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Reinvent Onboarding With Personalization

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Getting started in direct selling is exciting. The new enrollee is on the receiving end of intense focus by sponsors and the company, but that quickly passes for practical and understandable business reasons. Then, the new distributor too often is left on their own with no roadmap for success. Personalized mobile apps can step in to extend the one-on-one onboarding experience.

During the initial days in a network, a sponsor may talk with the enrollee daily. Learning must deliver the enrollee a sense of purpose to ground new distributors in company mission, policy, and how they will be measured for success. In those first days, there are many policies to remember and sales actions to start growing the funnel of prospects. But within days, sponsors are on to their next recruit and often leave an enrollee to fend for themselves, long before the Society of Human Resources Management’s recommended minimum of 90 days of onboarding.

With an app in hand, enrollees can dig into a library of company learning, be prompted to start sales activities, and receive feedback and recognition based on their success. These activities can be monitored and reported to sponsors or management, allowing them to reach out with encouragement and individualized next-step guidance with a single tap.

Reinvent your onboarding experience by taking the time to associate content and sales process steps to measurable events in a smart sales platform.

A smart sales content platform can shepherd new distributors and provide reinforcement of learning and company best practice with automated recognition messaging. Sponsors can also receive updates about their enrollee’s activities and reach out when it will make the biggest difference, saving them time while accelerating time-to-first sale by their newest team members.

Assembling An Onboarding Library

When breaking down existing training content for ingestion into a sales automation platform, a crucial step in a company’s adoption of smart tools, content should be linked to identified next actions the new distributor can take to become successful using brand content and processes. Early users of the Gig Economy Group-based LifeVantage App describe the resulting experience as “like having a personal secretary reminding you to follow-up,” according to Jacqueline, a reviewer on the Apple App Store.

Begin by separating basic company knowledge, product introductions and product knowledge sequences, as well as initial sales actions and related sales skills videos. Address each group of content assets separately, always thinking about where in their onboarding the enrollee will engage with each type of content.

“Great job” is the most potent phrase for extending onboarding, and your company can send that message whenever a recent enrollee takes an important step. Action cards, such as the content sharing recommendation to the left, can be triggered based on distributor actions, prospect behavior, or company policy, giving guidance and encouragement.

Action cards provide suggested content and messaging to distributors, which they are free to accept, reject, or modify. GEG’s platform tracks and learns what works best.

Gig Economy Group’s action card interface, for example, can be configured to respond to activity with recognition messages (“Attaboy!”), related information, or the what’s next activity necessary to progress. Recognition, in particular, should be tied to:

  • Viewing all of a video or an entire sequence of videos;
  • Adding a contact;
  • Sharing content or sending a message to a prospect;
  • Following up with a prospect after a sales step, such as sharing media or a shopping cart, and, of course;
  • Converting a sale or getting a prospect to increase their product interest.

The same triggers can be set to send the enrollee’s sponsor or a sales team member a message alerting them to how the onboarding is going.

As your automated onboarding evolves, take the time to return to the management interface to add new tracked events, such as a distributor’s lack of activity, difficulty moving a prospect along the funnel (signaled by repeated sharing without any change in prospect interest level), or positive results to spur the sponsor to communicate.

Reinforcing action, which more than 80 percent of new distributors fail to take, can dramatically improve early sales success. It’s also important to allow new distributors to decide for themselves.

“I love that you can delete suggestions [in action cards] since they aren’t always the right choice for a particular person,” wrote one Apple App Store reviewer, JudiPP, of the LifeVantage app.

When onboarding, and throughout the distributor’s relationship with a company, people want to know what to do next, not take arbitrary orders. Allowing people to experiment with their selling style is essential to their sense of efficacy, and the variations they introduce into the process is fodder for the smart platform to learn.

Sales and marketing leaders can use existing content and new data-targetted content production to create a genuinely inviting onboarding experience that creates a conversation between enrollees and their sponsors long after traditional welcome activities end. Well placed triggers in the onboarding and daily sales process can alert management and sponsors to distributors in need of help, or just a push toward activity.

 

How Salespeople Can Start Selling On Day One

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Helping a new distributor during the “golden two weeks,” when those enrollees who close their first sales or distributor enrollments are most likely to become a high-earning, long-term member of a direct selling network, is the best onboarding investment. Bar none. It moves the potential sales rep toward confidently repeating the company’s sales process. Getting new enrollees to “work the system” from Day One with an organization creates the bond that drives network growth and improved revenue.

Distributors who start sales activities and close sales within 10 business days of enrollment will earn 71 percent more than a peer who takes just two weeks longer to make their first commission, an analysis of nine years of sales data by LifeVantage found. Direct selling trainer ServiceQuest reports that a 10 percent increase in distributor retention will produce 49 percent more revenue over 10 years compared to unengaged distributors.

The Gig Economy Group (GEG) platform and app eliminate all tool-centric training, providing easily understood functions to do one action at a time.

Machine learning tools can coach a newbie from their first moments with a direct selling company, but the most important action automation can facilitate is the adding of new prospects, initial messaging to those prospects, an established pattern for follow-ups and content sharing to build the prospect’s confidence in the salesperson, the company, and the trust relationship that will result in ongoing sales and auto-ship registrations.

McKinsey concluded that sales and marketing uses of Artificial Intelligence — the catch-all description that includes machine learning — will produce $1.4 Trillion to $2.6 Trillion in improved sales and marketing performance, with more than two-thirds of the value coming from enhancement of existing analytics. Your sales process, if mapped as part of machine learning adoption, is the raw material needed to increase revenue and retention.

The problem, or rather the reality is that 80 percent of new distributors never take any action. They either fail to take any action or get bogged down in trying to understand the company and the products or services they’ve signed up to sell. Without sales actions, there is no data to use when optimizing sales procedures.

First and foremost, direct selling companies must get new enrollees to start adding and working prospect relationships.

What’s Next is Step One

Focus new distributors on two necessary goals on their first day: 1.) Understanding their new company’s values, and; 2.) Adding and reaching out to their first prospects.

We’ve discussed how to map your onboarding process here. Let’s concentrate on the problem of getting people to act. Throughout any guided experience, whether it is delivering sales coaching or interpreting marketing data to suggest better selling steps, the “What’s Next” approach to app user experience is the most effective means of getting people to move through a sequence of activities to achieve a goal. During the first two weeks with a company, new distributors remain unsure about the company and its mission or processes.

A LifeVantage App action card suggests a video to share with a new prospect based on their interest, and over the next two days will remind the distributor to follow-up, along with the appropriate content so share next.

Onboarding content that provides a clear, concise narrative about the values and mission of the company sets the stage for action. Then, the barrier becomes the complexity of the tools themselves.

Too often, apps require users to learn many tool skills and go about it by walking through many steps before allowing people to start using the tool for its primary purpose, such as adding and communicating with a new prospect. As apps grow more sophisticated, these learning processes become more complex, raising barriers to success for the distributor who needs to do simple steps in the simplest way possible. Consider the vast breadth of capabilities of Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop, which most users never need and will not explore without a specific context, getting their job done.

Artificial Intelligence apps have to stay focused on the human actions they support, hiding all complexity that will prevent an aspiring distributor from taking the actions necessary to close their first sale. The Gig Economy Group (GEG) platform and app eliminate all tool-centric training, providing easily understood functions to do one action at a time. For example, on their first day, a distributor is asked to enter one or more new contacts. There are no elaborate instructions, just an “action card” that suggests what to do and, with a tap of a button, the tool to do it in the simplest form possible.

But data entry is not the salesperson’s main interest or a reason to be enthusiastic about their first day on the job. The GEG platform ingests the new contact data, reviews the information, and immediately suggests recommended messaging and content to share in order to start the prospect conversation. After the distributor sends their first outreach message to a prospect, the platform monitors whether the content has been viewed, as well as any responses sent by the prospect, so that it can coach the new enrollee toward the sale.

For example, in the GEG-based LifeVantage App, the action card (see image to the right) is generated in response to a new contact entered in the app. Assessing the prospect interests entered (or not entered) by the distributor, the platform suggests a specific video program to share with the contact to begin the conversation. If the distributor accepts the recommended action, the app delivers suggested text to use when sharing the video in the next screen, which is part of the messaging toolset. But the distributor’s experience remains focused on their next step in the relationship rather than navigating between different tools.

In this case, AI smooths the technological overhead of a complex set of application capabilities, leaving sellers to emphasize their strengths, which are developing relationships, choosing the right words, and delivering the information a customer needs at exactly the right time. At the end of Day One, the distributor has seen three short onboarding videos and has at least one, if not the recommended five, prospects in motion. Those actions translate into commissions, which keep distributors engaged and eager to grow their business.

Selling is hard work. Make it easier for new enrollees to concentrate on their strengths instead of the tools they must use to grow their personal funnel and move prospects toward the close. What’s next should always be related to the state of the distributor-prospect relationship, not the distributor’s competence with a set of digital tools.

Mapping The Sales Journey: Machine Optimizing Customer Experience

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In the previous posting, we explained how to break down a content in an existing digital asset library into major categories, Onboarding, Prospect Development, Product Knowledge Development, and Sales Skills Improvement programming. Each of these phases of the distributor and customer journey must be inventoried and the expected outcomes to be produced by each asset identified.

As a team begins to use machine learning, the next step is to focus on the customer journey in its Prospect Development content, because it has the greatest influence on conversion rates and revenue. These assets provide a machine learner with measurable steps in a customer journey and the team’s job is selecting what to measure at each customer touchpoint.

Focus on the process of moving a prospect from initial awareness into a distributor relationship or to the close of a product sale. Set aside the social content used to attract awareness along with the content used to train and inform distributors right now. The video, articles, product sheets, and other materials shared between a distributor and a prospect are the only concern at this step. Don’t be afraid to throw out content that doesn’t fit and to plan the production of new content that may work better.

Consider each content asset as though it is a candidate when hiring a sales support person to work with distributors to successfully complete the Prospect Development sequence. Is it up to the job? Can it be described completely so that its “boss,” the machine learner can understand what it is expected to do?

“Just as you wouldn’t hire a human employee without an understanding of how he or she would fit into your organization, you need to think clearly about how an artificial intelligence application will drive actual business results,” wrote Greg Satell, author of Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, in the Harvard Business Review this month. The metrics identified at this step in the machine learning onboarding process are the equivalent of a job description for the machine learning platform.

A machine learner will analyze the performance of content assets, the sequence in which they are presented, and the messaging that drives views of the content, comparing the results to the expectations and metrics identified during this exercise by sales and marketing leadership. When the system identifies departures from those expectations, the system will seek alternative routes to improved conversion by testing different combinations of content and sales messaging. It sends suggested next steps to the distributor, which they can use or modify (creating more variations the machine learner can analyze), measuring all the results against the goal of speeding prospects to the close.

What does the machine learner need to know about each asset? 

What is the asset about? What is the subject, as well as the keywords, themes, and who or what appears on-screen? Metadata is often missing and may be added in the content management platform. If an asset does not have extensive metadata describing its content, that must be created so that the machine learner is able to test different combinations of assets. For example, if the machine learner knows that a video features a female presenter, it could test that asset with female viewers to see if it converts better. There are myriad combinations of demographic and psychographic factors that can be tested, but only if the asset is thoroughly described in a way the platform can understand and use.

Where is the asset positioned in the current selling sequence? A machine learner may also test different sequences of content to understand if existing content can produce better conversion rates.

Is it the traditional first video shared with a prospect to create interest? Does it depend on any other assets for context, such as a previous video in the sequence? This information is important to preventing the machine learner from rearranging content in a way that doesn’t make sense to the recipient. For example, if your company uses jargon frequently, such as referring to a product using an acronym (e.g., “Comprehensive Weight Magagement is spoken about as “CWM”) it should be explained before it is used in other contexts. Telling the machine learner that one asset must precede another prevents customer confusion because information is presented in the wrong order.

What is the expected outcome of the customer’s engagement with an asset? Is a video or a sales action, like making a call or presenting products at a meeting, expected to increase customer interest? Is there a specific call to action associated with an asset, such as a link to send a message to the distributor who shared it? Is the expected next step after a distributor makes a presentation a purchase, a call being scheduled, or a specific follow-up asset should be shared and viewed? Documenting these expectations provides the machine learner with extensive options to test in different sequences. As long as each expectation is documented, your organization has the basis for a measurement of the response.

What is the expected pace of a complete sales motion? If there is a six-step sequence associated with selling a health product today, for example, are the assets performing satisfactorily as a unit? Is the distributor taking too long to present the steps? Are prospects responding in the expected timeframe? These pace-related signals catalyze machine-generated coaching for the distributor, reminding them to follow-up in the optimal timeframe to make a sale.

In the Gig Economy Group platform, clients can configure specific follow-up questions for the distributor to ask the prospect so that qualitative and quantitative feedback can be captured by humans. Determining whether the prospect more or less interested after seeing an asset or participating in a meeting often requires the sales rep to interpret statements and signals. This ability to interpret the impact of an asset is the distinct advantage in-person sales provide to marketers. Leverage it by developing follow-up questions that can be turned into metrics.

Attribution can be controversial. It is a mistake to lump social and other content together with your sales assets because social content often has different goals. However, as a direct selling company captures more information about its distributors and market, the opportunity to use assets in a different context, for example by adding a personal success story normally shared in social channels to a sales sequence, will emerge. The outcome is a more productive asset library with more applications, which can increase the ROI on every content investment.

With this sales process inventory in place, distributors can be equipped with an evolving selling process that can deliver ongoing improvement in revenue with greater distributor confidence and retention.

Onboarding to Machine Learning: Mapping Sales Processes

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Improving a sales process with machine learning starts with a straightforward assessment of the existing content, including video, audio, text, graphics, and training, a company uses to onboard a new distributor to its policies and practices. These first steps, which set the stage for confident selling by new distributors, are essential to improving sales success during the first two weeks with a new direct selling company. People who close their first sales within 14 days earn an average of 71 percent more than a distributor who takes just four weeks to complete a sale.

Sales and marketing leadership tackling machine learning for the first time need to break their existing onboarding practices and initial selling activities into steps, then organize those steps into collections that are expected to produce a specific result that can be measured. We recommend assembling a map of the onboarding, training, and sales support experience for new distributors, as their immediate success will produce immediate improvement in revenue and profitability results. Tier your product content in terms of 1.) Company overview and welcome programs and content; 2.) Selling materials and programming for distributor use; 3.) Deep product information, such as sales sheets or detailed product knowledge videos.

Break down the first month of distributor experience into:

  • Onboarding: Introduction to the company, its mission, and selling process at the overview level — what you most want your new enrollees to know on Day One and to have internalized by the end of Week One.
  • Prospect Development: This is the first, most important step for a successful sales enablement tool. Rather than explain how to use the contact management tools, get the distributor to work immediately on adding prospects and following up.
  • Product Knowledge Development: Ongoing and frequently updated, product knowledge and product-specific training.
  • Sales Skills Improvement: If there is sales training content that is not product-specific, such as coaching on how to follow up or present at a meeting, these programs will be useful throughout the entire distributor lifetime, not just as they become familiar with the company.

We suggest beginning with a list of all existing content. Write the title of each asset on a sticky note and, on a second note, the goal for the asset, such as “Create a sense of welcoming support” or “Establish product- and lifestyle-claims policy.” Place the two sticky notes, asset and goal for the asset side by side. Examine all the content related to onboarding to see if there are multiple assets seeking to achieve the same outcome.

As common goals are identified, cluster the content assets by the expected outcome. It is likely there will be several assets that drive to the same distributor goal, and these variations are natural places for a machine learning content system to start testing to see which content assets are most effective.

Introductory content, such as a generic welcome message and overviews of the company, should be separated from practical how-to content related to using tools and services offered by the company to refine distributor sales skills. The latter training content will distract distributors from mission-centric learning. For example, most direct selling systems begin with a series of introductory videos about the company, its products, and how the distributor can start to work its selling process. These videos set the stage for future training, but they have a narrow set of goals: To build confidence in the distributor that they’ve made the right choice of product or service to sell, that the company is reliable and supportive of their success. This is essential for winning younger distributors’ loyalty.

With mission- and policy-centric content organized into the first category, the next step is to organize each of your sales task workflows for use by the machine learning platform.

Each days’ distributor training activities during the first two weeks must have a goal, such as confirmation that the new distributor understands the basic value proposition and mission of the company or that they enter and start communicating with prospects. And each day’s activities should contribute to the next day’s goals — if on Day One, the distributor enters five contacts, Day Two should include follow-up activities and content that help convert those leads to a call, presentation, or online meeting.

