I’ve seen some ‘Calls for Guidance’ in Leader Forums recently on the question of how do you decide whether to Gift Enrolments or not, and clearly it is a great subject to explore in a blog.

The Gift

Let me start by pointing out that the language in my Blog Title was very deliberately selected.

Firstly, when an enrolment is transferred from the original enroller of a person to one of their downline, so that they can rank off this person, it is a Gift. The transferor is giving the enrolment because it seems to them that it is for the higher good. It is something they own and it has real value, but they have arrived at a view that gifting it makes sense to them. We’ll look at this in more detail, but lets move to the other part of the title.

Discernment

As we will see the gifting of an enrolment is no simple issue and can have very positive consequences, and very negative consequences. The decision as to whether to do it needs careful deliberation and needs to consider a number of very material factors, and always drawing on upline wisdom till you’ve been round long enough to really understand the subject at a level of deep knowing and wisdom.

Let’s look at some of the issues that will come into this discernment:

Ownership of the Enrolment

Generally enrolments are the product of significant effort and work, and belong to the enroller rightfully. No-one else has any right to proprietorship over this enrolment but the original enroller. It will be their decision ultimately whether it is for the highest good including their own to gift it to a downline.

Relationships

Probably the most critical aspect of enrolment transfers is the relationship between the Initial Enroller and the Enrollee, the impact an enrolment transfer will have on the Enrollee, and the degree to which the Enrollee and a prospective new Enroller get on and are comfortable with each other. For the moment we are just listing issues. We are going to come back to this one in detail.

Fast Start Income

An Enroller makes 10% Fast Start Income off the enrolments of their enrolees, and 5% from the enrolments of the enrollee’s enrolees. If you transfer the enrolment to someone else you will lose either the 10% or the 10% and the 5% depending on where the new enroller sits in a chain of enrollership. You receive Fast Start for the remaining years or decades you are in the business and the amount sacrificed may be many thousands of dollars, or for a less active enrollee may be little or nothing.

Ranking Bonuses

An Enroller makes significant money from Ranking Bonuses at particular ranks for personally enrolled Elites, then Premiers, and finally Silvers. Ranking bonuses can represent $US 150 at Silver for an Elite, and after Diamond run into thousands of dollars. If the enrolment is gifted it will be the new Enrollee who is eligible for ranking bonuses, so it is a material sacrifice.

Enrolment Can Be Transferred only Once

We are given only one opportunity to transfer an enrolment, apart from the possibility of it being returned subject to the agreement of the new enroller and the Placements Department at dōTERRA.

You want to be sure you have thought well into the future about the structure of your tree and your ranking strategy because a decision today for short term gains may compromise your long term strategy.

Enabling Non-Performance

One of the temptations with Enrolment Transfers is that it allows someone to rank who is not actually either walking towards you, or who is struggling to build and lead.

It can allow you to achieve your next rank, by helping the new enroller to rank, so you can rank off them, however if the truth is that the new Enroller is not your real long term leader that can get to lets say Platinum or Diamond to support you to Presidential Diamond, then is it really wise to structure your tree around propping up a leader who has not yet done the work to have the ‘Soul Advancements’. You may in fact be robbing them of the circumstances that were going to create the opportunity for them to Soul Advance.

Recognising Support

Sometimes you place one of your enrolments under one of your leaders to give them the gift of volume. Then as time unfolds that leader offers a great deal of support to your enrollee. In time their relationship with the enrollee may be even stronger than yours. Pj and I had such a case in our Melbourne tree, and it was with delight that we recognised the Leaders good work supporting our Enrollee in another state between our visits, and we transferred the enrolment.

Lets Talk Relationships Some More

OK, as I’ve said relationships is one of the most critical parts of this issue. A person enrolling in dōTERRA does so for a variety of reasons, but one of them will most commonly be they were responding to the relationship they have with the enroller, or if they didn’t know them that well, to their vibe and the trust they felt in their interactions.

