Corporate social responsibility and advocacy are table stakes in today’s marketplace. Yet, companies of all kinds fall short on strategy in these areas. Direct selling companies possess the most potent of assets—independent sales forces and employee bases numbering in the tens of thousands—but often lack the know-how or motivation to effectively activate them as grassroots ambassadors who can inform, educate and advocate for their products, manufacturing processes, operations, independent sales forces, causes and missions and—most importantly—the direct selling industry itself.
In its largest gathering of direct selling executives to date, Direct Selling University (DSU) offered two days of education and training sessions from the experts and thought leaders behind today’s most successful brands and marketplace movements.
How to find, develop, encourage and promote your budding viral superstars. If there is one constant refrain in today’s direct selling channel, it’s change.
The multi-day educational event offered new insight and strategies for connecting with a rapidly evolving market.
We need to be more proactive in dealing with our channel’s negative perception. On Aug. 25, SHOWTIME aired the first episode On Becoming a God in Central Florida, starring Kirsten Dunst. The series is set in a small town near Orlando in 1992, and Dunst plays Krystal Stubbs, a minimum-wage water park employee, who lies, […]
Our channel needs to update its recruiting message and practices and concentrate on the real motivations and needs to attract future prospects. Amazon, gig economy competitors and other market forces have taken some wind out of direct selling’s sales. After years of significant growth, our industry’s U.S. revenue was down 1.6 percent in 2016 and […]
Whether or not there’s such a thing as bad publicity has been a matter of various opinions for decades. There’s less disagreement, however, about whether a company facing negative press should respond to the media’s challenges. Media relations professionals to whom Direct Selling News posed the question “When do you meet criticism head on, and […]
For nearly as long as direct selling has been in existence, our business model has been the subject of skepticism, and often by virtue of the fact that it’s one with which many aren’t familiar. That uniqueness—that flexibility to operate one’s own business with an unparalleled degree of support from an established brand—is what inspires […]
How many of us DVR our favorite television shows because we don’t want to be bothered with ads? Or click the “x” on those pop-up screens telling us about limited-time offers? What about the ads displayed on billboards, on the sides of buses, in the subway, the grocery store and sporting events? When advertising pervades […]