The Truth Is Good Enough
How the truth attracts and keeps quality people, while hype accelerates attrition.
“The Truth is the Strongest Argument.” — Sophocles
Smart guy Sophocles. It’s a principle that has stood the test of time. In a world where hype dominates the marketing landscape, over promising and under delivering is common. In the profession of Direct Sales, it undermines us all.
Let’s start by defining hype:
Hype is the exaggeration of truth or telling part of the truth.
Stories of success and failure are two sided. For every success story there is the untold story of disappointment, sacrifice, and growth. With every story of failure, there is also an untold story. Hype ignores the untold story; hype looks for the success anomaly, the outlier (such as “he added 10,000 new distributors to his team in 30 days” or “she sponsored 30 distributors personally in 30 days” or “they earned a six-figure income in their first six months”) and puts it on a platform telling the world this is normal.
If you want to find examples of hype in our profession, just go online. They are everywhere.
Stories of success and failure are two sided. For every story there is also an untold story. Hype ignores the untold story.
Hype Accelerates Attrition.
Here’s the reality: hype makes sponsoring easier, but when the truth starts to emerge (and it always does), it accelerates attrition.
The reality is that attrition is normal. Not everyone is a fit for Direct Selling nor is everyone a fit for every company. But unfulfilled expectation, the source of all disappointment, is a difficult hurdle to jump. Disappointment kills dreams and creates discouragement. Discouraged people often give up and stop working. Eventually, they quit.
Hype also defeats people. When we consistently message “urgency over quality” by displaying the speed at which some people achieve things, those who need a little time to develop their skill sets (most people) can feel defeated.
Often those that move quickly are honored for the speed at which they achieved. When there is an untold story that isn’t shared, distributors who don’t have the influence or experience start to compare themselves and measure their journey against someone with a head start. For example, when a rising star comes from another company and has experience or a person with tremendous influence joins.
The Truth Attracts Quality People
Getting to the top on sheer energy and/or charisma is one thing. Staying at the top is an entirely different thing. Staying at the top means building your content as a leader so that you can build others as leaders. Leaders, not volume, determine the stability of any organization. Volume needs leadership to grow and sustain it. Quality is just as important to message. Balancing a message that shows what is possible, and what is created over time, is necessary for the longevity of any organization.
In a culture that aligns itself with truth — balancing quantity and quality — leaders don’t feel shamed if they have a business setback; they are empowered to keep going.
Those attracted to hype are attracted by fast and easy. As soon as it gets hard in any way, they are gone.
Quality people are looking for the unique benefits available through Direct Selling. They expect to have to give up something, even something important, to build a business. They don’t expect to have leveraged income as a result of signing a distributor agreement. They don’t expect it to be fast or easy. Quality people want to be challenged; they want to grow. Quality people are very comfortable being responsible for their own results.
Attracting quality people to our profession becomes increasingly more difficult when hype is tolerated. Hype will blight our profession and those who sponsor and promote with integrity will have to overcome the reputation that follows hype.
Quality people are the ones who make a decision, commit to the decision, and back the decision up with action until they achieve success by building and sustaining large organizations. For quality people, truth is the strongest argument for getting involved.
When Socrates uttered his famous quote, he had no idea how relevant it would be to a profession not yet invented.
— Dana Collins
Mastermind Event Presenter
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