to take action.
Instead—and this is VERY IMPORTANT—when you identify someone on your team who IS motivated, someone who IS willing to learn and apply themselves to achieve success, CONNECT WITH THEM WITHOUT DELAY! These are your diamonds in the rough! Make sure they have everything they need. Support them with passion. If you do so, someday they may make you rich!
Leadership Role #1: SFI SPONSOR
As an SFI sponsor, YOU are the main SFI point person for your Personally Sponsored Affiliate (PSA). Your job is to develop and provide the personal, one-on-one relationship with your PSAs so vital to home-business success. Consequently, you'll want to provide timely communication, quick answers to questions, and friendly guidance and support as they progress through SFI and begin to build their own organizations.
Make SURE every one of your PSAs has logged into the SFI Affiliate Center and checked out our step-by-step introduction to the SFI program: the SFI LaunchPad (LP) Lesson series. Be ready to field questions and refer them to more detailed information if necessary.
☞ REMEMBER: Getting started is the hardest part of any journey! Help encourage your PSAs to take those first steps to learning how to make money at SFI.
SFI Sponsor Responsibilities:
✓ Sponsors should be available for any assistance PSAs need, and answer all questions within 24 hours—sooner if possible.
✓ Sponsors should make sure their PSAs have reviewed the Compensation Plan and the Go Executive page, and assist them as they continue to grow their business.
✓ Sponsors should set a good example by maintaining Executive Rank or above, ideally with an E-Pack Auto-Delivery.
✓ Sponsors should be familiar with the information covered in the SFI LaunchPad Lesson series and encourage each of their affiliates to read through each lesson.
✓ Sponsors should stay abreast of SFI news, program enhancements, and other updates and changes in the SFI program.
✗ Sponsors should not twist people's arms about "upgrading" or "advancing in rank."
✗ Sponsors should not be sloppy and unprofessional in their communications with their team members.
Leaders get the details right.
✗ Sponsors should not waste time on skeptics and non-motivated people but focus on the workers.
Featured SFI Sponsorship tools:
• Stream
• E-Cards
Learn more about being a great SFI Sponsor:
• How can I be an awesome sponsor and create big income duplication?
• LP Lesson: Introduction to Sponsoring
• Gery Carson's SFI Rules of Success
Leadership Role #2: UPLINE LEADER
As you continue to sponsor new SFI Affiliates, some of your PSAs will themselves start to sponsor their own Affiliates. Although you're not the direct sponsor of your PSAs' Affiliates, you're still their upline leader, and, therefore, have specific responsibilities to your growing team. Additionally, not everyone in your team will be as capable and/or active an SFI sponsor as you. In these cases, you—as an upline leader—should be ready, willing, and able to fill the void, providing the personal assistance to those Affiliates in your downline you didn't directly bring into SFI. That said...please don't step on the toes of active SFI Sponsors in your team!
☞ BOTTOM LINE: Don't be shy about providing plenty of encouragement and moral support to all your team members, but refrain from actively guiding any non-sponsored affiliates (NSAs) in your team unless asked!
SFI Upline Leader Responsibilities:
✓ Upline leaders should set a good example by maintaining Executive Rank or above.
✓ Upline leaders should set up and maintain their SFI Leadership Page.
✓ Upline leaders should promote good, general business guidance and tips to their downline.
✓ Upline leaders should answer all questions from their downline within 24 hours—sooner if possible.
✓ Upline leaders should regularly check their My Movers section to identify up-and-coming leaders and provide encouragement and recognition.
✗ Upline leaders should not do the work of sponsoring non PSAs in their downline.
✗ Upline leaders should not engage in actions they don't want their downline to emulate; if a team leader is doing nothing, their team will likely do the same: NOTHING.
✗ Upline leaders should not be sloppy and unprofessional in their communications with team members. Successful leaders get the details right!
Featured SFI upline leader tools:
• Stream
• E-Cards
Learn more about being a great SFI upline leader & team builder:
• Genealogy Tutorial & User Guide
• How to generate duplication in your group
• How to set up your SFI Leadership Page
Leadership Role #3: SFI Co-Sponsor
As a co-sponsor, it's CRITICAL that you understand your role with your CSAs. Although you DO have a vested interest in seeing that they do well in SFI, these Affiliates are NOT your prime responsibility. Let their sponsors (those closest to them in the SFI organization) take the lead and provide the direct guidance they need. In short: be reactive with your CSAs, not proactive. Sure, welcome them and introduce yourself and let them know that you're one of their co-sponsors in SFI. Be sure to let them know you're available to assist them if they have any questions. But don't actively communicate with them with instructions, to-dos, etc. That is the job of their Sponsor, and receiving possibly contradictory information from multiple sources will only confuse and overwhelm an Affiliate and ultimately be counterproductive. Let the person's sponsor do his/her thing! As a Co-Sponsor, just hang back and be there if directly asked.
Co-Sponsor DO'S:
Co-Sponsor DON'TS:
IMPORTANT! The restrictions outlined above are in place for the benefit of ALL Affiliates in SFI and to provide a robust organization that promotes success for our leaders. Those who violate these restrictions may be expelled from SFI. See our Affiliate Agreement for more information.
For more information about your role as an SFI Co-Sponsor, see: