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The Holy Grail of the Public Relations is what they call BUZZ.

Buzz’ is the sound that excited crowds make. Excitement restricts one’s vocal cords so that the pitch of voices are higher and louder. We are tuned into this sound. It is infectious and makes us excited.

Buzz is what happens when the public are excited about something. When ‘word of mouth’ advertising happens. When people take action. Some products achieve buzz. Some businesses achieve buzz. iPod, Google, Gordon Ramsey and Slumdog Millionaire
have buzz.

It is very difficult to create buzz. If you don’t get buzz, you get just ZZZZ [sleep]. Or even worse, ‘hype’.

In the ‘people business’ of direct sales, the creation of ‘buzz’ is critical if you want to tap into the exponential growth power of people. Buzz is vital to successfully a new product or new incentive. Buzz is needed to inspire self-employed people into action.
In my role working with direct sales organisations across the world, I see some companies with buzz and many with just ZZZZ. So when I see BUZZ I get excited.

Buzz Down Under

In the world of direct sales, Australia is one of the ‘bellwether’ markets that we all should keep an eye on. It is one of the ‘beachhead’ markets that American companies first expanded to so it’s also one of the first markets to mature and thus needs to reinvent itself.

A few weeks ago, I was a keynote speaker at the DSA Australia conference and ‘down under’ there is a new BUZZ in the air.

What was interesting was that the buzz was not generated due to the recession as, quite frankly, the recession has not impacted Australia [yet]. Nor was the buzz created because of any exciting new innovation or hot company. It was created by a new attitude.
Under the leadership of the new DSAA boss John Holloway and Chairman Bill Duncan, the conference took on a new attitude towards the future. In typical Australian style, every industry skeleton and challenge was addressed, dissected and debated. It was no-holds-barred and people loved it! The place Buzz’d!

Of all the areas discussed, the most important that was referred to time and time again, was the subject of leadership development. Speaker after speaker referred to the fact that to take companies, and this industry, to the next level we need to dramatically improve the quantity and quality of the leaders we have. To quote leadership legend John Maxwell: ‘Everything rises and falls on leadership’.

Next Generation Direct Sales

My keynote speech on the future of direct sales explained the Seven Key Developments that would define what I call ‘Next Generation Direct Sales’. If you have read my new book on the future of our industry, 100% Confidence, my analysis predicts the biggest
boom in our history.

It’s exciting. It’s inevitable. We will follow franchising industry’s path YET this will not happen until we can develop our leadership better. And the fact this conference discussed this reality so openly created an excitement I have never experienced at a DSA conference.

Unique Environment

In his Chairman’s address, Bill Duncan explained that our initial challenge with developing leaders is that we have a unique environment and that the traditional approaches to leadership are not proving effective.

Many DSOs have invested in leadership programmes from organisations such as Covey-Franklin, which, whilst offering some excellent insights, were designed for an employee relationship and thus were not adaptable by leaders so the Return on Investment (ROI) was too low. Bill announced that it is time we developed our own unique leadership approach.

Taking Action

To support their views, the DSAA Board took action organising a pilot leadership programme with a small amount of leaders from a number of DS companies. And the results produced proved their view. Not only did confidence levels rocket, one GM provided statistics that showed that the growth in the test leader’s business was up 54 per cent after flat-lining for years. His only grumble was that he only had one leader on the programme!

The Highest ROI

Whilst executives pointed out practical difficulties of rolling out this exact programme across a whole organisation, discussions will be held with supplier providers such as myself. The point is that investment in specific leadership development works. In fact, it more than just ‘works’; when it comes to investing in developing your sales network, it probably has the highest ROI you could achieve.

In reality, this is no surprise when you consider the histories of transformational organisations such as General Electric. There is nearly always a massive investment in leadership development which preceded their dramatic and sustained growth.

The investment in leadership development per individual is always high and the results often slow to emerge for some executives yet [finally] people are realising that the returns are worth it. Who cares about a US$10,000 investment in educating a leader that produces 50 per cent more business in their organisation [year after year]? Other industries would scoff at this investment as they expect the investment to be many times higher.

The Blinding Obvious

I am sure that these comments may seem like statements of the ‘blinding obvious’ yet few direct sales companies invest any significant amount in leadership development. They’ll pour money into leadership performance rewards such as bonuses, trips and cars yet not into education.

How much are you spending on actually educating these leaders on leading their organisations? Are your strategic leaders educated on organisational strategy and training development? Are your team leaders educated on the job of leading direct sales teams?

The Buzz

The buzz from down under comes from an acceptance that the key to our exciting future fundamentally lies in this one area of developing better leaders. Clearly defining and acting on this area has produced a new confidence and anticipation of the future in executives. They can see how to create a new boom. The belief is that by working on this area we will achieve the maximum leverage from our business model, as in simple terms, we are a leadership business.

The call to action is simple. It’s time to prioritise investment in leadership development and through this, direct sales will explode into an exciting new growth era that will allow us to deliver the true potential that lies in a sales networks.

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Ed Ludbrook is a specialist direct sales leadership coach who has trained leaders and executives in numerous companies in Europe and Asia over the past 15 years. His new book on the future of direct sales, 100% Confidence, was published in 2009. See http://www.100percentleadership.com for his online leadership programmes.