Steve Jamieson
How IBM Watson Can Help Network Marketing Checkmate the Gig Economy!

In 1997, with the entire world watching, IBM’s Deep Blue super computer, shocked and defeated the number one chess player in the world, Gary Kasparov!

Today, IBM’s Watson may now be the next great player called upon to help Network Marketing defeat our inability to stake out a strong and vibrant position in the new Gig Economy. In fact, failing to do so may beg the question whether or not network marketing should even consider itself a part of the new Gig Economy at all.

Network Marketing and Direct Sales used to be the alternative income opportunity of choice. You were able to work it part-time, full-time, anytime and with a modest investment, and earn an income in proportion to your efforts. That opportunity is still true today and many companies continue to have great success.

Over the years, the cultural backdrop and technological landscape have driven even more people to choose non-traditional incomes in order to spend more time with their favorite people or their passions.

In pop culture, whenever a group, a movement, or a lifestyle becomes significant… we quickly name it and give it an identity. Hence, the term Gig Economy was born.

Just as the microwave created instant fully cooked meals you can consume quicker than you can preheat your oven, the Gig Economy created instant business opportunities faster than you can create an LLC, even while using Legal Zoom.com

A Shopify site can be set up in minutes. Amazon directs traffic to your new shopping cart a few minutes after launch. Join Uber in the morning and get your first customer even before your first cup of coffee. Rent your apartment on Airbnb? Sell your crafts on Etsy? In contrast, how long does it take for a Network Marketer to get their first customer or how many never get any customers at all?

The number one common factor in all successful Gig Economy opportunities is they are all equally vested in giving you the customer as in bringing you the opportunity. In the Gig Economy your time is spent servicing the customer instead of finding one. Your customers find you through your company and their technology.

Customers Don’t Want to be Sold but They Do Want to Buy

If a Direct Sales Company wants to be compelling and relevant in the new Gig Economy, they can no longer only provide customer acquisition training and tools but provide the customers themselves.

What made the Avon Lady an iconic figure in alternative sales wasn’t the ringing of the doorbell but her passion for servicing her customers once she was on the other side of that door. While the Mary Kay Pink Cadillac became a symbol of the successful businesswoman, it was the Mary Kay Red Jacket seen in someone’s living room that evoked an emotional reaction of great service and professional respect.

When we service our customers instead of trying to sell them, we not only become a part of the Gig Economy, but the very champions of it.

In the past few years mobile apps and click funnel sample programs became a first technology mover in pushing Network Marketing into Network Partnering and a newer company client acquisition and distributor service model:

“I just bought a new lipstick from my friend who works for a cosmetic company. In fact, I got so many compliments I decided to sell it too! The first thing the company did was send me a customer who sampled the same lipstick that I did. I ended up selling her $200 worth of products. I told this story to my neighbor and now she wants to sell it too!”

While sampling has been a good low-tech, hi-touch way to connect people more easily, companies didn’t go far enough in embracing this as a potential pivotal shift in enabling us to compete in the new Gig Economy with a focused customer acquisition model.

The secret to the Gig Economy, is that the customer acquisition and service model has become a mainstream part of our lives, not an intrusion into it. Alexa, Siri and Gig Economy opportunities have replaced the Avon lady as the person we are more likely to let into our homes and into our lives.

The Gig Economy is not an app or a website. It’s a voice, a persona that lives on our phone, on our nightstand, controls our lights, entertains us on TV and now delivers our groceries. Uber is no longer a ride to the airport but takes our kids to school. The most successful Gig Economy opportunities solve our problems, give unparalleled service and gives us instant gratification whether you are the customer or the person who seizes the opportunity to service that customer.

We need to get back into people’s homes and more importantly get back in their hearts. We will do that through the culture of the Gig Economy, which is the culture of service, not sales.

Ironically, it is technology that can lead to a stronger emotional connection between your distributors and your customers by identifying those who are far more likely to be interested in each other. Connecting people who want to buy with the people who want to service them, based on data and not intuition, needs to be the new normal in network marketing!

The Future is Now and Cost-Effective

Since January of this year a large and established Network Marketing Sales Organization working within a well-known Network Marketing Company has been field-testing such a new normal and far exceeding expectations. Distributors are being introduced to vetted potential customers with a projected percentage of expected success.

