Industry News

Tools of the Trade: Building Communication from the Ground Up
by Barabara Seale

Last year the Direct Selling Association launched its Image Enhancement Program on behalf of the entire direct selling industry. On April 17, the May issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, hits the newsstands and includes a DSA-produced 20-page advertising insert showcasing 16 member-company display advertisers and 49 directory advertisers. The insert introduces readers to direct selling from the perspectives of customer, representative and hostess and is certain to become a valuable tool for companies and distributors as they share their company's story and opportunity. Carefully crafted communication tools like these can help recruit distributors into a company, introduce them to the company's products and processes, open client doors and ease prospecting for new distributors. Tools today come in many forms and can have a huge impact on recruiting, training and increasing sales to the consumer.

Traditional tools such as meetings, conference calls, brochures, newsletters and audio or video programs are a staple for most direct sellers, and many direct selling companies find they are an affordable way to communicate, educate, train and help distributors run successful businesses. Newer tools include newsstand magazines that help individual companies tell their stories-from history, to management, to products, to successful distributors-and enhance the credibility of both the featured company and the industry as a whole. And technology plays a role also, with the Internet helping companies and distributors communicate much more effectively.

Encouraging Consistency

One of the most important benefits of providing distributors with communication tools is that they standardize the messages the salesforce gives to consumers. From communicating product benefits to company culture, history and business-building opportunities, tools help companies ensure their consultants are sharing consistent information.

As Jeff Olson, Senior Marketing Associate at Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc. points out, when communication tools are affordable and easy to use, they can help distributors feel comfortable with prospecting and recruiting. "Well-produced communication tools help ensure that distributors tell their company's story the same way every time," Olson says. "Even the newest distributor can function as effectively as those who are more experienced, and success can be achieved much sooner. When a distributor leaves one with a prospect, the tool can still tell the company's story, making it easier for the distributor to follow up to answer questions and close the sale. Using tools this way saves the distributor a lot of valuable time."

Mary Kay Inc. aims to produce tools that are consistent and focus on a single way of doing things. "That's the thing that company-produced tools do the best," says Rhonda Shasteen, Senior Vice President, Corporate Brand Strategy and Sales Support at Mary Kay. "Most direct selling companies benefit from the ideas and the tools that are created by various members of their salesforce. When that happens you get a tremendous amount of diversity, which in many ways is a good thing, but sometimes it can lead to confusion because there are so many ideas out there."

Measuring Success

A tools culture can allow companies to measure activities critical to their businesses more accurately. Most companies track the correlation between tool usage and prospecting, recruiting and training results. USANA, which develops, manufactures and sells a range of nutritional and personal care products, finds great success with printed sales tools and has a 10-year history of using a variety of tools. Over the past 18 months USANA has dramatically expanded its communications offerings, moving to what it calls a "tools culture," connecting communication tools to every new product, event or field communications program.

Kevin Guest, USANA's Executive Vice President of Marketing, explains, "Last year our international convention centered around communications tools. Following that, we had the biggest quarter in the history of the company. It's too early for it to be a direct result, but it's a contributing result.

"People spend a lot of time in their cars," Guest says. "So we produce audios that a prospect can listen to while commuting or that a distributor can use for training. We have a monthly audio tool that is focused on re-motivating the field with new information, messages and success stories mixed with training and product information."

Guest measures the effect of everything he can.

"We have seen great growth in the amount of sales-tools activity in the field," he says. "It's not a quick process to develop a tools culture, and we're right in the middle of it. As we're changing, we have been surveying and keeping close track of associates who are using the tools. Among those who are using tools, enrollments are up year over year."

Top Training

Arbonne, which offers skin care and nutritional products, provides its distributors with a choice of printed or online communication tools that distributors use to talk about products and the Arbonne Opportunity. It also offers frequent face-to-face training from corporate staff and field leaders. But its pride and joy is its top-of-the-line online training.

