Real Time Payments: A Must-Have Feature for Your MLM Software

MLM Software
Back to News May 10, 2019

Real Time Payments: A Must-Have Feature for Your MLM Software

Making payments to sales reps is much more than a simple transaction. Your flexibility in making payments can actually be a major competitive differentiator for attracting new sales reps in our “gig” economy. Just be sure your MLM software can keep up with what you have in mind.

You’re probably used to a monthly payment cycle—and so are many of your sales reps. In fact, most MLM compensation plans include accelerators based on monthly sales volume. For example, if you sell up to $1,000 of product this month, you’ll make 10% commission, but if you sell $1,001 or more, you’ll earn 15% commission.

And then there’s the whole issue of teams. Mary and her downline are considered a team. You may try to inspire teamwork by telling Mary that if her entire team collectively sells $5,000 in product this month, everyone who made at least one sale will make 20% commission on those sales.

This system has worked for decades. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Well, the system may not be broken, but the expectations of many of your sales reps have changed—and your MLM software will need to adapt.

Can Your MLM Software Do This?

Sales reps who are trying to build up a business that provides a steady monthly income may not mind only being paid once a month. But participants in our gig economy are different.

They’re likely to sell more when they’re planning a trip to Disney World and want to be able to stay in the fanciest hotel on site. Or when they got hit with an unexpected mechanic’s bill and want to pay it off ASAP.

In other words, they participate in direct selling because of the power it gives them to dictate their own income in times of need. And once they’ve generated that income, they’ll want to have it in their hands as soon as possible.

So if it hasn’t happened already, you’re going to start getting requests from your sales reps for weekly commission payments, daily commission payments — or even immediate settlement.

Are you equipped to give them what they want? If not, they may lose their motivation to sell for you. After all, for someone with an immediate cash flow challenge, a payment that’s not coming in for another month might as well not be coming at all.

Try These Flexible Payment Methods

Of course, offering weekly, daily payments or real time settlement isn’t the only way you can differentiate yourself for today’s sales reps.

Think of other ways you can meet the unique needs of your distributors. For example, some reps come from underserved communities in which it’s common for people not to have bank accounts. They may be used to buying most things with cash.

You’re not going to send their commission payments in cash, of course. But you should consider giving them the option of receiving their payments in the form of co-branded Visa debit cards. You can stamp your company logo on each card, and then enjoy the free promotional activity that happens every time one of your reps makes a purchase in a store. And when the sales rep’s card runs down in value, you can simply “recharge” it with their next commission payment.

Here’s another option: depending on how many of your sales reps are also avid customers, you may find that paying them in terms of reward points is a good motivator. You can let sales reps redeem these points for discounted or free products, for office supplies that help them run their businesses, or even for trips and other rewards.

You can even give reps the opportunity to route some of their reward points to a charity of their choice.

These are all excellent ways to inspire greater results from your sales reps—but again, you can only pull it off if your MLM software is up to the task.

The Advantage of Single-Tenant Software

We’re in an age when your MLM software isn’t just another tool you use behind the scenes to keep your business running. Your software can now give you a competitive advantage by allowing you to offer a wide range of payment options to your sales reps.

Thatcher’s Prowess software is designed to support every payment model we’ve discussed here—and then some. Why is Prowess so much more flexible than most MLM software? Because of the way it’s built.

Most other platforms are multi-tenant platforms, which means that all customers are essentially using the same one-size-fits-all platform with separations provided only to ensure security of data. Their payment processing controls have to stay the same across the shared platform. Prowess, on the other hand, is a single-tenant platform. This means that each client gets to use their own highly customizable solution.

We can configure your Prowess implementation to support whatever discounts, payment methods, and payment schedules you have in mind. And you can share this good news with your sales reps. Learn more about Prowess MLM software.

 

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