Current mobile sharing apps that are predominating throughout our industry are not currently positioned to compete with an Alexa or Siri powered by an IBM Watson. A distributor who can ask an Alexa or Siri to import their contacts and tell them the likely percentage of interest from friends and family members, based on public profiles and algorithmic data (machine learning) can position us to win in the new Gig Economy.

What if your distributors could ask Alexa or Siri to connect them with new prospects everyday who might be interested in either the product or business who live in their area? Alexa or Siri, powered by Watson or the like, can match the data from the thousands of people who have bought a product or joined the opportunity over the past several years from your company with a similar like audience who live in their hometown with names, emails and phone numbers.

Using machine learning to facilitate the prospecting of new customers and distributors is our entry point into the world of the Gig Economy. While it won’t actually give the distributor a customer, it will close the gap significantly by providing a constant flow of far more likely successful experiences. Machine Learning has great potential for retention, but its application for prospecting is what can place us in the Gig Economy.

With machine learning you not only give your distributors targeted success and percentage probabilities, but your data is now held accountable by all parties. If a distributor is given 10 customers with an average probability rating of having a 37% likely interest in purchasing a product, and they go 0 for 10… then, there is something wrong with the data or more than likely, the salesperson may need training.

Which is why I can comfortably project a probability of better than 50% your next distributor in the very near future will be saying, “Hello Alexa, Hello Siri, do you have a new prospect for me to talk to today?”

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The post How IBM Watson Can Help Network Marketing Checkmate the Gig Economy! appeared first on The World of Direct Selling.

Guest author Steve Jamieson is the Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner of WorkingSocial, offering innovate and transformational business, sales, marketing and digital strategies to network marketing companies at every stage of success. Steve has a 20+ year career in direct sales that included working as the CEO at three prominent network marketing companies and as the CMO and Executive VP for Success Partners and Success Magazine.

Guest post by Steve Jamieson
Customer Viral Marketing Compensation Plans Go Viral!

James Carville, a famed political consultant once said to Bill Clinton – “Don’t worry, it’s not about you, it’s the economy stupid”.

To every MLM C-Level Executive, that is struggling from continual stagnation in your direct sales company, let me say to you, “Don’t be Stupid”, it’s about the Compensation Plan. Alternative Gig-Economy compensation plans provided by such companies as Uber, Amazon Marketplace, Shopify and Customer Sharing Apps, are in direct contrast to the out of touch chase the dream compensation plans still found in many direct sales companies.

If we are to become a relevant and vibrant part of the “Gig Economy”, then we can no longer have compensation plans with similar promises offered by no money down real-estate schemes, forex trading platforms, bitcoin currency mining and now click-funnel programs that promise to teach you how to be a marketing guru.



If your Company isn’t working the way you envisioned, more than likely your compensation plan isn’t working for you. It’s built upon the wrong premise, it promotes the wrong behavior, no one understands it, no one can teach it, invites legal scrutiny and is hurting your brand.

For the past two decades, comp plans were designed to mirror the success and failure of traditional businesses whereby 20% of the people earn 80% of the income. The attraction of our business model was simple, we offered the 20% tier to people who didn’t traditionally have an opportunity to be in that group! Carpet cleaners, mattress salesman and stay at home moms were offered a second chance at a first-time exclusive income.

While those comp plans did, in fact, work for the few, doesn’t it make sense that any plan designed for the majority of people to fail is eventually destined for failure?

Customer Viral Marketing

There is a new phenomenon sweeping across retail sales called Customer Viral Marketing (CVM) that can evoke revolutionary change at the core of every direct sales compensation plan.

If you still think going viral is how many views a video has reached or whether or not an influencer is now marketing your products, the marketing world already blinked, and that moment has come and passed as your next best marketing strategy.

The new viral metric now is how much money have you paid your customers for sharing your app or your products.

• Companies such as Ibotta, Dosh, RetailMeNot, BeFrugal, and Rakuten have paid more than 1 billion dollars in cash back to customers for sharing their products or apps with their friends.
• Companies with formalized referral programs experience 86% more revenue growth over the past two years when compared to companies that do not.
• Repeat customers are often the most profitable. McKinsey found that repeat e-commerce customers spend more than double what new customers spend ($52.50 average cart size for repeat customers, compared to $24.50 for new customers).