"We have two different sets of training tools," says Karen Goodman, Arbonne's Director of Business Development. "One is our Learn & BurnT audio training library, and the second is Arbonne University-our collection of online training on personal growth and development, leadership, basic consultant training and products. Each category is broken into modules that take 20 minutes to complete. A quiz at the end validates learning. When a consultant passes the module, they get a certificate of completion. When they complete every module, they can graduate Arbonne University."

Both Learn & Burn and Arbonne University are self-paced, allowing consultants to enhance their skills, knowledge and focus on the subjects they need to be successful. Both programs are available to consultants in a variety of formats so they may choose the media they are most comfortable with. Consultants can listen to Learn&Burn audios online, burn CDs or purchase an MP3 player loaded with a comprehensive library of training material. Goodman says the knowledge their consultants gain gives them the confidence to sell and prospect.

"Given everyone's druthers, people would interact with live people. But bottom line, that's not always possible," she says. "The response has been fantastic, and feedback has been phenomenal."

Integrating Technology

Financial services direct seller Primerica is committed to making its business as easy for representatives and their clients as possible, and it has developed a complete suite of tools that prepare its representatives to sell and recruit. "Though we're on the leading edge of technology, communication is still a very print-heavy activity," President Glenn Williams says. "We use a lot of printed credibility pieces to promote our business opportunity. We can tell those same stories through DVDs and audio presentations-each is effective at different times and with different people. We do much printing and creative in-house, and we also have our own TV studio and satellite network. We create our own DVDs, audio presentations and CDs."

As the world's largest direct sales organization, grossing $8 billion in annual revenue, Avon Products Inc. works with 5 million independent representatives around the globe. Barbara Burlingame, Director, U.S. Sales Training & Development at Avon, says the United States appoints tens of thousands of representatives annually, and they come to the company with differing levels of selling experience or nonselling experience, skills and expectations. The company's online training tools make it possible to provide accurate and consistent information to all representatives at their convenience with a click of a mouse.

"Avon's online training program features 20 interactive, engaging courses with audio in both English and Spanish offered free 24/7, as well as 42 online resource tools or job aids," Burlingame says. "When representatives successfully complete a course by passing an online assessment, they are able to print a certification of completion. We have monthly and quarterly drawings for completing specific courses that change quarterly."

This year, Avon launched an online program specific to product knowledge and customer development. The company took an existing live, classroom-training program called Beauty Advisor and offers the opportunity for a representative to become a Beauty Advisor by completing seven online courses.

Burlingame says the response to Avon's online training courses-which are free-has been tremendous. "We launched the program in May 2005 with nine courses," she says. "By the end of that year we had over 150,000 users who had taken courses or downloaded tools and resources that we have on the site and had taken over 260,000 courses. As of the end of February 2007, with 20 courses we have had over 385,000 users take courses or download resources and tools, with over 1.025 million courses taken."

Avon's analysis of its online training has shown that representatives who take the courses are more productive and stay longer: "Representatives feel more confident about selling and approaching customers," Burlingame says. Avon's leaders are enthusiastic about how the tool supports their efforts to reach all of their representatives with training and a consistent message. "Lisa Wilber, a Senior Executive Unit Leader in our Leadership program with more than 2,000 representatives in her downline, told me that the online training makes her life easier because she can send new representatives to the site first to take courses, and then she coaches them afterward, answering any questions they still have," Burlingame says.

Tools Plus Teaching

Company executives agree that just offering well-produced tools to distributors is not enough to ensure success. Companies that have developed a system to teach their field how to integrate tools in every aspect of their business achieve the most significant results. "Teaching our salesforce how to use tools has been every bit as important as making them affordable and easy to implement," Jeff Olson says. "Creating a tools culture at our company has helped level the playing field-from the newest recruit to the most seasoned veteran, our distributors now have what they need to succeed in their business."

BK Boreyko, Founder and CEO of Vemma, which markets a liquid supplement, says developing a tools culture dramatically increases prospecting success by giving the distributors the confidence to become a messenger, rather than the message. "In this business, you get paid for results, not effort. Why spend 30 minutes with a prospect to see if they're interested, when you can spend 30 seconds and hand them a tool that tells the story? That's the tremendous power behind tools-they help distributors sort through prospects and allows them to invest time with those who have an interest."

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