For direct-selling companies: how to build a better distributor persona and an Ideal Distributor Model

For years, the Direct Selling Association has published helpful information for direct-selling companies, showing demographic breakdowns that help sales teams and marketers dial in their target demographics.

But is this enough in today's environment of hyper personalization? Let's take a look at what we have so far:

This information shows that women are the biggest piece of the pie when it comes to those engaging with direct-selling brands (74% vs. 26%). And as millennials and Gen X have aged, we've slowly seen the age demographic shift with them.

Women, as the main demographic for direct-selling companies, often have these other qualities:

• These women most likely already have full-time jobs

• They have families

• They're educated

• They're on social media

• They don't have a lot of time (see...all points above)

  
  

Each layer of information offers new insights to help further define messaging concepts, imagery ideas, and your overall strategy to attract more of these individuals to your particular brand, rewards program, and product offering.

But we can do better!

Building out a fully fleshed out distributor persona will allow you to create ideal branded experiences. These experiences will help your distributors become more successful at sharing your products with others...and in turn, ensure they stick around for the long haul.

What’s a Persona & Why Demographics Aren’t Enough

A persona is a deeply specific profile of the person your brand wants to attract, support, and retain. While demographics (age, income, gender, location) are part of it, a persona goes further:

• What life stage are they in?

• What motivates them to sell or buy?

• What problems are they trying to solve in their life with your product or service?

• Why are they interested in earning income?

• What do they want to say about themselves by being affiliated with your brand?

• What does “success” look like to them?

• How much do they need (or want) to earn—and how fast? Be specific!

• How much time can they realistically give to your company?

• What rewards matter most to them, and why? Cash, product credit, community, recognition, travel?

• What tone, message, and aesthetic would they be most interested to share with their audience?

• Are they creators, sellers, connectors, teachers?

  
  

Without this clarity and target, your messaging may end up feeling generic or get lost in a sea of other brands. Your product mix will be misaligned, and your incentives will miss the mark.

But when you truly know who you're going after and what they want, you'll know why they want you.

Once you have this persona down, then you can create the Ideal Distributor Model.

What is the Ideal Distributor Model?

This model defines the experience you create for your distributors' success...everything you need to do across all touchpoints to create MORE of the ideal you've just documented. You know the who, so you can solve for what, when, where, why, and how.

The Ideal Distributor Model is essentially an operational blueprint that can guide the success of everything you do.

It influences and helps define your brand, product strategy, compensation plan, back office offerings, UX, app strategy, messaging voice and tone, social media content, sales trainings, rewards and events style, and even R&D priorities.

You can then provide clear direction to your creative department; you'll know which products to keep, which ones to sunset, and which ones to start developing to attract more of the people you want; you'll be able to create incentives and promotions to drive the behavior you want to see; and you'll be able to simplify your digital experiences to align to what your ideal distributor wants and needs.

Keep in mind:

• Your authentic brand is important: What makes sense for what you sell, your strengths as a company, what you ultimately bring to the table? There's only so much you can change about who your company is. Align your ideal distributor with a truly authentic message that won't shift with trends but instead will allow you to highlight who you are as a company.

At the end of the day, we all want to feel understood. If you can understand your ideal distributor at their core, and if you understand what your brand offers to them, you'll be able to see how to connect the two in the right way.

Don't Forget About the Customer

The direct-selling industry is unique in that you have to create different content for distributors and customers. They have different needs (although at times they may overlap).

In addition to the demographic information that's likely similar to the distributors, customer personas should answer:

• What specific goals are they trying to reach that your products can or could support?

• Where and how does your product fit into their overall lifestyle?

• How price sensitive are they?

• What is their optimal buying frequency for your product and why?

• What kind of content helps them say “yes”? Reviews? Experts? Influencers? Athletes? Scientists? FAQs?

• Do they have potential to become distributors? If so, what motivates that shift?

Once you have this information, you'll be able to make better decisions about setting up your optimal customer funnel, your product detail pages and how they are designed with content, how you attract customers with their initial orders, winback strategies, and more. This will also allow you to test your assumptions about your customers and adjust as needed.

Final Thoughts

When you truly understand who you’re serving, everything gets easier:

• Marketing gets more focused.

• Creative gets more freedom to own a defined space. (Sounds like an oxymoron, but I promise this works.)

• Communications get more targeted to convert at a higher rate.

• Social media gets more purposeful and authentic.

• Compensation gets more rewarding and has the potential to even save costs.

• Sales tools become more effective.

• All touchpoints become more refined.

• It becomes simpler to know what's working, what's not, what fits within your strategy, and what's a waste of time.

• Your brand becomes magnetic...to those who matter most.

Build real, specific, human-centric personas for distributors and customers that are custom for your business. It’s the most foundational step you can take, and it will impact everything.

Not Sure How...or Where to Start?

Look at the data you have. Talk with your internal team leads. Run focus groups across multiple distributor levels and markets. And put surveys out to your existing distributors and customers. That will give you a good starting point. Don't negate the talent of your team members across your company, such as your market-level sales managers. They'll have insights that will be incredibly valuable as you dig into creating detailed personas for your business.

Need help? Drop me a note.