Of the hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who join direct selling each year, a large percentage come into the industry with little or no sales experience or knowledge of how to run a business. While direct selling companies are widely known for the extensive business and personal development training they offer newcomers, third-party experts can deliver unparalleled teaching experiences to companies’ new or existing salesforces. DSEF Fellows bring a new level of expertise and a unique perspective to this important work.
One of the benefits of being a DSA member is the ability to connect with academics through the Direct Selling Education Foundation (DSEF), which currently works with nearly 250 university professors in such areas as business, management, marketing, entrepreneurship, ethics, and consumer studies. DSEF Fellows not only have decades of research and study in their respective fields, but also have a deep understanding of the direct selling business model. A number of individual direct selling companies have partnered with Fellows on internal research projects, participated in case studies that appear in leading marketing and entrepreneurship textbooks, and utilized independent Fellows’ research in communications with investors, boards, and key external audiences including media, policymakers, and other influencers.
“When company executives get to know our Fellows at DSA events or through board meeting presentations, webinars, or workshops, they immediately recognize the value these academic experts bring to the table,” says DSEF Executive Director Gary Huggins.
Huggins points to USANA Health Science’s collaboration with Dr. Stephanie Boyer, Professor of Marketing at Bryant University, as an example of how DSEF Fellows work with direct selling companies to help them meet their business objectives.
Finding an Academic Fellow
Lori Truman, Vice President of US Sales at USANA, was searching for a solution beyond her company’s internal training to help educate new distributors on the fundamentals of sales. Upon meeting Dr. Boyer at DSA’s Sales & Marketing Conference, she considered the idea of bringing Dr. Boyer in to speak to the field.
“I was really intrigued by the topics she was speaking to and teaching as a professor, and how she had expanded into the social realm of the fundamentals of selling and how people buy,” says Truman. “That was what we were looking for: to educate our associates on how people buy, how to sell, and how to do it in today’s world, because it’s a little different and the world is becoming more digital and social. Stefanie had done so much work in this area, and we found a lot of benefit in that.”
Difference from Internal Training
USANA has an internal training program, covering sales, marketing, and social media, but with Dr. Boyer the company had an academic specializing in the field of marketing and someone who wrote a book on social media strategies. She coauthored The Little Black Book of Social Media, Strategies to Ignite Your Business, Influencer, and Professional Brand with Bryan University colleague and DSEF Fellow Dr. Sharmin Attaran. An award-winning sales educator, Dr. Boyer is also a Co-founder of RNMKRS, a virtual platform used by universities across the country for training and assessing sales talent of students, and Executive Director of the Northeast Intercollegiate Sales Competition, linking organizations with top talent.
Training Process and Assessment
Truman and her team devoted much time to assessing the needs of the salesforce, identifying areas where more training was essential for the success of the field, particularly topics relevant to newcomers with little sales experience and social selling strategies that were not as familiar to less tech-savvy associates. The USANA team and Dr. Boyer discussed the intended outcome of the partnership and then reviewed Dr. Boyer’s areas of expertise, landing on three specific topics that formed the basis of her training.
Benefit of Partnership
In addition to her academic expertise on the subjects of sales and social selling, Dr. Boyer’s experience as a DSEF Fellow helped her understand the unique needs of USANA and its salesforce. Through her Fellowship, Boyer has had the opportunity to attend DSA conferences, get to know direct selling executives, and gain an understanding of the issues facing companies and the industry. She has moderated CEO panels and has led workshops and webinars for industry executives. She brought all of that knowledge to bear in her partnership with USANA.
Salesforce Audience
Dr. Boyer delivered her training through three webinar events. USANA opened up the program to its US salesforce as well as its markets in Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. In addition, the webinars were open to associates at all levels, not just sales leaders. Truman estimates that Dr. Boyer was able to reach more than 3,000 USANA associates.
Truman could not be more complimentary of Dr. Boyer and her assistance in educating the sales field. “The team loved working with her—the details, the professionalism, her experience, and her expertise. Stefanie is very passionate about what she does on a day-to-day basis,” Truman says. “Bringing that passion, experience, and expertise to our industry and helping our associates apply it to what they’re doing is invaluable.”
According to Huggins, DSEF is eager to facilitate these connections between companies and the Foundation’s academic partners. “Tapping into the deep expertise of our Fellows positively impacts companies’ bottom lines, the direct selling channel, and industry reputation,” he says.
For more information on partnering with DSEF Fellows, contact Gary Huggins at ghuggins@dsef.org.
