I remember one of my favorite keynotes that I ever had the pleasure of presenting. It was for the Multi-level Marketing Association. I can even recall the day, it was raining outside, and a bit too warm inside. I was sweating before I took the stage, thank goodness for blazers!
As I anxiously awaited for my introduction and to be called to the stage, I reviewed my notes and a few of my opening jokes (fingers crossed that they worked, they were new jokes). I had prepared for many months leading up to this event, it was a big one. I researched the group, some of the top and lower level companies that were attending and I was ready to present and inspire a room filled with approx. 750 MLM CEOS, CMOs and executive teams.
As I began my keynote with an inspirational story and a few jokes (I was lucky enough to get some deep laughter from the room…phew), I sat down on the stage and looked straight out and said “your industry is in trouble, you’re stagnant, stale” I then stood up and said “you haven’t even begun to tap into the opportunity that I have found throughout my research in these past few months, and that should scare you and excite you at the same time”. I was harsh and got straight to the point, they seemed to appreciate that, because they didn’t boo me off stage. I pressed on and shared my findings, I also shared a few sneak peeks of the opportunities that I had uncovered.
As I continued, I noticed that the energy in the room began to shift. What started with laughs and high energy, started to level out into a more serious crowd. At the time, I thought that the audience wasn’t connecting with my ideas and slides and of course my very high energy, however I somehow finished my keynote and was cheered with a lovely standing ovation. As I walked off of the stage, I was bombarded by most of the room, a line formed all the way to the back of the ballroom. Within 5 minutes, I had 3 major MLM companies say to me, “you’re hired”. What hit me as I talked to the first few executives is that I had just presented a new way of thinking but not only that, a clear path on how to get to these opportunities and grab em. They were lost and starving for what i had just shared.
I decided to work with one of the first companies that approached me because I absolutely loved their CEO, a female, a visionary and her executive team was full of energy and ready to join forces and do the different, shake up the industry a bit! I traveled to their headquarters a few weeks later and met with them throughout the day, I gathered information and decided to offer up a global training process for all 550,000 of their reps, because we had to inspire their global sales team and fast. Their sales team spread across so many countries I can’t even remember how many there were but I did know at the time that one of our biggest barriers was going to be the language and cultural differences throughout the global teams.
I won’t go into the details of what the training entailed, because…well, I entered into an NDA and an exclusive and proprietary agreement. But here’s what I will tell you- technology made the unthinkable become reality, analytics gave us all of the information that we needed to change course, improve, personalize it, and add more modules etc…
Here was my process: (I can show you how to do all of this btw)
- I researched their current sales process in depth
- I identified opportunities and we board stormed them, narrowing them down to the top 2
- I designed a training that could be translated into any language and resonate with most any culture and made it engaging.
- I recorded additional support modules as I analyzed the data and response.
- I was available for Q&As through a community portal for the entire year.
- I designed a transition plan for them so that they could continue the program in-house.
This entire process- research, identifying opportunities, designing, presenting and recording as well as rolling it out across the globe took 46 days. We continued to analyze deeply and by the 120th day we generated the sales numbers and compared from where we had started. It blew us all away and I have to say that there might have been a champagne party…in the conference room for a few hours and there was definitely cake, oh and pizza.
To this day, I am still close with the team from this MLM company as well as the CEO that has since left. I am very proud of this case study. Thank you for stopping by and reading this post, I have a ton more, just click your way on through here.
Enthusiastically,
Starr Hall