Alan Luce

After nearly 40 years in direct selling, I am a firm believer in what I have come to call the Belief Multiplier Effect.  “What is it?’ you ask.  The Belief Multiplier Effect (BME) is that sudden unexplainable upsurge in your direct sales business that goes well beyond what all your analysis and projections anticipated.   Your plans called for a modest increase but suddenly the business just starts to fly!  Sales are exploding; recruiting is at all time highs and new leaders are coming out of the woodwork.  What in the heck happened?  Or perhaps more accurately, what are we doing right that we didn’t do before?

In my experience, the Belief Multiplier Effect kicks in not because of any one thing, but because the Company has done a number of things right and all of these important separate elements finally coalesce into a firm belief among your sales leaders that anything is truly possible.  When enough members of the sales force begin to really believe, then incredible things begin to happen.

Can you plan for the belief multiplier effect?  No, not really.  But what you can do is set the stage for it to occur.  How? By paying attention to the small things and gaining and maintaining the trust of your sales force.

Here are some of the key elements that must be present before there is any chance of riding the BME Express:

• Your sales force must use and love the Company products.  They must be on a mission to share the product benefits with everyone they know.
• Your sales force services must be excellent.  This includes accurate, on time shipments with little breakage.  When errors do occur the sales force must have easy access to report them and quick, cheerful solutions.  Never embarrass the sales force in front of their customers.
• The training must be effective.  If the company says that this is the way to do something, then most folks who follow the advice had better get the results promised.
• Heroes and heroines must emerge.  Nothing creates organizational belief faster than some of their own experiencing great success.   Sales force belief is peer driven.
• The sales force influence leaders must believe without doubt or question that the company will always try to act in their best interests.
• The experience of belonging to the company must be fun, educational and motivational.

When a company gets all of these various elements in alignment and those heroines and heroes are emerging and inspiring others with their stories, then the atmosphere exists for the Belief Multiplier Effect to kick in.  That’s when the results begin to significantly exceed both forecasts and expectations.  As I said, you can’t predict it, it is almost impossible to measure, and you cannot count on it being there forever.  But what you can do is work very hard to make sure that all of the elements necessary for the Belief Multiplier Effect to kick and thrive are continuously cared for, improved and nurtured. Drift, even slightly, away from the attention to detail and practices that were present when the BME kicked in and you can lose it as quickly and unexpectedly as it first appeared. Once lost, it is hard to get back.  When you’ve got it going, you and your sales force experience the true magic of direct selling.

Few people in the direct sales industry can match the experience, expertise and successes of Alan Luce. With over 25 years in senior management, guiding start-ups and established companies alike, Alan has met virtually every challenge a direct sales executive can face.  Learn more about how Alan can help your company at http://www.luceandassociates.com/Alan-Luce.html.

by Alan Luce

Alan Luce

What a year 2009 has been so far!  For direct sales party planners this year of recession has been challenging in many respects.  A few companies seem to be blowing right through the economic downturn as though it isn’t there.  Other companies are struggling to keep their businesses on course.  It is a year of anomalies: for many companies the surprise is that the all important retail-sales-per-guest and party average retail sales figures have held steady or dropped just slightly, but the bottom has dropped out of the activity rate.  In these companies the primary obstacles seem to be a lack of confidence among the sales force that hosts will book in this economy and that the hosts will  be able to get guests to attend the party.  Though the statistics from the parties held dispute this belief, once that lack of confidence invades the sales force it is hard to displace.

The best solution that I have seen to the booking and attendance “confidence” problem is to find great “good news” stories and publish them frequently to the sales force.  Do not wait for your traditional communications vehicle schedule.  Create short attractive story templates and tell the stories about great new Consultant first party results, hostess success results where they set a goal to get $100 of free stuff and surpassed their goal.  In addition to publishing these good news stories out to the field weekly, put the same stories with new Consultant, new leader and host testimonials on the company public web site.

We all know that we are working with mostly part-time volunteer sales forces.  But sometimes we forget just how much of their party plan business activity is driven by their “confidence and belief” in the business.  The more that we can give them proof that their peers and colleagues are enjoying success when they choose to work in this economy, the more our sellers will get their sales “mojo” back and our businesses will grow again.

Few people in the direct sales industry can match the experience, expertise and successes of Alan Luce. With over 25 years in senior management, guiding start-ups and established companies alike, Alan has met virtually every challenge a direct sales executive can face.  Learn more about how Alan can help your company at http://www.luceandassociates.com/Alan-Luce.html.