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Direct selling enterprises today face something of a paradox.
On the one hand, it’s vital to cut expenses. Many of the industry’s leaders experienced significant growth downturns in Q4 2022.
Additionally with, for instance, the mid-sized banking industry showing signs of weakness, there’s a general sense of financial peril, and so in order to insure against future turbulence, many companies will seek to reduce costs in the ways immediately available to them.
Investing in Digital Acceleration
At the same time, investment in digital acceleration has, arguably, never been as important as it is now.
With tech-driven gig platforms up, and according to the latest available data, the number of direct sellers decreasing, it’s reasonable to infer that providing some kind of modern digital experience to the field is vital. The fact is that large gig platforms, profitable retailers, and other verticals that overlap with direct selling’s constituency are known to offer in-app digital experiences that help their workforces perform.
This isn’t so true for direct selling, which has often lagged behind in digital transformation, in large part because direct selling distributors trend older demographically and so have had less use for, or interest in, apps.
Today, however, especially after the pandemic, many are more digitally literate than they were before. If they’re going to onboard with a direct selling company, they want to be able to get up and running quickly and smoothly.
You’re also seeing the potential entry of Gen Z digital natives into the field–folks who want a more flexible, self-determined lifestyle, which direct selling can provide. According to the World Economic Forum, nearly ⅔ of Gen Z want to work for themselves, independently—an opportunity that direct selling will leave on the table if they’re not providing the right technology. This is the future, and we have to be prepared for it.
Yet investing in digital acceleration, so crucial in winning committed sellers, takes investment dollars, at the very moment that leaders seek to cut costs. How are you supposed to do both? Aren’t they kind of–contradictory? Well, not exactly, provided you think about it the right way.
Tech Consolidation for Direct Selling: The Basics
I’d like to introduce a concept that has been operative for us at Rallyware–for context’s sake, I’ll add that we provide an all-in-one field enablement platform. That concept, called “consolidation,” is core to our philosophy of technology. It’s also growing in prominence. In their December 2022 State of Sales Report, SalesForce published their findings that 94% of sales organizations plan to consolidate their tech tools through 2023.
In recent years, there’s been a great deal of talk about the tech stack. Basically, this is the set of digital tools that a company uses to build a coherent distributor experience. Let’s break that down in actual English. Imagine a direct selling enterprise, Direct Seller A, wants to provide an end-to-end application for their distributors.
They might integrate a bundle of different technologies, one for onboarding and learning, another for customer management relations, still another for bonuses, rewards and recognition, and so forth, cobbling together their tech stack as they go. At this point the distributor might have every tool they need in the abstract, but is this a recognizably modern digital experience? Does the distributor feel that their experience responds to their needs and goals, that it’s easy to use, that it actively makes them want to engage with this company’s products? Or is it merely “sufficient”?
With too many direct selling enterprises, that last sentence is the right answer. Their front-end technology for distributors “does the job,” but it doesn’t reach the level of an Uber app, let alone beyond that.
In the end, the problem here isn’t only the individual distributor’s experience. It’s about Direct Seller A’s bottom line. They’re paying each one of their software vendors; spending time with each on setup, maintenance, training, integration; and losing money when distributors leave the field in frustration or exhaustion.
Additionally, there’s the question of centralization. What people want is a single app for a single experience. No one wants two separate apps for photos and videos; they want one Instagram. No one wants a separate app for riding and food delivery; they want one Uber. Remember when Facebook split their core app off from Messenger? That wasn’t exactly popular.
Tech consolidation integrates all of Direct Seller A’s core technology in one experience for the distributor, who now wields a single app. For corporate administrators, there’s no need to pay and maintain multiple core vendors, nor to pay third parties to help assemble an application in an unwieldy, lengthy implementation process. This cuts expenses, but it also, for reasons I’ll now describe, drives revenue at the distributor level, making this investment in technology into a high-ROI activity.