For some people that relationship with the Enroller can be very material, and especially where people are building the business, and if the Enroller is a successful person in the dōTERRA business. If you have enrolled with a Diamond, then it may well be because you want to be a part of their team, and I mean a ‘key’ part of their team, such as one of their first level ranking leaders.

Now sometimes as a leader you can end up with 4 or 5 or more personally enrolled people doing the business seriously in a leg. For example Pj and I have 3 personally enrolled Silvers in one of our legs who are all targeting Gold at present, plus two more on the cusp of Silver It’s really helpful in this business to have multiple people in one leg as it means you are protected by the  ‘being hit by the proverbial bus’ phenomena. However once you have say 4 or 5 Personal Enrolments you may begin considering transferring an enrolment to support one of the leaders you are working with. The question then is how is the transferred leader going to feel? They will usually be valuing your relationship, and be striving to become influential in your business. Very often because we can’t see who is around us in our upline’s tree we don’t have a lot of awareness of who else is in our leg (unless we are on their actual front line (first row), so it may come as a shock that we are no longer being seen as a prospective ranking leader for our upline.

To be transferred can feel like abandonment. So if you know that your enrollee values the relationship with you, it may potentially rock their confidence and commitment to building. We haven’t done that many enrolment transfers, but most of them we have done we have seen ramifications on some level for a period of time. It is wise to do it sparingly and with care.

We have many leaders in our tree who we simply will never transfer, even if another leader who is one of our ranking leaders could advance more quickly, and we in turn could advance more quickly as a result.

Being in a Ranking Chain

In other circumstances depending on the desires and intentions of an Enrollee it may make sense to transfer an enrolment with appropriate communication. We had an Enrollee at an early to middle rank, whose aspirations at the time were modest. We wondered whether transferring the enrolment in that instance might be appealing, as it might mean the person we would transfer the enrolment to might be able to help her by tap rooting at a time when our personal enrolments needed to go elsewhere, at the time the Enrollee was not part of our active ranking chain, and this would have made them part of it by helping one of our first line ranking leaders to rank off them.

We spoke to our enrollee first in that instance, and her preference was to stay with us, so we honoured that.

In some instances though it can make a lot of sense especially if the new Enroller knows the person too, and you are all part of the same circle. Both of them may relish the idea, and the new Enroller may be better placed either geographically or strategically to support the Enrollee. Sometimes you will get more direct support being an Elite Supporting a Diamond’s Silver, and thus part of a ranking chain, than being another personal enrolment of the Diamond, but not where their personal enrolment focus needs to be for their own progression.

All good leaders will support all of their personal enrolments with great focus, and their whole tree with education, inspiration, and love and care, so no-one should miss out on support to claim success if they are looking for it. There is however a different level of support with building volume in ranking chains, that being more personal enrolments from your uplines in the ranking chain.

Sometimes an enrolment may be someone who is not that connected to their Enroller, or they may just be using the products as a Wellness Advocate, but with little or no care for what is a tree, or what is an Enroller or a Sponsor. Obviously in this kind of instance there may not even be a need to let them know about an enrolment transfer, as it is not material to their world.

Post Transfer Support & Leadership

A good leader if they gift an enrolment to a new Enroller will continue to check in and support the enrolment, and their commitment to supporting that Enrollee to advance will not waiver, I can say for certain that this is Pj’s and my commitment, where we have transferred enrolments, and we’ve seen the same strong commitment modelled by our uplines.

If you make that clear to an enrollee they may be comfortable to move to a new Enroller.

One of the challenging dynamics with Enrolment Transfers is the question as to “who is their leader?”. In the situation where they were close to the original Enroller, and the original Enroller is doing the right thing and continuing to support the Enrollee it’s a good idea for everyone to get clear on what roles the original Enroller and new Enroller will play, and what the Enrollee wants from whom.

There is no right and wrong here, but getting clear sooner rather than later is a great idea.

Thinking Ahead All the Way

Part of making good strategic decisions is thinking a long way ahead at how things will play out.

