Looking into the future, I think we'll see quite a few changes compared with how direct selling works today. Here are some points you can see as a checklist for the future that I'm convinced about:
1. The companies and organisations that don't work with personal development and finance through their leadership will lose.
Companies that don't develop won't keep up with the development. The company needs to educate the organisation in personal development, leadership and finance. For us out in the field, it's the ones who keep learning who win. If you're not growing, you're dying. If we want our team to grow, we have to grow.
2. Online will grow strongly!
More and more people are starting to explore the possibilities of working on social media.
• You save time because you don't have to move from point A to point B.
• You only have meetings (zoom) with contacts who are interested.
• Prospecting becomes efficient because you can talk to more people in less time.
• It gets easier to create a flow and follow up systematically because you use the power of the platform, for example Facebook.
”Does this mean we should spam out our brands or post that we're looking for people for company XYZ in various groups on fb?”
Absolutely not! Working online is just as much about relationships as working offline. It would be like standing in the town square with a crate full of presentation material, shouting through a megaphone that there's money to be made here, and calling that working offline. Common sense will take you a long way!
Even if you make your business more efficient by working online, you'll lose a lot of contacts and opportunities if you don't put the relationship first! Be genuine, personal and 100% real when you post things on social media! A post on your timeline that you've copied from someone else doesn't look good and has the opposite effect! It just gets embarrassing when people see the original text posted by someone else earlier than when you posted yours.
3. Systems and automation will grow exponentially into the future and the companies that don't invest in ”tech” will get run over.
So much is going to happen here in the coming years and it's up to the companies to keep up with the development.
• Webshop: everyone shops online and products are sent directly to the customer.
• App for training: serious companies obviously work on constantly raising the competence of the organisation and use technology to the full.
• University via back office: the development makes it possible for companies to give us in the field more and more basic training via video, straight from our digital office.
• More digital tools: it's hard to imagine what the future will look like in a few years when it comes to technology, and that's why I've taken help from the best in the world to learn this, so I can then help others.
4. We'll see a bigger difference between serious and unserious companies.
We're going to educate the market about what this is and how it works. There will always be fraudsters out there, and the reason is that people can't tell the difference between a business system and an illegal game with money. Usually it comes down to people not understanding, because of a lack of education.
Stay away from all those ”passive income” groups on Facebook where the people who don't want to do the work post. Cryptocurrencies, coins, trading bots and lotto (yes, you read that right, even though gambling is a monopoly in Sweden, as Lotteriinspektionen, the Swedish Gambling Authority, can confirm). They're scams that have never worked over time, but as long as there are people who want to get fleeced, they'll keep being out there. The money you pay in is paid out to someone else. Stay away. You become who you spend time with, and believe me, you don't want to get involved in any pyramid schemes.
There will be considerably more of us educating the market about what direct selling is and isn't about. You who are reading this have positioned yourself extremely well to be part of that. You're willing to educate yourself and then educate someone else. Together we contribute to a better business climate in the direct selling jungle.
5. Our ”community” grows even stronger.
It's about belonging. We depend on each other. Whether it's family, sport, religion, politics, music or a boat club, we build a culture that people want to be part of. We need to belong to something. We need to feel that we belong to something bigger.
That's the whole key. It's the most important thing of all. The community can teach them everything. Why we do things, how we do things, values, where we're heading. We usually talk about sitting around the campfire, there's room for everyone, everyone is welcome and then it's up to each person what they want to do. The community is the most important thing of all in a direct selling organisation and it will become even more important in the future. It's a precondition for being able to build an organisation that lasts over time.
Build or choose a community in a company with a culture you're comfortable in and with mentors who can help you, who know how you feel, who are there all the way. Build for the long term! Think 10 years. Why not 50 years? Have a vision of building an organisation that remains long after you, in 100 years or more! We need to belong. We build a community in a winning culture. It's one of our strongest driving forces: to belong to something bigger. We're building something bigger!
The community or platform we're building within direct selling is going to get huge. This is only the beginning. Everything up until today has just been preparation. We're pioneers in by far the most exciting profession in the world.
Let's start a revolution...
I hope to see you out in the field.