 
As John Lennon once said, “Imagine all the People”. Imagine how many more people you can now talk to when you are speaking to all your satisfied customers about getting paid for sharing your products, instead of just your distributors? In today’s gig economy, is it easier for your company to create viral activity among customers in order to create viral activity among your salespeople, or do you want to continue to try to create viral activity within your sales force with the intention of having them create viral activity among your customers?

I recently spoke with the CEOs of 3 direct sales companies that are all more than 20-years old with a similar profile of about 2500 active distributors and 75,000 active customers here in the United States. When I asked which group, they believed had a more positive perspective of their company and was more likely to recommend their products, without hesitation they all said their customers. When I asked them why they don’t have a compensation plan in place for the 75,000 satisfied customers in addition to the 2500 distributors, they said I didn’t know we could.

Not only can these companies expand their conversations and talk to customers about referral-based income, so can every direct sales company. Virtually every company can integrate such a program almost immediately on top and alongside their existing compensation plan structures.

The Change Doesn’t Have to be Disruptive Only the Result

The Nutritional and Skincare Direct Sales Companies mentioned above all have a traditional Uni-level/Breakaway model with a wholesale discount of up to 40%. And as usual also have back-office software, not unlike their distributors, that is not kind or receptive to change or innovation.

The good news for both the entrenched distributors and the back-office IT teams for each company is we didn’t need to program a new comp plan to launch the programs.  We simply brought in a team to create replicated marketing sites that pay out the potential 40% wholesale/retail commissions in real-time to customers and distributors who refer people to the marketing sites to purchase products. Then, through an API, send the sales information to the company back-office for the monthly override commissions to be paid as usual. We didn’t change the distributor’s ability to purchase products at wholesale discounts or affect how monthly override commissions are paid, but we did create an instant cash-back program for both customers and distributors based on the same 40% retail model that each Company had already established.



Here is How it Works

If a customer is sent to the marketing site by a distributor and spends $100.00, the customer receives $10.00 instant cash back he or she can use for their next purchase. The Distributor would receive 3X instant cash back or $30.00 from the customers purchase paid immediately. The total payout would be $40.00 or 40% of the purchase.

The customer viral marketing begins when customers are excited about getting paid to shop. The marketing goes viral when customers also tell a friend and get instant cash back anytime their friends’ shop.

When a customer goes to the site who was referred by another customer and spends $100.00. The customer who spends $100.00 receives $10.00 instant cash back for his next purchase. The customer who referred the customer to the site gets $10.00 instant cash back for referring them and in this case, the distributor who signed up the original customer gets 2X times or $20.00 instant cash back. The total payout would be $40.00 or 40% of the purchase. The distributor makes $20.00 instead of $30.00 because his customers were doing the work for him or her.

Regardless of whether or not your comp plan has a 40% wholesale/retail or 25%, the philosophy remains the same…only the numbers people receive an instant cash back are different.

This is the First Step We Can All Take – The Second Step is Up to You

Creating a relevant compensation plan with only your wholesale/retail is a first step to creating Customer Viral Marketing (CVM). Sample programs, shopping carts with AI, machine learning prospecting tools, a simplified back-end compensation plan for royalty overrides and customer acquisition programs, are all next steps that companies outside of direct sales have already taken to be competitive in the new gig economy. Why not take the first step that all direct selling companies can and should take?

Go viral! Pay your customers and your Company will be paid back with Customer Viral Marketing (CVM).

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Guest post by Steve Jamieson
AdvoCare’s Leadership Council: The Truth Behind Their Season Ending Story!

On the very same weekend distributors of AdvoCare saw their story come to an untimely end, Tyrion, one of the lead actors in Game of Thrones said to the Leadership Council in the show’s climactic final scene, “true power and lasting impact doesn’t rise from the ashes of what people are willing to die for… but in the powerful stories they live to tell”.

Will the story of AdvoCare be a turning point for network marketing? Based on the initial reactions from industry leaders, distributors and customers, I question whether we are all reading from the same page.

For many it is being read as a story of betrayal, for others a hollow victory for government regulation, callous mismanagement, a family dynasty taking the money and run, a bold and necessary decision to avoid litigation and protect the company, the “Armageddon of Network Marketing”… and then they told us what they really think.

Network marketing was borne out of the art of story-selling. Stories that begin with the origins of our products, the benefits from their effects, and the riches one may receive by sharing their story with others.