Whenever I am looking at placements and ranking strategy I am asking myself what I or the Leader I am mentoring wants. My personal desire is to get as many of our Personal Enrolments, and their Personal Enrolments as want it to at least Blue Diamond, because that is where the abundance gets to a level where it creates freedom and choices.

So if I am mentoring one of our leaders, helping them to think about rank strategy I will ask them what they want to get to, and lets say this one actually wants Presidential Diamond to fuel a really beautiful big ‘Why’ and to do amazing things in the world. Even if they are only at Silver I will ask them to look ahead, and if we are looking at their Ranking Leaders a question arises. “If you want Presidential Diamond, does this person you are working with want to do the business badly enough to reach the Platinum (Presidential Diamond is six personally enrolled platinums in seperate legs) or ideally a rank or two beyond that.

Our Silver may be looking at an Elite who is trying to progress to Premier. Platinum is a long way ahead in terms of work and water that will pass under the bridge. However they will have a feel whether this person is walking towards them, actively enrolling, creating community, and leading.

Sometimes as part of this scenario you will be trying to assess together, should you as a Diamond gift an enrolment to this potential Premier to help them get to Premier, or perhaps your Silver holds an enrolment that can be gifted, who is maybe Executive and will become one of the two Executives the Premier will rank on.

A key part of the question is whether you are supporting a person who is working for it, and a person who will make this enrolment transfer worthwhile by being able and willing to go the journey all the way with your Silver to Platinum or Diamond. If that is not the case you should probably be slowing up and working out whether it is a move that supports a sustainable business, or whether it is a short term compromise.

Sometimes it will be Ok to gift an enrolment to support a short to mid term strategy, and you might have another leader in a leg who you know will get to Diamond and support you or your leader, and so long as you have your clear long term strategy a short term strategy can make some sense and help everyone rank sooner, which helps cashflow and the journey to being able to go full time in the business.

The important thing is not to make short term compromises without an awareness of the long term strategy, and the fact that you can only gift an enrolment once, so don’t give it to someone not walking towards you today, if there is someone who is walking towards you that you could gift it to and create a more sustainable business long term.

Take the long term view, and cast your mind into the future.

Asking for Enrolments

A common question is “Is it OK to ask an upline for the transfer of an enrolment of someone they have placed in your tree?”.

Pj and I have never asked our uplines for the transfer of an enrolment, and on just one occasion we have been gifted an enrolment, which was a valuable enrolment of a powerful builder, but that was an unexpected gift that our uplines Vanessa and Paul considered to be for the greater good and resolved a situation where there was a Plan A that suddenly needed a Plan B, and it created mutual benefit and was done with the consent of their enrollee.

The fact that we have never asked tells you what we think about asking for enrolments. Personally, neither of us would do it.

Some people are not backwards in coming forwards, and others have more front than a Department Store. If this sounds like you, and if it it is your nature to not leave questions unexplored, then you can ask. My counsel though is to not be offended if the answer is No.

Remember that this enrolment is rightfully the product of your upline’s blood sweat and tears. It’s a big ask to request a transfer. It will involve a sacrifice of future income from a little to a great deal, and as we’ve explored there may be all kinds of personal reasons that they may want to hold on to the Enrollership.

Paul Ovens often said to us in his mentoring in most things there should be ‘Value Given for Value Received’, and I think it’s a great question to consider.

If you are walking towards your upline, and are approaching the business very professionally, and if your upline feels like you are giving value and there is an exchange, then they may feel inclined all things considered to grant your request.

However if you have not engaged with the business, and if you are not doing the inner work to push through your blocks and begin getting traction in the business, and if the request is made because it’s the only way you can see you can succeed, then you really haven’t done the work yet to earn the transfer of enrolment. A Transfer of Enrolment is in part an investment in a team mate, and a statement of belief. If you are going to be bold enough to ask someone to invest in you, then you probably have an obligation to present a case as to why you are a good bet, and to outline the Value Given for Value Received.

