People looking in from the outside often think the job of a direct seller or networker is to sell products, which it is. But what those outside the organisation don't understand is all the work around it that needs to be done if an organisation is going to grow. Let's look at all the types of work that can exist inside an ordinary company selling products.
Category 1 is about taking raw materials from nature, the earth or the water. Sand. Stone. Water. Diamonds. Oil. Vegetables. Nutrients. Animals.
Category 2 is producing something out of that raw material.
Category 3 is working with design, logistics, packaging, branding.
Category 4 is marketing and sales.
Category 5 is customer support and customer retention in various ways.
I heard a video clip with Bianca Ingrosso where she was talking to some influencers. She said the following:
”As an influencer you need to present yourself in your feed in order to market products. I don't think people get it... I see no difference between what you do and what a Creative Director does at a company when they create campaigns and a vibe, you're doing the same thing. You do it for less money and for yourselves. You're the boss and the talent who makes the money... The feeling you create in your pictures, that's what big companies try to create with makeup artists, hair stylists, creative directors, photographers... There's a big corporate piece (a big machine) behind it, and I can't understand that people don't understand that. As an influencer you need to present yourself in your feed in order to market products.”
It doesn't matter if you're an influencer, an affiliate, a direct seller or a networker... What we've done is become a partner to a company that takes care of everything around it. We have a partnership with a company that handles categories 1, 2, 3 and 5. The fourth category we handle ourselves. That is, the operational role in marketing and sales.
In network marketing or direct selling you also have a choice (an option) to build an organisation and get more products out on the market, and there we have fairly free hands. No musts. You choose for yourself which role you want to take. There are no demands.
What they don't always understand is that when they only see people selling products, they don't realise that leadership is required. They don't realise that in an ordinary company there's a sales manager on a salary. That person gets a percentage of the sales team's results so they'll hold it all together. Coaching, training and an incredible amount of work around it. Yes, we get paid for moving the product from the warehouse out to the customer, but if everything around it didn't work there wouldn't be much selling at all.
We handle sales and we also handle recruiting. We think it's smarter to let good salespeople find and recruit other good salespeople than to let an HR department take care of it, people who don't know how to get customers.
We're the company's HR department when it comes to customer acquisition. When it comes to marketing and sales. We're the marketing arm. Your role is to be passionate about the product. Talk about the product. Meet people and sit in customer meetings online or offline. To present the information we hold. That can let you build a good income. You can do it full time if you're really ambitious about customer acquisition.
If you also enjoy helping people develop, working with coaching and training, then you build an organisation as well. You recruit customer acquirers as part of the HR department in step 4 of the process. Marketing and sales.
Which role you want is yours to choose. If you're reading this and haven't understood it until now, you still belong to the small slice of the pie that has understood it. Stand tall and be proud of what you do, because we create magic. We outsource everything we don't want to do to the parent company and then we do the part that creates the most security and the biggest profit margin. How can I say that? Well, there's no safer job than bringing customers in to companies, because every company will always need that.
Category 4, that's where you get paid best. The person closest to the customer always gets paid best in a distribution chain or a marketing pipeline.
Then again, we don't always act like a sales manager. We're more like a gym owner walking around the gym giving a thumbs up to people who are there, whatever they're doing. Even if they've had a membership for months without showing up.
You just say ”good job!” Because you don't know who you're inspiring. You don't know who's watching. For that person it can be absolutely decisive in getting them back to the gym. Because there are a lot of negative voices out there, not least in their own heads. And then there's negative programming from the media, which often has a completely different agenda.
Be the gym owner who walks around and makes sure everyone feels welcome. That everyone gets to take part at their own level. Because that's the key. Everyone gets to take part regardless of ambition level or results. They can have whatever goals they want. That's how we build hundreds of thousands of customers.
Some will want to take on leadership and build big organisations and some will want to build an extra income on top of the income from their job, but their whole positive personal development community means they enjoy life a little more. They get inspired, they feel a little better. They want to be positive instead of negative. For me that meant everything. It's the least I can pass on to every single person I meet.