When personal and powerful stories were told in living rooms, remote meeting rooms and 3-way phone calls, stories were frequently told in careless whispers, grew in legend and overcame skepticism with infectious enthusiasm. Stories were sold and volunteer armies of impassioned story- sellers enlisted to spread the word for their respective cause… and this was even before the Kardashians invented influencer marketing!

As technology rapidly scaled network marketing’s exposure and duplication, people moved from hearing the stories at a private kitchen table to the public counter at Starbucks or on a Zoom Webinar across the country. We went from sharing our “Why”, to making sure they had Wi-Fi. Stories were no longer rumors that needed personal validation, but permanent testimonials broadcast simultaneously to thousands of potential customers and distributors, as well as government agencies and consumer watchdog groups.

Spontaneous selfie videos, internet marketing, and real-time social media postings changed the way we tell stories. It changed who saw them and changed how companies would be held accountable for their distributors who told them.

A huge part of AdvoCare’s final chapter is they could no longer empower their distributors to tell their best stories. “Do the products give you energy? Yes, but you can’t say it! Did you earn more than$10,000 last month? Yes, but don’t tell anyone! I heard there was a double-blind placebo study in Germany proving our products cause weight-loss? Yes, but I can’t share it with you!”

The government has gone so far in protecting people from lies and exaggerations that the unintended consequence is people can no longer hear the truth.

If like AdvoCare, we can no longer tell and sell “our” stories… can we still be the competitive network marketing industry we have come to know? Can we compete with the stories of Shopify, Uber and the alternative Gig economy if we can’t tell our best stories and they can? Do we as an industry have an alternative strategy to communicate?

Pharmaceutical companies adapted when they were told by the government, they had to tell people how their product could kill us as well as cure us in the same 30-second commercial. Wal-Mart adapted to a new strategy for free shipping that didn’t cost their customers a $119.00 membership fee. Legacy Airlines adapted to deregulation and low-cost start-ups by trading leg room and baggage fees for cheaper 3-hour plane ride loaded with reward miles. Costco adapted to an influx of Dollar Stores with bigger cash back amounts on their credit card programs instead of offering even bigger boxes of Cereal.

AdvoCare said “No!” to network marketing. More importantly, they said no to seizing the moment and showing us how a successful network marketing can adapt to today’s new regulatory, e-commerce and crowded competition from alternative income opportunities. This should have been our story. The new story for our industry to sell.

It is easy to criticize AdvoCare for the decision they made or how it was implemented. It is even more incumbent upon us to criticize those companies who continue to ignore the reasons AdvoCare felt compelled to address the very viability of our business model. At least AdvoCare didn’t look away, they just failed at looking hard enough to find the difficult answers.

What if AdvoCare was right in recognizing there are fundamental problems in our business model, but wrong in their solution?

Should they have considered adapting to a company-sponsored customer acquisition program, because distributors might be better suited to servicing customers than to finding them? Are exaggerated health claims or financial promises inherently unavoidable when accompanied by high-pressure sales goals and lofty expectations.

The difference between a taxi driver and an Uber driver is a taxi driver spends half his day looking for a customer and the other half driving them to their destination. An Uber driver spends all of his time getting paid for driving his customers to where they need to go!

Do we have the ability to drive customers to our network marketers?

Did AdvoCare discuss adapting to a simplified referral and instant cash-back customer program to create viral behavior among their 400,000 VIP satisfied customers, as has been done so successfully with popular websites and apps such as RetailMeNot and Dosh Cash?

Would a new compensation plan, designed towards most people’s needs instead of a few people’s wants, made AdvoCare seem relevant and credible alongside the competitive landscape of other alternative income opportunities?

AdvoCare is not alone in re-evaluating and making tough decisions. Some of the most iconic names in our industry have had difficult challenges in the past 5 years. In 2015, Avon split itself into two separate companies. 3 years later after a near 50% drop in sales, New Avon of North America sold to a South Korean consumer giant at a significantly lower price. Avon International is also entertaining takeover offers. Herbalife went through a bruising government investigation and wall street challenge to its business model. Amway had 4 consecutive years of declining sales until stemming the tide this past year.

The story of AdvoCare is a message to all of us to embrace the changes that are inevitably coming. There is nothing wrong with network marketing! There is only something wrong in missing the opportunity to elevate it to the forefront of the Gig economy.

