As we learn things, we have a tendency to add stuff to our presentation. The catch is that if you've been at it for a year or longer, it's impossible to fit everything you've learned in that time into a presentation that's supposed to take half an hour or an hour. That's a challenge, because if you want to build big in direct selling it isn't about becoming an expert, it's about becoming relatable. That's a big difference.
If you're a business consultant, a coach or a trainer of some kind, you're probably striving for authority and to be the person others look up to as highly educated and knowledgeable. You want to be the expert. But if you're building a direct selling organisation and you want to inspire people to do what you do, then people need to be able to relate to who you are and what you do. You need to be duplicable. So if your vision for what you do with this tool (direct selling) is to build something very big, then my advice to you is to keep it very simple.
”Never underestimate the power of simplicity.” - Robin Sharma
The thing is, if you're a therapist, a massage therapist or a nutrition adviser, you can probably get 100 customers without much effort, because you meet so many people who listen to you since you're the expert. They follow your advice and become customers of a health product or something similar, but the challenge comes when you go out to recruit people into your organisation, because then they say:
”That's easy for you to say, you know all this. I'm just an ordinary worker, I can't do what you do. I can't relate to what you do, it's not for me...”
What you think is your greatest strength can become your greatest weakness. You need to be able to be relatable and you need to be able to be duplicable. Of course you should take advantage of your network and the position you've built in the market so far. If you're an influencer, naturally that's where you start. What I want to say is that if you want to build big, you need to work on being relatable from the very beginning, because if people can't see themselves doing what you do, you're done for.
You'll be able to build an income of a few thousand because you have followers. You can have customers, you can even have people who say they want to work with this and who join because you're you. They like hanging out with you and they like listening to you because you know so much.
I don't want to build an organisation where people listen to me because I know so much. I want to build an organisation where thousands of people build their own business. They learn from each other because they want to achieve freedom. They want to get away from scarcity and create abundance, but that will never happen if they strive to become experts. Then they easily become the person who gets questions about everything all the time.
I'm not your guru, like the title of Anthony Robbins' documentary on Netflix... I always point to the source of the information. If people ask me what the product costs, I point to the price list. If someone asks whether the product contains turmeric, I show them the list of ingredients. If they ask me for information during the presentation, I point to it in the material we work with. I never want to become the expert.
”I'm not saying you should do what I do. I'm saying you can choose to listen to why I do what I do and then make your own decision about whether it's something you want to follow.” - Randy Gage
This isn't a question of right or wrong. I'm not saying you have to build big. I'm saying that many people aren't aware that their approach won't lead to anything big. If you have a talent, an ability, a network, a personal brand, then of course you should take advantage of it, but do everything you can to make it duplicable.
Do you want to build a large organisation that duplicates itself?
Look down into your organisation and count how many leaders are self-sufficient. How many have you personally helped become self-sufficient? That says something about what your business will look like in one year, two years, three years and so on. How many presenters do you have out in the field sitting in meetings every week? That tells you how your business is really doing.
Do you want to be an expert or do you want to be relatable?