Look for multi-day processes, such as prospect development and determine whether multiple assets address the same steps and issues. These are convenient reference points when thinking about how to shorten and improve onboarding programming, which can produce immediate improvements in distributor success. Sales process steps in a “What’s Next” machine learning tool allow the distributor to focus on doing sales work instead of learning how to use tools.

Once the Welcome and Onboarding workflows are complete and redundant content identified for testing, the organization of product knowledge and sales skills coaching content if there is any in the current asset library. These are content categories that can be populated over time, as well as licensed from training providers for integration with sales coaching machine learners, which can target sales training based on the distributor’s sales challenges. For instance, if they consistently add contacts, get meetings, but don’t close, the tool can direct the distributor to training videos about closing, getting commitments, and handling objections.

With a smart platform in place, a variety of training programs can be added to address your network’s training needs and to address individual distributor challenges. In the next installment, we’ll explore attribution modeling for machine optimization of each step in the sales process.

Distributor Retention: Accelerating Time-to-First Sale

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Direct selling is challenging work, but the distributors who achieve early success do build long-term businesses, often as a sideline to a day job. The emerging gig economy presents direct selling companies a rare opportunity to claim more revenue across markets traditionally dominated by retail. As workers become more mobile, many are opting to mix gigs instead of dedicating themselves to one job from 9 to 5. In this mobile and values-centric environment, in-home sales and personal networks can connect virtually any product or service to a market.

The first step for a direct selling company is to win and keep a distributor. A new enrollee’s initial success can create a large network of personal relationships that convert into sales revenue. When their first sale converts within 14 days of enrollment, during the “Golden Two Weeks,” a new distributor is likely to stay with the network for an average of 72 months. That six-year commitment substantially improves the direct selling company’s revenue. Direct selling training company ServiceQuest estimates a 10 percent increase in retention grows revenue by 49 percent over 10 years.

Younger workers also tend to start seeking alternative employment if they don’t make an immediate connection with the company’s mission while finding sales success. Mobile apps connected to intelligent content and training platforms will be the primary point of customer engagement in retail and direct selling within five years. As much as 50 percent of customer relationship management already takes place in the cloud and market researcher IDC predicts spending on artificial intelligence to deliver personalized customer experience will grow by 46.2 percent CAGR between 2016 and 2021.

The next step in the evolution of one-to-one selling is personalization, the delivery of targeted training to distributors and, in turn, helping them to present exactly the information each customer will respond to with a purchase.

A personalized experience that begins when a distributor enrolls in a direct selling network unlocks early sales success. Using a What’s Next approach to a brand’s sales process, sponsoring distributors working with smart mobile apps can address the recruit daily, even hourly, to keep them taking the steps toward a first sale.

First Impressions: Action and Purpose Ignite a Business

It’s also time to for direct selling to put the attrition issue behind it and point out that success in every business is hard to achieve and grow. Reinforcing the business challenge a new distributor is starting in combination with simple actions a new distributor can take is essential to moving the tentative recruit to confident selling. It’s not necessary to apologize for high attrition rates, the industry can focus instead on making more distributors successful.

Keeping a recruit today is difficult in every industry. Annual churn rates in retail are 53 percent compared to 56 percent in direct sales. Only traditional employment models have an advantage in hiring and even they face higher attrition rates when the economy nears full employment – 26 percent of the U.S. labor force quit their jobs in 2017, up from 20.3 percent in 2010. Moreover, 90 percent of entrepreneurs fail within five years. Success is hard-earned and, regardless of the form the company takes, an entrepreneurial success will never be easy.

At LifeVantage, Gig Economy Group’s first partner app takes the new distributor through a brief series of mission- and policy-establishing video programs then turns to get them to enter their first contacts as part of Day One activities. Then, a What’s Next process kicks in to get the distributor selling instead of finishing their contact entries and resting.

The LifeVantage app suggests actions the distributor can take with each new contact based on selections made in the app about customer interests, from buying health products to joining the network as a distributor. Drawing on a growing library of video programming, the LifeVantage app composes an introductory message to a new contact and attaches the appropriate video to share. Critically, this is not done in the background, rather the distributor can review and change the message and media selected or discard the suggestion.