Great leadership, great ideas, and great companies are not born out of momentum but out of moments of disruption and transformation.

Many AdvoCare loyal distributors as well as those from other companies throughout the industry, cannot help but feel like we were all scorched by a fire breathing dragon today. It is up to all of us to use this story to make us stronger, make us more determined to make our industry the most powerful story in the new gig economy.

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Guest Post by Steve Jamieson
The Climate is Changing in Direct Sales

Without sounding political, most everyone agrees that climate change is a global phenomenon that is happening right here, right now. Some people only differ about the cause.

According to the most recent DSA-published reports, direct sales is experiencing a similar phenomenon. Sales and recruiting have been slowly melting away for the past 3 years while the tide of success for other competitive alternative income opportunities has been rising at an alarming rate.

In the case of direct sales, virtually no one is arguing the cause and effect… only the solutions.



The formula for success of non-MLM alternative income opportunities follow a consistent pattern. The companies are directly involved in customer acquisition for their sales reps or service teams. Their compensation plans are built for the 85% instead of the 15% and explained in the same time it takes to tip and rate an Uber driver. They have personalized their sales technology and customer experience. They focus first on solving a problem for a particular customer, instead of inventing a solution in order to find a customer who needs it.

It has been said many times that a taxi driver did not invent Uber and a hotel owner didn’t invent Airbnb, and if that be the case, then more than likely it won’t be a distributor who will have the inherent skill set required to re-invent direct sales.

Yet, we still find mostly former distributors sitting at the head of the table as either the Founder, CEO or President of a prototype direct sales company.

This is a potential problem because a distributor’s instinct is to perfect the current business model, when the solution might need to look far beyond our current best practices.

It is hard for a Distributor/CEO to fix something they don’t see as broken! It’s hard to move away from a solution that made you so extraordinarily successful.

Many of the top 100 direct sales companies have not been growing in North America, but are sustaining themselves with international success, recruiting distributors from other companies, promoting the promise of a hero product or spiking their comp plan for short-term gain.

Needless to say, in this instance the climate needs to change!

Private equity firms have been investing in direct sales companies ever since Warren Buffet led the way with his acquisition of Pampered Chef. Unfortunately, investors brought their money and not the type of executive team who knew how to be change agents. Outside executives were so insecure on how they personally fit into the direct sales culture, they couldn’t see how the direct sales culture needed to fit into many of the same forward-thinking technologies and business strategies that were revolutionizing retail, e-commerce and other alternative income opportunities.

Today, the climate is changing, because new executive teams are leading the change, whereby the old guard was simply reacting to it.

The executive carousel in the past 24 months has been dramatic. Leadership changes at companies such as Arbonne, AdvoCare, Thirty-One Gifts, Herbalife, Plexus, New Avon and Amway, just to name a few, are bringing in a new wave of non-traditional direct sales expertise.

Customer acquisition, e-commerce and brick and mortar experts from Purple Mattress, Spanx, Yves Rocher, Unilever and Pizza Hut are now on board moving direct sales companies into a new era of micro-entrepreneurship and influencer brand marketing.

In the first month of 2019, Perfectly Posh is demonstrating the power of paying sales reps instant cash on every sale instead of old school weekly paychecks. Crescendo is paying customers instant cash back on every purchase and paying customers to give away free product samples to their friends and family. Watch Total Life Changes move from network marketing to network partnering with an aggressive plan to corporately acquire new online customers and utilize their distributor field for closing sales, upselling, building brand loyalty and culture. RevitalU is giving away almost $100,000 a month to people who simply watch one of their daily business opportunity presentations on Facebook Live.



The climate for direct sales is changing because the consumer driven economy has changed, and we now have companies in our vertical that understand how to be a part of that change.

Of course, technology plays a key role but only when proceeded by thought leadership. Thought leadership can only be the answer when we have agreement on the problems we need to solve.

Can we agree in 2019, we won’t solve customer acquisition with only motivation and training? When possible, we will allow your customers to try it before they buy it. We will think on how to pay our customers to work for our distributors. We will have a compensation plan less complicated than the ingredients on our label. And won’t think outside the box… because there is no box anymore!

If you believe now is the time for the climate in direct sales to change, then you are already a part of the change that is happening, and we are all anxious to see where you will take us next!

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