RENÉE
CHITTICK’S UP-CLOSE-AND-PERSONAL COACHING STRATEGY
BY JOHN ZMIRAI(
Renée Stewart Chittick used to make a
living selling rubber alligators to tourists. She and her first husband ran a
chain of Florida souvenir shops near the Everglades. In her time off, she
played a lot of tennis and covered the sport for The Tampa Tribune.
One day, as Renée puttered in the kitchen, her tennis teacher dropped by. “She reminded me tat I’d been trying to lose weight,” Renée says, “and she had a product she thought could help.”
That was Renée’s introduction to the network marketing industry. At 52, she is now the top-earning woman in Rexall Showcase International, a company with 75,000 distributors in all 50 states, Mexico, and Asia. Founded in 1991, Rexall Showcase is a subsidiary of Rexall-Sundown,
Inc., based in Boca Raton, Florida.
“Neither my husband nor I knew anything about the network marketing industry,” she recalls. “What attracted me was the caliber of the people involved—the professionals who quit other things to join.”
The person who most impressed Renée was Jim Moyles, an engineer and stockbroker—a veteran of Lehman Brothers and IBM—who ran his own mergers and acquisitions company in Tampa. ‘Jim explained to me that this was basically a wholesale buying club—like Sam’s or CostCo—without the storefront or the real estate.” That formula made sense to Renée and she decided to join.
Moyles recalls, “Renée introduced me to the best and brightest people she knew, holding meetings with them for me at her house. For a month I practically lived there.”
Those first few months of tag-team presentations with Moyles shaped Renée’s whole style of doing business. As she recruited people forte company, she would go wit them to their first few presentations-regardless of the time or distance involved. “My philosophy is, you build this business one friend at a time,” Renée says. “To me, that means training people one-on-one.
After you recruit people, don’t just sit there and watch. You should guide them—like a good parent. Neglect means failure.
A Need for Confidence
To those who believe that a networking business is a “turnkey system,” which you can hand off to a newcomer wit a few hours of pep talks and an audio cassette, Renée answers: “New people have no real idea what the industry can do for them. They haven’t succeeded yet, so they don’t have the confidence to find new people, attract them, and transmit a specific system to those who sign up. That’s exactly what’s needed.
“After you recruit someone, don’t just sit there and watch him. That’s would be like a permissive parent, letting your kids go crazy and hurt themselves”
Instead, Renée offers recruits a detailed time-line of the business, explaining what they should expect to achieve within the first 30, 6o, and 90 days-and how to get there. What about motivational manuals-asking people to write out their goals?
“No way, I don’t do it,” Renée says. “They would aim way too low. People have no idea what’s possible.”
Renée was a prime example herself, according to Moyles: “Originally, all Renée wanted was an extra $18,ooo a year to cover her daughter’s private school tuition,”
She adds, “I also wanted to buy her a car.
To achieve these modest goals, Renée worked furiously: “Jim and I put together the very best people we could find in the Clear- water [Florida] area, people we knew had the reputation for integrity-well-respected teachers, people in business, and generally, those who took an interest in their health.”
She approached these local luminaries very directly, without trying to disguise the nature of her business. “I never invited people over for dinner and then sprang the business on them. I told prospects that this was a network marketing opportunity before I met with them; I don’t have time to waste dragging people to something to which they aren’t open. Now I actually let prospects qualify themselves by listening to an audio tape before we meet,” Renée says.
Once people have received a full briefing on the business, Renée is never shy about trying to sign them up. “Do you want to know the difference between the five percent of people who really succeed in this business, and the other 95 percent? You want the secret? Here it is: make the first move. Call people up, after they’ve heard your tape, to find out what they think. Answer people’s questions honestly and set up a meeting. Don’t just sit around waiting for call-backs to come in.”
This business is about finding a few people for whom the timing is right. Then you help that small group do business the right way.
Explosive Results
Renée’s candor and enthusiasm worked. “Her business exploded,” says Moyles. Of the first group of r~ people who came to Renée’s first meeting, four rose to the company’s top level, Director, within a month.
Renée’s first recruit was Ronnie Weston. A securities lawyer based in Palm Harbor, Pa., she had fired of her practice. She was looking for a new opportunity (and some help keeping off weight). Renée hovered over Ronnie, guiding her every step.
“She played a huge role in the beginning,” Ronnie recalls. “She’s a master at teaching how to do the business. At first, she didn’t even know that much-she sponsored me only a month after joining the business. But she admitted that up front and kept pulling Jim Moyles in to help us.
She kept me motivated, informed, and always primed with new information. Eventually, I sponsored my best friend, and she and I started going out to recruit together.”
Ronnie’s step toward independence freed Renée up to help other newcomers. The real key to success in networking, she says, “is to keep looking until you find those two-to- four individuals who are real powerhouses; then work like heck to make sure they succeed.” Seven years later, Ronnie Weston has earned more than $ r million and built sales of $1 million per year.
Another key recruit Renée sought out and won for her organization was John Kercher,
“A lot of people who fail in this business don’t understand the basics the way Renée does,” John says. “How do you attract business-builders? By contacting people you like, respect, and would want as your partners in the business, then presenting it to them. It’s not about leaning on your family or friends. It’s all about finding a few people for whom the timing is right-people who’d like to make a change in their lives. Then you help that small group of people do this business the right way.”
Renée spends much
of her time on the road, training newcomers in distant cities. “Most of the
people who join us aren’t full- time at first. They can’t pick up and go help
their downline people get started. I can do that for them-so I do. They plant
the seeds. I go off and water them. NML
When it comes to training. Renee goes a few steps further than many distributors. According to Jaine Fishcer fo Palm Harbor, A Rexall distributor and former therapist several levels down Renee’s organization, “Renee is very selfless. She’ll always travel to do presentations about the business, even for people who are beyond her pay plan-where she doesn’t make any money. That’s terrific because it helps the people under her make money. It strengthens the organization as a whole.”
Is all this just altruism? Not quite, Renee admits. “If I help people beyond my downline succeed, it makes money for their upline – people whose success I do share – and keeps it solid. You don’t see people flaking off and quitting, when their organizations are performing for them. And that helps me.”