The distributor’s choices help shape their understanding of LifeVantage’s process, and if they make changes or refuse the suggested content, the Gig Economy Group platform records the results. The platform can mine changes to identify improvements in messaging, so even a brand-new distributor will start to reshape the company’s sales process with improvements if their changes convert more sales. Final decisions about content and messaging rest with sales and marketing management, who are able to deploy budget based on real-world results that change conversion rates.

Contacts become the raw material for a conversation between the new recruit and the company, with activity and conversion data available for both to review. No contact is left untended. The app reminds the new distributor to make an initial outreach and to follow up at each step in the sales process. Customer feedback collected by the distributor also shapes the ongoing content and messaging selections targeted to each prospect, driving personalization from the first interaction.

The first day with a sales tool must result in first actions taken for three to five contacts at a minimum to convert a sale within two weeks.

Activity Breeds Sales

With a measured sales process, improvements can be rolled in daily to test and revise messaging, sales cadence, and training. The distributor’s experience is one of an intense focus on their process, reinforcing their psychological need to see investment in their potential.

In today’s sales environment, pre-sales activity is vital to closing a new customer. Content management platforms can push the right content, but without feedback gathered from customers by the distributor, it is easy to push a prospect out of their comfort zone. When a customer’s interest level goes down, the distributor is encouraged by the platform to revert to informational engagement, building the prospect’s trust using video and suggested messaging that identifies objections that can be addressed.

Failure to develop and keep a personal connection is one of the seven reasons salespeople don’t close deals. Using the wrong closing strategy, failing to listen, and the representative’s own insecurity also contribute to poor conversion rates. A smart platform that encourages feedback can adjust the suggested closing strategy, prompt the rep to listen and record feedback, as well as build product knowledge and confidence.

Yet it still comes down to making the calls that close the gap between prospect and sale. If the direct selling company does not help the new distributor follow up, providing the right messages and variations that address customer feedback, the rep will not close the deal and, if history is any guide, start looking for their next opportunity – one where they close in the first few weeks.

The proof, however, is in conversion. That requires extensive follow-ups, which many salespeople never have the determination to complete. An app can coach distributors through these steps until they become second nature.

With so many economic activities moving to the “edge of the network,” where people meet and interact with one another in person and through social and other digital channels throughout the day, direct sellers have an enormous opportunity to increase their share of the market. The tools are ready and people are living mobile lives that invite frequent trusted interactions. Is your company ready to move a new enrollee to their first sale in the “Golden Two Weeks?”

See You In San Diego

Gig Economy Group and LifeVantage will be presenting at the upcoming Direct Selling Association 2018 Annual Meeting in San Diego, June 17 through 19. We look forward to meeting you at the event, where our team will be exploring critical questions about the future of direct selling. Schedule a demo or reach out to meet and talk at our suite during the event.

We would also appreciate your joining our blog team for a discussion at the event about the challenges facing the industry. We will be writing about direct-selling in the weeks before DSA 2018 and would like to include your thoughts in our reports. Send email to schedule an interview.

Onboarding: Turning Training Into First Sales

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Direct-selling organizations have some advantages over traditional sales organizations during employee onboarding. Instead of being locked into a Human Resources-defined schedule, direct-sellers start people off in the field with experienced sponsors who collaborate daily. They can start to deliver training in many geographic locations every day.

Each direct-selling advantage also comes at a cost, especially as software and content delivery become central to onboarding. The lack of an established training program reduces consistency, which results in less effective communication of the brand and sales messaging, leading to poor conversion rates at a critical phase in the new employee’s experience.

If a sponsor fails to perform their training role, making the new distributor familiar with and committed to the company’s mission, the recruit is likely to leave within weeks of enrollment. A novice direct-selling representative, like 73 percent of employees who are brought onboard through a Human-Resources directed program, wants to start with an orientation to the company’s mission and policies. Early comprehensive orientation is essential to a new recruit’s sense of confidence.

Direct-selling organizations that have continued to rely on manual training tools and sales reporting leave management detached from individual training outcomes, unable to respond to gaps in the onboarding process with new content and process refinements. The result is an industry-wide distributor retention rate that trails the economy as a whole. Meanwhile, retail and brand marketing companies are rapidly adopting digital training tools, raising the stakes for direct-selling brands that want to remain competitive in the age of personalization.