Creating a Customer-Centric Salesforce
USANA Teams with DSEF Fellow to Educate Field
Becoming more customer-centric requires a multi-pronged approach, which is why direct selling companies are employing tools like segmentation, CRM, and customer journey mapping to help enhance the customer journey. But perhaps the most critical component on the path to customer centricity is your salesforce. What can you do to help your distributors better service their customers—and keep them coming back?
Training is key, of course, and that’s why USANA Health Sciences partnered with DSEF Fellow Dr. Stefanie Boyer to offer a series of webinars last October to help their salesforce understand how people buy and how they can sell in today’s digital and social world.
Lori Truman, Vice President, US Sales, USANA Health Sciences, first met Dr. Boyer, Professor of Marketing at Bryant University, in 2019 at DSA’s Sales & Marketing Conference in Lake Tahoe. “So often, people get involved in our industry and they have no experience with sales,” Truman said. “Stefanie talked through sales principles and the fundamentals of selling, and it really intrigued me.”
The first step in planning the three webinars was bringing Dr. Boyer together with the USANA team to discuss what the company wanted to achieve. “It was such a great experience working with the USANA team,” Dr. Boyer said. “Sometimes when you work with a company, they don’t tell you what they want to accomplish. They just say, ‘Well, what can you do?’ It’s so much better when you have an open dialogue.”
Assessing the needs of the field and Dr. Boyer’s areas of expertise, the group decided upon three topics: the psychology of sales, holiday sales, and social selling. Boyer believes that leveraging self-directed learning philosophies can help organizations like USANA get more out of their training resources, helping sales associates learn more effectively and efficiently and, ultimately, improving overall sales performance. She applied this approach to help USANA meet a challenge many companies shared during the pandemic: nudging their field toward more fully embracing a digital world.
While USANA was well on its way to leveraging technology to support their field even before the pandemic hit, Truman said the fact the company is nearly thirty years old meant that some associates were less comfortable with digital selling. “It was important for us to be able to help individuals who had not necessarily transitioned toward that online selling space and, for those who had transitioned, to enhance what they were currently doing.”
When leadership cares enough to train their teams, it really shows that support throughout the whole organization. Representatives feel like someone actually cares about them and is supporting them."
—Dr. Stefanie Boyer, Professor of Marketing, Bryant University
Whether online or off, authenticity and engagement are critical to a successful customer experience, and Truman said that paying attention to customers’ needs can sometimes get lost in the digital world. “Sometimes individuals tend to sell just the product,” she said. “They don’t sell the benefits to the consumer. And that’s how we buy—what can I expect from this? What’s in it for me? Instead of just putting an image out there with some text, it’s more of the storytelling aspect, as well as making sure that you’re focusing on the features and benefits of the product.
Social media is the outlet to share that story, Dr. Boyer told webinar attendees. She explained how associates can get more touchpoints and brand impressions by experimenting with content.
“The really great thing about social is that you can test things out,” she says. “If you put a question out there and you see what people are struggling with right now, what are their challenges or what are their goals, then you’re getting immediate feedback to understand what’s on peoples’ minds. Then you can shift your posts around what people care about. If you have a post and you think that that’s exactly what people want but people aren’t engaging, you’re getting immediate feedback—without having to reserve a room or buy appetizers for anybody coming over for a visit. You can do this for free and find out customer sentiment in real time.”
While getting immediate online feedback helps the salesforce identify customers’ needs, it’s not enough to close the sale. “Customers need to see about seventeen brand impressions, and it often takes about eight follow-ups from a salesperson to actually sell,” Dr. Boyer says. “A lot of people think, ‘Oh, I’m just going to post something on social media and see if somebody is going to click through and buy.’ Sometimes that happens, but you’ve got to ask yourself what is their why? What problem are you solving and how are you going to be valuable? Customers are really buying the solution; they’re not just buying that product.”
Closing a sale is a win for the associate, the customer, and the company, but Truman says the information Dr. Boyer provided on keeping those customers coming back was equally important. “I was so impressed because in our industry we sometimes don’t see strong customer retention,” she says.
USANA associate feedback on Dr. Boyer’s webinars was very positive, with Truman saying the topic of holiday sales was especially beneficial. “We had just launched our holiday gift guide and Stefanie did a training for us on how to maximize the holiday timeframe. It was invaluable, and we saw a nice boost in sales,” she says.
Dr. Boyer says that the positive feedback she received from USANA associates during the webinars was a tribute to USANA’s commitment to their salesforce.
“When leadership cares enough to train their teams, it really shows that support throughout the whole organization,” Dr. Boyer says. “Representatives feel like someone actually cares about them and is supporting them. I could tell by the comments people were making that they were really happy. They felt like they had hit the lottery of companies. I think the action of actually taking the time and doing the training and trying to help them to be successful was definitely appreciated.”