It doesn’t mean that any of us can’t be of service or gift something without having expectation of something coming back the other way, but if we are going to be cheeky we need to be prepared to have a forthright response coming the other way if we haven’t done our homework, and especially if we’ve gone past cheeky to feeling entitled. It would be a very rare circumstance where someone should be feeling entitled to an enrolment transfer.

Upline Input Into Enrolment Transfers

As I said earlier it is recommended to discuss Enrolment Transfers with uplines. We’ve generally done that before doing Enrolment Transfers, certainly 100% of the time before Diamond, and still some of the time if a situation is tricky or very material and significant.

We’ve also spoken to our downlines to ask whether they have considered gifting some of their own enrolments where it seems to make strategic sense. I would say though we have always respected our downline’s sovereignty over their own enrolments. They know the relationship better than anyone usually and will be the best judge.

I think it is incumbent on an upline to consider such matters for the benefit of their downline and the team as a whole, taking into account all that we have discussed. However I do think they need to make the case well enough that the downline sees the wisdom in the recommendation, the same as a downline asking for an enrolment transfer needs to make a case.

At the end of the day my recommendation is that the Enroller considers upline counsel, downline requests should they arise, and work through all of these matters of discernment. Up to probably Gold, you would probably be unwise not to take counsel from a deeply experienced upline given in good faith.

Timing

As a general principle, enrolment transfers are best left for execution when you get to the point where it is clear that the new Enroller would be in a position to rank this month if the enrolment transfer happened. Do it in the second half of the month after the commission run so that it doesn’t impact monthly commissions run around the 15th, and at least a week before the end of the month.

The Placements team who process the requests typically take 2 to 5 working days to make them happen and you should not announce the rank advancement until the transfer has happened in case of some aberration that causes Placements to deny the transfer. If you leave the transfer request to the last day of the month it will count so long as Placements receive it on time, but it means you end up being unable to announce your newly ranked leader till days into the next month, which can be a little deflating.

The reason to leave it until the Enrolment Transfer is required to support the rank advancement is that because sadly some people talk a good game and then don’t follow up with action. If the strategy is for Ginger to receive the transfer of Basil’s enrolment so she can rank to Premier, but if Basil is only one of the two Executives she needs, and the strategy you’ve agreed together is that she will build the other Executive, then if she never then proceeds to have a class or generate the enrolments then you’ve wasted your one transfer if you’ve already done it.

There may be exceptions to that principle, for example with a strong leader who has already proven themselves and given value, and in whom you have the utmost trust. Such a gift can be a wonderful reward that inspires them to the next level through your trust in them.

In Conclusion

As I said in opening, enrolment transfers are a gift, and they require some serious discernment. Please do seek counsel from your uplines, from a wisdom perspective if you are not yet Gold. After Gold we generally still talk to our uplines from a respect and open dialogue perspective when transfers are strategic and have material consequences for our business.

Value your relationships, and be careful not to negatively impact your Enrollee’s confidence and belief in your support for them.

As a ratio we’ve probably considered enrolment transfers and then decided not to proceed upward of 50% of the time. Part of discernment is caution when something is a high risk and high consequence.

Finally an abundance mindset is a wonderful thing, and the gift of an enrolment transfer can be a wonderful support to worthy leaders when done the right way at the right time after appropriate consideration, and can be a positive to the enrollee where it gets them extra support and the benefit of being in a Ranking Chain.

Finally please have respect for the original Enroller Enrollee relationship, whether you are the Enroller, the Upline of the Enroller, or a prospective new Enroller.

 

Ura P Auckland
Diamond Leader with Petah-Jane Auckland-Hall
Writer & Authentic Essential Oil Entrepreneur
Earth Spirit Pathways
Facilitator & Speaker
Authegrity Pty Ltd

 

Image Attributions:

1. ‘Law / Justice – Stock photo ID: 665191522‘ on Shutterstock by Zolnierek under license by Shutterstock Standard License