Engage, Retain, Succeed: A Recognition Culture as a Business Growth System

No matter how big or small a direct selling company is, one thing remains unchanged: the focus on helping distributors easily succeed. Part of your field success largely depends on how you motivate them, recognize their efforts, and show appreciation for dedicating their time to building their business within your company. A lot of direct selling organizations do a great job of offering incentive trips, hosting annual events and giving shout-outs to celebrate their achievements overall. However, recognition doesn’t end there.

Keep in mind that you should recognize not only your team. Recognize every independent distributor. To meet the fundamental need to feel valued for even the smallest accomplishments, direct selling companies should go beyond annual recognition programs. It takes the development of a recognition culture to ensure that every distributor is continuously engaged and ready to rock. 

Let us share our insights gained through years of developing and analyzing the most successful recognition programs for direct selling companies to help you drive distributor retention, increase sales, and boost customer engagement. 

A recognition culture as a business system aimed at performance growth

The majority of distributors choose the direct selling industry for a number of reasons: entrepreneurial opportunities, flexible schedules, extra cash, communities of fellow-thinkers, etc. However, when it comes to their retention and productivity, these factors alone won’t keep distributors active and dedicated for long. Our psychology is the reason why. 

The need for recognition is ingrained from early childhood. We receive praise and encouragement for the right behavior, and later on for academic or athletic achievements at school to increase our intrinsic motivation and gradually develop a growth mindset. Without recognition, we can’t tell the value of our work and become demotivated in adult life as well. That’s why direct selling companies should foster a recognition culture, where distributors feel valued and recognized for their daily efforts.

Studies show that a recognition culture is among the key drivers of business growth. As it turned out, 37% of survey participants stated that highly personalized recognition motivates them to perform better. Other than that, companies that promote a recognition-rich culture see a 31% lower voluntary turnover.

Why is the impact so tangible? John R. Childress, сhairman at Pyxis Culture Technologies, describes culture as a business ecosystem containing multiple drivers in dynamic interactions that influence business performance outcomes through cultivating specific behaviors. 

To turn recognition into a business-boosting tool, direct selling companies should make those multiple drivers hyper-personalized. The first step is to understand why each distributor joined a given company, segment them according to their goals and aspirations, and recognize every individual in a way that matters most to them.

A recognition system: driving business growth at scale through intelligent automation

Delivering hyper-personalized rewards at the right time to the right individual to cultivate desired behaviors is a real challenge. A large network of independent distributors calls for a scalable, data-driven system that can personalize recognition initiatives and automatically deliver them when the time is right. 

How does this smart system work at the ‘local’ level of distributors’ everyday lives?

• The system goes beyond supporting just a recognition program.

Just like how onboarding starts from day 1 and transforms into continuous support throughout the distributor’s journey with a direct selling organization, recognition initiatives start right from the moment of joining a company. And these initiatives deal not only with personalized reward points. 

Recognition means meeting distributors’ needs and rewarding their efforts on the way to achieving their goals. What does a new distributor need? The right tools to succeed: seamless communication with uplines and peers, business-building tools to manage their busy schedules, and just-in-time training activities to solve any performance challenges. Having all these tools in one place 24/7 and earning personalized points for progressing at their own speed, distributors will be kept engaged and active.

• The system focuses on small but crucial for success recognition gestures.

We live in a world of instant gratification, and it’s getting harder for people to stay engaged when we’re talking about achieving long-term goals. That’s why it’s important to ensure that distributors enjoy small, immediate rewards for short-term activities while seeing their progress towards bigger milestones. 

“When I think of recognition impact, I focus on our small gestures—the highly personalized communications that are timely in nature and designed to recognize the individual instead of the rank. At 4Life, we are interested in a recognition culture, not merely a recognition program,” comments Leslie Dunn, vice president of recognition & events at 4Life Research. A smart, data-driven system can prescribe just-in-time personalized rewards to celebrate every achieved small goal or completed step to show distributors that every effort they make is important and appreciated.

• The system delivers specific rewards tied to business goals.

Rewards are effective only when they encourage specific actions and behaviors to help distributors stay focused on their business-building journey. In other words, recognition for the sake of recognition doesn’t work. Avoid irrelevant recognition initiatives that may distract distributors from what really matters. Define what business aspects you need to improve (e.g. selling, recruiting or retention) and offer relevant rewards that timely encourage corresponding activities.

A data-driven system automatically triggers curated rewards tied to the company’s business goals and makes them personalized for every distributor, according to their needs. This drives only desired behaviors and can impact major business KPIs.

• The system creates an emotional connection with a company.

Above, we’ve already mentioned the importance of supporting and recognizing distributors from their first day with a company. This aspect is crucial for direct selling companies that want to create long-lasting relationships with their recruits and turn them into dedicated, motivated and productive distributors. 

Matt Hall, general manager for the U.S. at Nu Skin, says that the company “designs the recognition program and the reward to create an emotional connection” that often results in reaching “far more than what they originally thought possible.” By adjusting rewards to distributors’ needs and automatically delivering them upon any small win just-in-time, distributors feel like every step is worth the effort. It also gives them the perseverance to go on because they know that their company supports and values their contributions to the common good as well as their personal business growth.

By cultivating a recognition culture and supporting it with smart data-driven systems, direct selling companies can turn their recruits and current distributors into dedicated, motivated and active members, unlocking their full potential.

Get a demo of the Rallyware smart data-driven system to see for yourself how it can encourage every one of your distributors to stay productive and motivated throughout their business-building journey!