Learning from Direct Sales Communities

While Jono Bacon's book was a great starting point for building my online community of patient advocates, my community had several characteristics different from an open source software community.  The first, as I referenced in my last post, was that technology did not come naturally to most of my advocates.  New software tools needed to be rolled out mindfully.  Another important distinction was that my advocates were not volunteer software developers, they were independent contractors building their own businesses.  Engaging as the work was for many of them, this wasn't a hobby.

To better customize my community building efforts, I turned to my sister-in-law Tammy Romage, who is a National Sales Director with Mary Kay.  She leads hundreds of independent contractors, which is what I wanted to set the groundwork to aspire to.  She has also been doing this long enough that building an online community was not really a consideration when she started out, which made her a rich source of low-tech community building solutions. 

One of her community building tools is her weekly open conference call that she has held at the same time every week without fail for years.  She has developed multimedia onboarding materials (including pre-recorded phone messages) and writes a weekly newsletter.  She is public with praise and celebrates the success of her consultants. 

She spoke of the need to develop leaders within the community - for example, her leaders can step up and hold the weekly call if she falls ill.  They can also be early adopters and promoters - "first followers" - supporting her when she wants to roll out new tools or initiatives.  Her first followers give her traction and support when she kicks off community activities like having 200 selfies uploaded to her Facebook community page by the end of the month.

Her message was to keep the contracting work in the context of the consultant.  She designs all of these materials and activities remembering that she must use them to add value or save time for the contractors.  Coach and support the the contractors, but allow them to work for themselves.  Let them embody their own strengths and grow their own businesses.  Her advice was to be a fire underneath, not a blanket over top.