This year brought great news for the MLM and Direct Selling Community in India as the government finally decided to accentuate the bifurcation between MLMs and Pyramids.
This eventually will lead to awareness and a better outlook on the industry.
But this is a moment to reflect upon how it came to this point. Yes, agreed, there is a multitude of external factors but today we will only be concentrating on the internal ones.
There are two chief factors internally why we are misunderstood as a community. One, the salesforce is unorganized – Quality Education is difficult to duplicate amidst the noise and people’s ignorance towards learning something new.
However, this can be solved over time, which makes number two more important:
There is not enough emphasis on building a moral compass!
So, what is a moral compass? It is the power to differentiate between what’s right and what’s wrong.
From a Direct Selling PoV, it’s very important we drive awareness and empower individuals with a moral compass framework and later even calibrate the business outcomes against their moral values.
As our community gets more visibility and comes under government regulation; it’s critical we start thinking and building the framework for a moral compass for our team. Above and beyond the company’s guidelines, ethics and policies!
A moral compass of a network marketeer ensures a rich understanding of sales, communication and people thereby helping him set a high performance – high trust culture.
So, imagine you are lost in the jungle? And you have no ways to figure out the directions where you are headed.
You would need a compass to figure a way out, right? The moral compass is as simple as that.
In an unorganized platform like Direct Selling, to be on an ethical and high-performance path – You need a moral compass!
Let’s look at the compass framework that my team practices.
I strongly recommend you create the moral compass of your team but if my framework can inspire your thought process, I will consider myself grateful.
Your Purpose is your North Star. In the deepest of the jungle, on the stormiest of nights, it will help you remember who you are and where you are headed.
What is your ‘why’ in life? And how badly do you want it?
That is the purpose we are talking about. Purpose provides Clarity.
We cannot be making any significant impact without that clarity.
Once we have clarity on purpose, we need to understand what is the basic thing we need to do.
Peel down the layers and see what is at the core that a network marketeer does.
Underneath whatever we do, we essentially drive awareness.
The work of a good marketeer is to drive more awareness to his/her product.
What is the USP of the product?
What are the problems this product solves?
Why Direct Selling over Traditional Products?
Our Enemy is Ignorance, so our product awareness should be cutting through all biases that the prospect has.
To a point, where it helps them even if they end up not taking the products!
So our fuel is Purpose and our destination is awareness. But what will be our vehicle?
As illustrated in our moral compass framework, Trust will be our ‘how’ in the equation.
This business, like every other good and long-lasting one, is based on trust.
The bad thing about trust is – It’s zero or even negative on Day one.
With good relationships and patience, we built Trust. Learn about that in-depth here.
Trust works both ways – externally with prospects as well as internally – with partners, the Company, and the Line of Sponsors.
The perception of our industry as described before is negative. So consultants rely heavily on Objection Handling Classes.
That’s good but the thing is those classes can’t teach you trust but trust can teach you to handle objections. Don’t believe me? Imagine this: Will you need objection handling classes if someone insults your mother or wife or brother or son in front of you? Of course not! Why? Because you trust and love them.
That’s all that there is – that’s all that ever was.
The last in the equation is Value and not many people understand that.
Direct Selling will be a business of sales unless you engrave the entrepreneurial mindset.
An entrepreneurial mind chases and creates value.
The consumer journey is way longer compared to traditional counterparts, hence we need to understand how to create value at all junctures of the journey.
That entails all four – (1) the ones you are not able to close (2) the ones you close as customers, (3) the ones who decide to be your business partner going forward, and (4) business partners who have difficulty getting success.
You can learn about value creation for customers here.
For business partners, value creation infers to helping them create and sustain monthly incomes for them.
Bridge the gaps and make it easier for them, from your experience. Make sure when you earn 100,000 you have individuals earning 50,000.
In this business, you don’t create value for yourself. You create value together.
That is the moral compass for all of you.
The idea is to have 4 strong pillars as your guiding directions.
Need help building the moral compass of your team? Join us today!
