Q: I don't feel my sponsor is properly supporting me. Can I be provided with a new sponsor?

Q: I don't feel my sponsor is properly supporting me. Can I be provided with a new sponsor?

A: If you don't like your sponsor, you can opt of SFI for six months and rejoin under any SFI affiliate of your choosing. However, even without factoring in losing six months of productivity, it's a bad decision in my opinion. I say this because I believe focusing on what your sponsor does or doesn't do is completely irrelevant to your success.

Before I started SFI, I was extremely successful for many years as a distributor in several network marketing companies. I built groups numbering in the many tens of thousands—generating millions of dollars in sales. I was wildly successful, yet I essentially never heard from my sponsors or received any upline assistance. I knew what I wanted to do, and I went out and did it. I didn't need a sponsor to succeed...and neither do you!

A good sponsor should be looked upon as "icing on the cake" ONLY. That is, if you're fortunate enough to have chosen a sponsor who supports you to your satisfaction, that's great. On the other hand, if you're not completely satisfied with the support your sponsor provides, that's okay, too, because whatever success you achieve is always going to come down to what YOU do and no one else.

As most longtime SFI affiliates know, one of my guiding mottos has always been, "If it's to be, it's up to me." NEVER, EVER allow yourself to think your sponsor, other upline members, or anyone else controls what level of success you achieve. Blaming anyone else for your lack of success is a defeatist attitude that will keep you from ever achieving your dreams. YOU and YOU ALONE are responsible for your success! Don't' ever forget that!

Now that you understand that, let's look at this from another angle: What do you expect your sponsor to do for you? He or she can't magically turn you into a success (that's up to you, as I've explained above). What a sponsor CAN and SHOULD do, however, is help you with your concerns, help you get your questions answered, etc.

Hopefully, your sponsor is providing this service. If not, however, you're FAR from being left out in the cold. You can go to your upline Team Leaders. You have up to six of them listed at:

https://www.sfimg.com/MyAccount/upline.sfi

There's also the SFI "DBoard" (www.sfidboard.com).The DBoard is like having a hundred sponsors! Indeed, the DBoard is a place where thousands of experienced moderators and fellow SFI affiliates gather to discuss SFI topics and help each other with problems, questions, and concerns. You can get help 24 hours a day from the DBoard by simply posting a question.

Finally, there's SFI corporate support. Our staff stands ready to help you with any problem or question you have. Just e-mail us at support@sfimg.com and you will receive an reply, usually within one to two business days.
Q: OK, I see now how I don't actually need a good sponsor, but can't SFI make my sponsor answer my e-mails or at least penalize him for being non-supportive?

That's a very loaded question! First of all, realize that all SFI affiliates are INDEPENDENT representatives. They are not employees. Just as we can't force you to answer your e-mails, we can't force your sponsor or anyone else to do it either.

The vast majority of affiliates DO answer their e-mails because, of course, that's how you build a profitable organization. Beyond putting that incentive out there, however, there's not much else we can do, particularly because we have NO WAY of knowing the status of your or their e-mails.

That is, because of misconfigured spam filters, millions of legitimate e-mails every day are not delivered or are routed to "junk" folders where they're never seen. The fact is, your sponsor may not be receiving the e-mails you send him or her. Or, he or she may be receiving them and replying to them, but your ISP is not delivering or junking the e-mails.

There's NO WAY we can know exactly what is occurring. There's no way to determine if it's your sponsor who is not responding to your e-mails, of if your sponsor's ISP, or your ISP is dropping the ball.

Because this cannot be known, punishment for "non-support" just doesn't work. If we suddenly cut off your check because someone in your downline reported that they had e-mailed you and didn't hear back from you, you'd likely be very upset. You'd probably think a lawsuit was in order in fact. Especially if you actually DID respond but through no fault of your own the e-mails never got delivered.

Now, all that said, there IS something coming to SFI that will change this dynamic. It's called "A2A" and is our new Web-based messaging system that will allow messaging between upline and downline members.

A2A, which stands for "Affiliate To Affiliate" will also allow you to send messages back and forth with ANY affiliate in SFI. This will be particularly valuable because you can precisely select affiliates. You will be able to directly communicate with affiliates in your country, for example...or, of same gender and age...or, choose affiliates who joined SFI the same time you did...and so on.

In regards to your sponsor, however, A2A will provide SFI for the first time with the ability to know if a sponsor is not responding to requests from downline members. This is because A2A operates 100% on our servers. There are no outside ISPs used. When you send a message to your sponsor using A2A, we'll know it was sent and delivered. We'll know if your sponsor responded, and we'll be able to take the appropriate actions if not.