JOURNEYING IN THE DIRECT SELLING INDUSTRY – Treading or Re-Treading

A few years ago I had the interesting experience of receiving a complaint from the Direct Selling Association on whose Board I sat; that someone in my organization had tried to recruit their Director of Finance over a drink at a DSA function. They cited the provision in the DSA By laws regarding cross recruiting. Of course this was a misapplication of the provision, as it was designed to eliminate cross recruiting campaigns of Independent Representatives for member companies. As such, the complaint was dismissed as frivolous but it did provide fodder for some further comedic repartee amongst DSA Board Members. Sadly, the focal point of much of this humor was that the resumes of the eight sitting Board Members represented close to 35 Direct Selling Organizations both in existence and long since gone. The irony, not lost on any of us, was that were it not for cross recruiting of employees, none of us would probably be sitting there at all.

This rather interesting phenomenon was a catalyst to some outside the box thinking in the ensuing months. Was the stagnancy of much of the industry due in small part to the lack of fresh ideas from outside the industry? Was the industry, in its quest to stay pure and hire only executives with industry experience actually robbing itself of creativity and innovation? Certainly reading any of the industry periodicals or attending industry functions had an element of catching up on who was where now. While this may not be unusual in isolated industries; I had seen the same during my first career in the telecommunications sector; it certainly was worth pondering. As I pursued this line of thinking, I was drawn to consider two important elements. Based on my own experience, which positions in a new or existing organization could one afford to look outside the industry? In other words, which roles did not require as healthy a dollop of Direct Selling experience? Secondly, if one was looking outside the industry for new talent, what particular skills, personality traits and experiences lent themselves more easily to a transition into the Direct Selling space? More clearly; who should we be looking for to recruit into our industry to infuse new ideas and fresh concepts?

I began to look at hiring individuals based on aptitude and personality within similar but not necessarily homogenous industry experience. A finance person, it would seem did not necessarily have to come with MLM or Direct Selling experience. Yet arguably, they would be infinitely more successful early on if they understood how the compensation worked and how compensation actually stimulated behaviour. Furthermore in terms of understanding the impact of a program or even product margins, their ability to do something like a cohort analysis to figure out the residual effect of a new recruit was infinitely more valuable than basic accounting knowledge. So, what we needed to search for was someone who had exhibited extraordinary analytical skills with a health understanding of human behavior.  In the area of business development I decided that there was an even larger risk in hiring someone outside the industry however, if I did there were some key attributes and experiences that could be transferred to a Direct Selling opportunity. As an example, they had to understand the heart and mind of an entrepreneur. They were not dealing with staff; they were dealing with independent business people who had to be motivated and could not be told. They had to have extraordinary communication skills and I came to see that people who had dealt with franchisees and in my case, people who had worked with telecom distributorships were an excellent source for talent that could make the transition. Marketing was another essential area particularly in early stage growth and once again I had to determine what the key attributes were of a Marketing person in our space. One of the key elements that we were able to define was the concept of ‘experience’. In other words, being a part of our organization had to be a cultural experience not just for our distributors but our customers as well. One of the sources for outside talent I found most valuable were people from the theme park industry. Not just any theme park, but those parks that were totally consumed with the guest experience from the moment they arrived to the moment they left. We all know the companies that excel in this. I was able to see the transition of two individuals in particular that come to mind, in two separate organizations; from leaders in the ‘experience’ business to quality marketers in the Direct Selling Industry.

Exceptional Talent is, in my opinion, the single most important element to a successful Direct Selling organization. I place talent above product, above geography, above pricing, above any other single success element. If we believe this to be true, is it not time for us to begin to cultivate and groom new talent to infuse our companies with fresh new ideas?  Or, instead are we willing to keep passing our executives and employees from company to company hoping that somehow the successful ones will be able to repeat their success with the same formula time and time again. My bias is on reinvention and rethinking our current modes of operation as opposed to replacing or creating employee positions with retreads and repeat offenders.