According to Training Magazine, 22 percent of companies increased onboarding spending in 2017 while 17 percent added to ongoing product knowledge training expenditures. The same survey also found that sales onboarding using online tools was embraced by 91 percent of sales organizations last year, compared to 80 percent in 2016. Sales managers using platform technologies are tuning into each challenge faced by new reps and tracking how new hires perform overall to optimize their training programs.

Paper- and sponsor-based training don’t deliver the feedback required to continually improve onboarding outcomes. With emerging sales and personalization platforms direct-selling companies can transform sales training into sales activity, not hypothetical presentations and sales exercises, from the first day a distributor joins.

Onboarding First Action: Sell

Recruiting is expensive. Attrition steals valuable sponsor-distributor time that could be spent on revenue-generating selling. Quantum Workplace estimates that the cost of recruiting a new employee averaged $4,129 in 2017. For direct sales organizations, a lost recruit is a tax on the sponsor and the company. The fastest-growing sales networks focus new, often impatient, distributors on selling activities from Day One to reduce attrition.

The new distributor who makes a sale in the first two weeks is likely is likely to stay engaged with the company for six years, while almost all their recruitment cohort will depart the program within five years because of lack of success. Success breeds confidence in the program. Direct selling companies have 90 days to ensure their overall return on recruiting investments, they must engage with new distributors through mobile-first tools that maximize feedback and personalize training.

Sponsor-distributors also need tools to help engage, train, and retain new enrollees. Every moment spent on non-selling activity during that time is potentially wasted, so sponsors don’t have time to watch over each recruit’s shoulder to ensure they follow the training process. Platform-based software using machine-learning can step in to support sponsors during the onboarding process, offering the trainee supportive messages and video to address day-to-day process issues. Mobile tools connect sponsors to recruits based on data-driven insights about enrollees’ progress against goals, ensuring they receive human support when it is most needed. This augmented human training approach can extend systematic training for months, exceeding the Society of Human Resource Management’s recommended three-month minimum.

Blending real sales activity with content and sponsor messaging that reinforces company values and policies is an antidote to the high attrition rates in direct selling. The experience of selling a product can turn a doubtful recruit into a long-term contributor. Because most sales reps fail to follow-up with prospects more than once, rather than the five to six times engagements required to close a sale, early training must reinforce the importance of daily sales activity. Those actions and the conversions produced will sell the enrollee on the importance of following the company sales process.

The keystone of early sales success is consistent personalized training delivered in real-world sales tools.

Sandy, Utah-based LifeVantage provides new distributors free iPhone or Android apps that begin onboarding at enrollment, including real sales actions they can take on Day One. Serving a customized stream of video training combined with tasks such as entering contacts and sending outreach messages, the LifeVantage App encourages new distributors to take steps that help speed initial sales. The LifeVantage app alerts distributors immediately when a prospect responds to a message or media shared, an important factor in converting sales. The Harvard Business Review reports that sales follow-ups within an hour of an expression of interest are seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation that moves the prospect toward a closing.

Constant Improvement

Today’s economy exacts a harsh toll on companies that fail to adapt. Younger workers are more inclined than previous generations to move on from organizations that cannot demonstrate a commitment to their success. Because it takes as long as eight months for employees to achieve their full productivity, “technology can save onboarding from itself” by extending training at scale, as Robert Ferrazzi, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2015.

No company can afford to have an informal and unmeasured onboarding program. The rise of new technology platforms lets managers, marketers, and data scientists look into their onboarding process to understand where it works and where it falls down.

The combination of onboarding and real sales activity creates previously unimaginable incentives for the new recruit to concentrate on their training. Tools like the LifeVantage App provide actionable feedback about the new distributor’s progress. Smart salespeople know what to do with actionable information, they will use it to sell.

See You In San Diego

Gig Economy Group and LifeVantage will be presenting at the upcoming Direct Selling Association 2018 Annual Meeting in San Diego, June 17 through 19. We look forward to meeting you at the event, where our team will be exploring critical questions about the future of direct selling. Schedule a demo or reach out to meet and talk at our suite during the event.

We would also appreciate your joining our blog team for a discussion at the event about the challenges facing the industry. We will be writing about direct-selling in the weeks before DSA 2018 and would like to include your thoughts in our reports. Send email to schedule an interview.