One of the easiest ways you can recognize, support and encourage your direct sales team is to send them handwritten notes. I built productive, loyal teams, and I believe the handwritten note was one of the keys to the success of the teams.

People save handwritten notes, especially when they are words of encouragement, recognition, and celebration. They put them on display or tuck them away in a drawer for safe keeping and easy access. When someone is discouraged or frustrated, she can take out the stack of notes you’ve written her and get an instant pep talk.

You don’t have to have a big team of top producers to use the handwritten note as a success tool. You can start with your first downline.  Woo Hoo notes are the easiest to write. You can say everything in just three sentences:

1. Reason for the note/congratulation statement
2. Specifics about accomplishment
3. Hope/good wishes and/or something personal

Celebrate her first win.

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We’re going to talk extensively about recognition in Spark and how to use it at every Success Stage. Recognition is something that you can start before you even have a team. You can recognize your customers and hostesses, and we’re going to talk about the best ways to do that too.

In a lot of ways, recognition is like gratitude:

• It can’t be overused.
• No act is too small for a high five or a thank you.
• It has to be sincere.
• It is always about the person receiving it.
• It does just as much for the recipient as it does for the giver.
• It is most effective when it is done in the recipient’s love language.
• It reinforces behavior.
• It strengthens relationships.
• It’s good leadership.
• It’s addicting in the best possible way.

Recognition is also like cookies, the really good homemade kind. Once you have one, you want more. You figure out that you have to earn them, and you start doing more to get more. They fuel you to go for the bigger cookies. And you...