Rating our sponsor is one way of giving him a feedback on his performance as a team leader. It has multiple impacts: on the sponsor leaderboard, potentially on the sponsor commission and more directly on the quality of the relationships between sponsor and a team member.
Nearly all of us are both a team member to our direct upline, and a sponsor to our PSAs. Thus, we experience both sides of the coin. Hence, we are all well positioned to be thoroughly aware of the issue as well as to have a strong opinion on it.
Rating our sponsor is actually a straightforward matter. SFI has made it very practical. We really do not need to go to great lengths to figure out how to rate our sponsor. We have a spreadsheet scaled from one to five stars to rate our sponsor according on how we feel they performed their work. It is in their best interest to do the best job they can. It is mostly to their own benefit.
Most affiliates have a clear opinion of their sponsor on which they base their rating. It is appropriate and has been working fine. Any bias in the rating can only come from a personal level, within the affiliate who is rating. It is not affecting the system per say. Thus, it has to be dealt within. There is no evidence that affiliates feel the need for a complex written scale. I do not see them changing their sponsor rating approach.
I personally feel the same and use a similar approach. My sponsor is not even in full-fledged activity, let alone providing any form of support. Still I rate him positively: I owe him the opportunity to be with SFI. I would even be prepared to rate him higher if he was just taking care of his business on day to day and regular basis.
If that is a bias, I am ready to keep it as is. I find it more beneficial to be generous to people in general. That way, nature will be generous to me.
However, if one wants to set up a formal, objective, detailed rating scale in an attempt to prevent bias, it is objectively feasible to define sponsoring benchmarks based the relevant guidelines on sponsoring.
The sponsor’s tasks are clearly defined in the Affiliate Manager and in the Sponsoring training module. We can give to each task a point value and add the total. This way we have an unbiased rating scale.
For the Affiliate Manager, we only need to click on one of our affiliates’ profile to get to their affiliate manager. Among the sections that make up the Affiliate Manager, we find the “Checklist”. It is a detailed description of the tasks expected from the sponsor. For the purpose of rating ourselves as team leaders or for rating our sponsors, let’s use the ‘Checklist” in reverse: We can look at each of the tasks listed, and make a determination, whether our sponsor has accomplished them.
As for the Sponsor’s “Dos and Don’ts”, they are well known. They are located in “Solutions”
https://www.sfimg.com/Support/Solution?id=191295
If we add these two sets of guidelines together, we will have a very comprehensive, exhaustive rating scale. One of the ways to make this work would be to add the 10 points of the Affiliate Manager’s Checklist to the 25 Does. It will give us a total of 35 points. With that number, we can give to each star in the sponsor rating page a 7 point value. We would deduct from the sponsor’s actual total any “Don’t”. If a sponsor has 35 points, he will be rated as “5 stars sponsor”. If he gets only 10 points, he will be rate 2 stars.
However, we should also be prepared to ask our own team members to proceed the same way to rate us. We cannot be this demanding against our sponsors when we are not meeting those same requirements with regard to the support we are providing to our own affiliates. That would be a total of integrity.
The proposed rating benchmarks are relatively complex and somewhat cumbersome. Other less detailed scales can also be put together. But, whatever scale it may be, it has also to be applied to the affiliate. Again, if he subjects his sponsor to any objective rating, he should ask his downline to do the same against him.
However, that would not necessarily eliminate all bias which is a subjective matter. The objective benchmarks can be ignored, misinterpreted, or not applied correctly. Only the affiliate himself would be able to face his own bias and deal with it.
The point I want to make is threeofold: first, I have not noticed a strong desire from affiliates to change the sponsor rating procedure now in place and it does not really seem to be any need to do so, except maybe, for a minority. Second, I am not prepared to apply the above proposed new rating benchmarks, or any other new system, and I have the impression that many affiliates may feel the same. Bias is a subjective, personal matter, no mechanism or benchmarks, regardless of how objective they may be, can prevent bias. It has to be confronted from within, at personal level.
Hence, very likely, the current rating system will remain in effect, company wide.
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