It’s time to embrace our alter ego—ecommerce.
At my church, the pastor loves to talk about identity. He preaches how fundamentally important your identity is in understanding pretty much everything else you do. More importantly, it has a profound influence over what you expect from yourself, as well as what others expect from you.
To make his point, he often walks us through this little exercise of call and response.
Cows…moo.
Dogs…bark.
Birds…chirp.
Pigs…oink.
He goes on and on, and we all have a good laugh like first graders as we answer his prompts. Then, he always gets to the main point. What you do doesn’t determine who you are. Who you are determines what you do.
Put another way, our actions don’t determine our identity—our identity determines our actions.
It’s a profoundly simple truth that can often be found at the heart of so many challenges we face as humans.
It’s true for direct selling companies, too.
I believe there’s an identity that we direct sellers aren’t embracing, and because of that, we’re struggling at times to find our way in the modern world. I’m not suggesting we abandon our identity as “direct sellers,” or “people builders” or even “an opportunity.” But rather there’s a major void in the tapestry that constitutes our complete identity. And by not embracing that part of our identity, we’re missing out on huge opportunities for our business right now.
We are Ecommerce Companies
From a purely mechanical standpoint, the vast majority of the orders you receive come via a transaction on your website. They have for years now. These can be from customers who directly order online. It could be a “party order” where a group of orders are submitted at once. It could be wholesale orders placed by your distributors who then may resell in some fashion. One way or another, for most companies, I would assume nearly 100 percent of your revenue technically comes through your website. For other companies who may leverage storefronts or trade booths of some kind, it may be as low as 80 percent, but even then your distributors are likely purchasing their “stock” online first, to then resell in person.
If the majority of your revenue is submitted via orders online, then you are an ecommerce company. It’s who you are.
But we direct sellers tend to not think that way. We are direct selling companies who use ecommerce. Direct selling is who we are, and ecommerce is something we use. Since direct selling is our identity, we let who we are determine what we do.
The KPIs we track; the decisions we make; the meetings we have; the resources we invest in; the people we hire and even the culture we nurture are all shaped and sparked first by our identity as direct sellers.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We’ve often seen where executives who join our industry who don’t necessarily embrace that identity can struggle. The gap between who they think we are and who we think we are can so often widen beyond repair. And that’s because there’s a discrepancy in our identity.
But when nearly 100 percent of our revenue is received via ecommerce in some form or fashion, we cannot simply consider ourselves to be users of ecommerce. We must recognize that we are ecommerce.
If you identified as an ecommerce company, how would that impact what you do? How would it shape the KPIs you track; the decisions you make; the meetings you have; the resources you invest in; and the people you hire? I would think there would be some major differences. Let’s look at a few obvious examples.
Analytics and KPIs
Most direct selling companies have a person who keeps an eye on website analytics, and they likely provide a report once a month, or twice a month. At ecommerce companies, everyone has access to the analytics and keeps an eye on them every single day.
Ecommerce companies are fanatical about conversion rates, abandoned carts, traffic sources and marketing automation. These aren’t data points that one person is privy to and interested in—the C-Suite and everyone else are obsessed with these numbers. They understand that, for example, a 0.3 percent increase in cart conversions can mean millions in added revenue.
But as long as you’re only a direct selling company who thinks of ecommerce as a tool, and not your identity, you’ll never act like this.
Traffic Sources and Lead Generation
What makes direct selling unique is the value we put on people, and the communities and cultures we create. Our distributors are more than just “salespeople.” We don’t ever want to change that.
But, our people, technically speaking, are also our primary traffic sources. They are our primary lead generators. In many cases, they are the only traffic source.
Ecommerce companies are constantly analyzing traffic sources, too. But they certainly don’t settle for just one. Affiliates and Influencers are traffic sources, but so are social media ads, search engine results, podcast placements and much more.
As more direct selling companies venture into the omnichannel space, we’re basically admitting that we’re open to treating our distributors as a traffic source, not the traffic source. And just like direct selling, every traffic source, every channel, requires a certain amount of knowledge and savvy to reap acceptable rewards. Typically, that’s knowledge and savvy that most direct sales companies don’t have. But ecommerce companies do.
Investments and Hiring
Budgets for tech and digital vary quite a bit across direct selling companies. Most companies that I work with tend to underbudget their tech needs. That’s not the case for everyone, but even many who “budget appropriately” end up over-spending due to a lack of understanding of their true tech stack needs and what’s available in the marketplace.
I’ve been a part of way too many strategic discussions where—when push comes to shove–you find out that a $50 million company is taking six months to roll out a major enhancement that a $25K investment could make available next month.
The logic (or lack of) behind this way of thinking drives me absolutely nuts!
Ecommerce companies invest in development and plugins and apps and integrations and platforms at a moment’s notice because they understand that tech stack enhancements are at the very core of who they are. They’re an ecommerce company.
Similarly, ecommerce companies value front-end and back-end development like nothing else because every idea, every promotion, every incentive, every campaign requires development. It is the lifeblood of growth for an ecommerce company.
What about at your company? Ever feel understaffed in the tech department? Ever get frustrated by how long certain projects take because the team is swamped on other projects that were approved three months ago? Most of the time, the problem isn’t the ability of the team; it’s the size of the team.
If everything needs to be “developed” (and it does), then your development resources are typically way more important than any other department in your company. It may require you to make some tough decisions and shift some budget and resources away from other areas. But you can’t afford to let something so obvious hold your company back. Ecommerce companies wouldn’t.
Sales Tools and Field Support
When I first started in this industry, the primary sales tool at the company I worked at was a magazine. Quickly, it shifted into a video. Followed by apps, social media tools and so much more since then.
The modern direct seller—or the affiliates and influencers we want to become direct sellers—are looking for fundamental elements of ecommerce as the tools of choice today. They’re looking for high-converting landing pages. They want segmented marketing automation. They want streamlined, shareable shopping carts. Affiliates are way more interested in conversion rates than commission rates.
The real wake-up call is this: today’s direct seller is more likely to get the tools they’re looking for from a “traditional” ecommerce company than they are a direct selling company.
That one hurts, huh?
So not only does the operation of our companies rely on identifying as ecommerce, but so does the very attraction of new direct sellers. We can’t continue launching affiliate programs and influencer campaigns and customer rewards and not also offer the core elements of ecommerce that make these programs succeed.
Embrace Your Ecommerce Identity
It’s amazing how well we’ve done as an industry despite lagging so far behind in ecommerce. But that luck is running out…very quickly.
I was born and raised in Kentucky, so I still identify as a Kentuckian. But I’ve also lived in Texas much longer than I lived in Kentucky, so I’m a Texan, too. They are two elements of my identity, and it dictates a lot of things I think, do, appreciate and more.
We are direct selling; no one’s trying to take that away from us. But we’re also ecommerce. Even if we don’t want to be. When almost every dollar you receive is received via a website, you are ecommerce.
So many of the challenges and frustrations we’re experiencing today are rooted in the fact that we aren’t embracing part of our core identity. It’s time for that to change. I truly believe direct selling’s greatest opportunity is in holding fast to our true differentiators while finally acting like the ecommerce companies that we are.
Dogs bark. Pigs oink. Cows moo.
And ecommerce companies…
Brett Duncan specializes in helping direct selling companies evolve into modern social selling models while still maintaining the culture and essence of who they are and what makes them different. He is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Strategic Choice Partners, a business development firm that helps direct selling companies take their next steps. From marketing services to compensation plan design to operations and distribution support, Strategic Choice Partners is a frequently sought-out partner within direct selling.
From the May 2024 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.
