How would you convince an affiliate who has abandoned SFI to restart again?
This is a good question, and one that I've been wondering about myself.
I think the strategy would be different depending on your relationship with the person and how much they had been involved in SFI before they quit.
If the person is someone you know whom you personally led to SFI, you could talk to them over the phone, or arrange a meeting to talk over their problems with them. Remind them of the long term vision they had and why they joined in the first place, which you may already know. Reiterate that this is a business and must be worked every day, and that growth will be slow, not overnight. Hopefully you can show some growth of your own that will be motivating.
If they have problems that are not related directly to the business, perhaps you can help them through these - have some ideas for time management, organisation, a place to work etcetera.
If the affiliates are people whom you have never met, which is the usual case, the situation will be a lot harder because you have to rely on them opening their emails from you. How do you get people to open their emails? The only way is to have a subject line that grabs their attention. I need to start working on those. You can send a please don't go e-card. I haven't had any positive responses yet from those I've sent, but some people have.
If you have established some kind of relationship with the affiliate, then you will have a better chance of persuading her to stay, because you may have contact via Skype or Facebook, or even a phone number and can speak more to her as if she were a friend, which she very well could be.
As soon as someone responds to your initial welcome letter, respond immediately and begin to establish a friendship with that affiliate. Communicate regularly with the active members of your team at a personal level so that you do develop strong friendly bonds. People will tend to stay and persevere with something if they feel that they have a friend beside them.
More than likely you will become aware of problems when you have established friendly relations. Your affiliate will feel comfortable to share things with you and you may be able to help them through these issues. You can be an encourager and motivator as with your personal friend.
If however, your affiliate really decides this is not working for him, for whatever reason, I think you should gracefully accept his/her decision without any more pressure. Try and keep the doors of communication open between you and every now and then let him know of your successes. You never know something you share sometime in the future, may draw him back. It is against the rules to pursue someone who has dropped out, so you could only do this because you have an established friendship and the person doesn't want to lose contact with you even though he wishes to leave the business - a bit like keeping in touch with a work colleague after he has moved on to a new job.
If despite repeated attempts to contact someone via facebook or skype, you are ignore, you just have to accept that they don't wish to pursue the business and want to cut off all contact with it, including you. It hurts but there's nothing you can do any more, so go out and find some more people to work with and help.
I wish you all the best.
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How would you convince an affiliate who has abandoned SFI to restart again?
This is a good question, and one that I've been wondering about myself.
I think the strategy would be different depending on your relationship with the person and how much they had been involved in SFI before they quit.
If the person is someone you know whom you personally led to SFI, you could talk to them over the phone, or arrange a meeting to talk over their problems with them. Remind them
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