Considering the Impact of High-ROI Technology
In short, when the distributor’s whole experience gets consolidated in a single app, every action increases in value. Why? As we all know, direct selling is a highly personal business. Each distributor has different business goals, aspirations, and needs; each business-building journey is slightly different. When data travels freely from one tool to another using the same framework, affecting one in-app experience, the platform itself adapts and matures to fit the distributor’s goals. The platform shows them content increasingly relevant to their goals and progress. When the distributor accomplishes a sales goal, the platform “understands” the kind of prompts that spur them on. At least the platform does so when it’s smart, adaptive, and flexible, which anyway, is the only kind of technology that you should be looking at.
The end result, multiplied by thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of distributors, is higher profitability. Though consolidated tech represents something of an investment, in the end our Direct Seller A is (1) slashing expenses and (2) driving profitability with greater personalization, in a business where such personalization matters greatly. After all, we’re not talking about employees: we’re talking about independent, self-guided sellers, who all have separate goals and processes. They need adaptive, individualized technology to match.
This has high business value not only for distributors, but for the long-term competitiveness of direct selling companies themselves.
Says Aleesha Duensing, Sales Operations Analyst at Hugh & Grace, about Rallyware, which they use as a consolidated platform: “We most appreciate the ability to personalize onboarding and training. Having the ability to increase engagement through triggered activities and a variety of rewards, coupled with the ability to house all resources in a digital library has been extremely beneficial to our field.”
In the end, using consolidated technology that is equipped to personalize the experience for the distributor can make our “direct selling paradox” into, actually, a win for forward-thinking enterprises. Tech consolidation that personalizes a single, integrated platform for each individual distributor at once cuts costs and boosts revenue, by means of the same technology. The results speak for themselves
Conclusion: Seek a Consolidation Partner–Not Just a Vendor
In my view, it’s important that when you’re consolidating your whole distributor experience in a single app, that app’s vendor shouldn’t just treat you as a customer. They should treat you as a partner in digital acceleration, offering consultation and expertise on how best to digitally transform your business in order to maximize the chances of the program’s success.
In other words: they should treat your success as their success–and have as much stake in the digital strategy behind the implementation of their technology as you do. They should have expertise in how to roll-out consolidation effectively for your specific business. After all, in direct selling, one company model can differ greatly from another’s.
As Nu Skin’s Colin Silva says, “Building a valuable experience for affiliates that is globally aligned is not easy, but Rallyware’s customer success team made the effort to understand our business and helped us effectively localize the service to fit each market’s rules and nuances.” Along these lines, we suggest the following three best practices as you start consolidating your technology into one platform:
1) Segmented Communication Is Essential. We’re more dispersed and global than ever, and the composition of your field probably reflects that, with a large diversity of languages, ethnicities, and goals. Your comms tools should be able to accommodate that reality. Many direct sellers also overload their field with messages. The right communications should meet the right field members at the right moment.
2) Tech Should Increase Efficiency for Admins. The implementation of technology often creates headaches for administrators and corporate teams more generally. That’s the sign of a poor fit. A quarter after implementation, the technology should be making your work life easier, not more of a struggle.
3) Adopt Technology Patiently. If you roll out every tool at once, you’ll overwhelm your current field, in addition to corporate offices. Consider fully rolling out one tool or set of interconnected tools, like digital onboarding and training, before moving on to rewards and recognition once it’s statistically verifiable that the field’s use of this solution has matured and is producing results. (Detailed, visualized analytics for HQ are useful here.)
Technology adoption isn’t something to take lightly. It’s openly accepted that in Uber vs. Lyft, Uber has won the rideshare wars. So, whose app is better? The New York Times declares that it’s “Uber, hands down”–since it all comes down to the best user experience. Providing a consolidated, easy-to-use, modern user experience is a large part of the reason why Rallyware’s customers experience 24% return on investment, 53% post-training sales growth, and 141% long-term retention increases for the field.
Technology and success are connected. Consolidate, and offer a modern digital experience, before it’s too late.
Rallyware is the all-in-one performance enablement platform for large sales forces. Request your demonstration today.
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