What is a Sponsor?

Are  you a sponsor?

 Are you a recruiter?

There is a huge difference.

The recruiter is good at “signing up” people.
But then he leaves them.

Recruiters are in a frantic search to find superstars among the crowd. His way to “find” them is to “sign them up” and then wait for them to rise to the top. The recruiter believes in “love ‘em and leave ‘em. The others will eventually quit. The recruiter believes in the “one-night-stand”. He is a "salesman".


Sponsors see things differently. Sponsors know that anyone worth sponsoring is worth developing. The sponsor believes in “marrying” the people he sponsors. Being a sponsor is an ongoing, continuing activity. It is this continuing activity that creates loyalty to the sponsor, and gives the sponsor serious credibility.

Recruiters are out to "make a sale". Recruiters are traveling salesmen; once he has sold you, he is gone.

Sponsors wants to "make a friend". A sponsor is a helper/teacher who wants you to have the training and tools you need to be successful, and the encouragement to keep plugging.

That's why sponsoring is a transferable concept. Your sponsor wants you to be a sponsor. A sponsor develops other sponsors by deliberate, careful help and encouragement.

A recruiter expects a born superstar.

The Story of My Six Sons: Each time that I went to the hospital nursery, I was a proud father of a baby boy. As I looked at those babies in that nursery, they each had a card that said “boy”. Not one of those cards said “superstar”. In all those trips to the nursery, I never found one superstar.

Superstars are “developed”, they are not “born”. Developing a superstar takes training, encouragement, help, patience, and time. It takes work after you sponsor them. It takes being a sponsor.

How do you become a superstar? It take a lot of attitude-type things, such as confidence, commitment, determination, credibility, etc. Where do these “attitude” type things come from? They are learned. They are taught. They are “caught”. The following are the stages of the development of a superstar.

1. Have a real sponsor.
2. Learn to be a real sponsor.
3. Develop others who will be real sponsors.
4. Teach them to teach others to be real sponsors.

This is the secret to success in Networking:

Recruiters are not building a “multi-level” organization, it is all one level (and most of them will quit).

Sponsors build a duplicatable system that can run downline through his organization. This builds a powerful downline because it is built deep and strong.

So what is the difference between a recruiter and a sponsor? It is the difference between “hype” and “help”.

The sponsor’s job begins after you enroll. But the recruiter’s job is done when you enroll.

The goal of the recruiter is to sign up people.
The goal of the sponsor is to build leaders.

Before you ask which you want to be, ask which do you want your upline to be. You are the upline to other people. The key to success in Networking is found in two rules:

1. Just be a sponsor.
2. Keep being a sponsor.

Copyright 1986, 2009. Paul Pierce

Contact Paul Pierce at 1-813-907-2523