We’ve all heard the story. You sign up with a new company.
You are excited, and scared. You tell all your friends. Your good friends book parties, and your great friends sign up with you. You tentatively begin selling products and recruiting. Word gets out in your community and your internet circles that you are selling XYZ products for ABC company. People begin to come to you. Business is great. Then your direct sales company lets you down!
“Ellen” built a healthy income selling candles through a direct sales company. She attained the management level of Team Director. Then overnight, due to one slow month in personal sales, her downline was re-assigned to other Team Directors and her income dropped down to nothing. Even her commission structure was lowered on her personal sales.
“Patty” struggled with recruiting but did a great job selling candles for her direct sales company. She developed a nice part-time income buying product at her discount and selling them to her customers and on ebay. Her direct sales company changed their compensation plan and penalized Patty in the form of a lower consultant discount because her team wasn’t growing fast enough.
“Monica” is busy at home raising children. She loves direct sales but doesn ‘t have a steady back-up baby sitter to enable her to do traditional home parties several nights a week. Monica developed a great online party program and was doing a wonderful job selling and recruiting for her direct sales company. But when the winner of a lingerie prize at an online party complained to the direct sales company when she had not received her gift within seven days the direct sales company removed Monica from the program without asking any questions.
“Katie” is a direct selling dynamo. She is a consultant for several companies with consistent sales and downline growth. One of her companies contacted her out of the blue and informed her that they no longer would allow her to be a representative of their direct sales company and one of the other direct sales company she had signed up with. They forced her to make a choice and leave behind the products, downline team, and customers she had built up with at least one of the two companies.
“Bobbie” has grown a wonderful direct selling team around her company offering gourmet herbs and spices. Bobbie had a large and loyal customer base in her home town. But her direct sales company decided to mass market some of their products in the local Wal-Mart and grocery store which cut significantly into Bobbie’s sales. Bobbie’s friend “Sue” who sells plastic storage containers had the same thing happen when her direct sales company decided to open up kiosks in the local mall.
All of our friends stories are quite true, and they occur daily in the direct sales industry. While their names have been changed to protect the innocent, their experiences are very typical.
What can you do when your direct sales company let’s you down? Most of us are tempted to answer fight back but experience has proven that to be ineffective. Even if you manage to force management to give in to your demands, the result is usually temporary as you become slated for “removal” from the company one way or another.
Have a Plan B. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Work with more than one direct sales company. Then if the worst happens, you have other resources to fall back on.
Duplicate your efforts. Attempt to turn customers for one company into customers for all your companies. Then if you lose one, you don’t lose an entire segment of your customer base. If this isn’t possible, at least maintain your own client database. Don’t risk losing all your customers if your lose your direct sales organization.
While you are duplicating your efforts, make sure that you are sharing all your direct sales opportunities with everyone in all your direct sales organizations. Why train new reps over and over again when a portion of your new reps can be consultants who you’ve worked with in other companies? And while you are at that, go ahead and take the best training materials you ‘ve developed for one company and convert them into materials for the other companies as well.
There was a time when network marketing companies wagged their fingers and lured you in with the promise of treating your better than corporate America and life time residual income. Too many of us have learned the hard way that the guarantees of loyalty outside mainstream corporate America are no better than those inside.
If you are blessed with the talent of finding new ways to do more business, then be sure you clear each one with your direct sales company. Get that clearance in writing. Otherwise you’ll be squabbling over domain names, and marketing materials, and online party rooms faster than one of you can call your attorney. The outside the box thinking direct sales consultant is better off to seek out a network marketing company with equally forward thinking philosophies rather than to attempt to conform to the small minded box some direct sales companies afford them to work in.
Finally, there is one way you can get even once your direct sales company let’s you down. Don’t get mad. Get even. Once you’ve found a better alternative to their way of doing business, go after your downline, your upline, and all your contacts within the old organization. Don’t violate any non-compete agreements. But if you can clean house rather than cleaning someone’s clock, you get to be the one laughing all the way to the bank at the end of the day.
Shannan Hearne is the owner of SuccessPromotions.com and the co-founder of ShoppingInTheSouth.com
shannan@successpromotions.com