10 Mistakes Direct Selling Companies Must Stop Making with Their Promotions & Incentives
Brett Duncan is a direct selling strategist who helps direct selling companies take their next steps. He is the co-founder of Strategic Choice Partners and theJuice.
Promotions are one of the most powerful tools in direct selling. They’re also one of the most abused.
When used well, promotions create urgency, unlock momentum and help align short-term behavior with long-term strategy. When used poorly, they waste attention, erode margins, confuse the field and quietly train your sales force to wait for the next deal instead of building a business.
The problem isn’t that direct selling companies run too many promotions. The problem is that many companies run promotions without enough intention, without enough discipline and without enough respect for the opportunity cost that comes with asking for the field’s attention.
Every promotion has a cost. Not just financially, but relationally. Every time you ask your consultants to talk about something, share something, explain something or rally around something, you are spending credibility and focus. When that spend doesn’t produce meaningful results, the damage compounds.
Here are the ten mistakes I see direct selling companies make over and over again with their promotions, and what to rethink if you want promotions to actually work.
1. Wasting Time on Not-So Compelling Offers
This is the most fundamental mistake, and it’s also the most damaging.
We do everything we can to get attention — from customers, consultants and prospects — and then we waste it on an offer that simply isn’t moving. Sometimes the issue is financial. The margins feel tight, leadership gets nervous and the promotion is watered down until it’s technically “safe” but strategically useless.
Other times, it has nothing to do with financials at all. The company is simply out of touch with what the market actually wants, values or responds to. The promotion makes sense internally, but not externally.
Either way, weak promotions are not just ineffective; they actively train the field to disengage.
And here’s the part companies often miss: this isn’t just about corporate wasting a moment. It’s about asking hundreds or thousands of consultants to spend their own time, energy and social capital sharing something that doesn’t feel worth sharing.
If you put the field in that position too often, they won’t complain. They’ll just stop participating. Promotions have to be compelling enough to justify the ask, or they’re not worth launching.
If you put the field in that position too often, they won’t complain. They’ll just stop participating. Promotions have to be compelling enough to justify the ask, or they’re not worth launching.
2. Failing to Focus on New People
A promotion should create incremental behavior. Too often, it doesn’t.
What I see instead is what I call “swapping dollars.” You run a promotion this month and generate $100. Next month, you run a different promotion and generate the same $100, just from the same people buying slightly different things.
Sure, I like repeat orders, and that can’t be overlooked. But if they were going to place an order anyway, nothing actually grew.
Promotions and incentives are short-term tactics that should support long-term objectives. If a promotion doesn’t meaningfully contribute to customer acquisition, reactivation or new consultant behavior, then it’s likely just rearranging existing demand.
That often happens because we keep targeting the same audience over and over again. The same loyal customers. The same top producers. The same insiders who would have done something anyway.
If promotions aren’t creating reasons for new people to act, or dormant people to re-engage, then they’re not doing strategic work. They’re just filling space on a calendar.
If a promotion doesn’t meaningfully contribute to customer acquisition, reactivation or new consultant behavior, then it’s likely just rearranging existing demand.
3. Accidentally Creating Friction Points
Sometimes promotions fail not because they’re bad, but because they conflict with other initiatives.
This happens when multiple promotions launch at the same time, or when a promotion doesn’t align with the compensation plan, enrollment incentives or existing programs. Suddenly, the field is forced to choose between two good options.
That’s a problem.
Choice overload creates hesitation. Hesitation creates inaction. When people feel overwhelmed or unsure which path is “right,” many will simply choose nothing.
Everything you put in front of the field should work together. Promotions should reinforce the compensation plan, not compete with it. Incentives should fit into a clear hierarchy, not exist as parallel options fighting for attention.
Individually strong offers can become collectively confusing if they aren’t designed as a system.
Choice overload creates hesitation. Hesitation creates inaction. When people feel overwhelmed or unsure which path is “right,” many will simply choose nothing.
4. Getting Stuck in Promotional Patterns
Over time, companies fall into a rhythm: monthly product specials, host rewards, enrollment deals, flash sales, half-off items, new product launches. It becomes a template that gets filled in automatically every month.
This is especially common in party plan and legacy structures.
The problem is that no one stops to ask whether it still makes sense.
When promotions become routine, they lose their power. Worse, they train the field to sell only what’s discounted. Full-price selling becomes rare. Margins shrink. Value perception erodes.
At that point, promotions aren’t strategic tools; they’re operational obligations. And no one is actually demanding that you fill those blanks except habit.
Breaking that cycle requires intentional restraint and a willingness to say no, even when it feels uncomfortable. But it could be worth it.
5. Overwhelming Consultants and Customers
Most direct selling companies run too many promotions at the same time.
It’s overwhelming. It’s confusing. And it’s incredibly difficult for consultants to explain clearly.
Simplicity is one of the most talked-about goals in this industry, yet promotional clutter actively works against it. Instead of one strong, clear message, the field is left juggling five mediocre ones.
Often, this happens because a weak core offer gets propped up by additional incentives. But five weak offers don’t equal one strong one. They just create noise.
Clarity beats quantity every time.
Simplicity is one of the most talked-about goals in this industry, yet promotional clutter actively works against it. Instead of one strong, clear message, the field is left juggling five mediocre ones.
6. Not Letting Promotions Last Long Enough
There’s an assumption baked into many promotional calendars that everyone understands and embraces a promotion the moment it launches.
They don’t.
It takes time for the field to process a new offer, understand how it fits into their workflow and gain confidence in sharing it. By the time that happens, many promotions are already ending.
Just as the seeds start to take root, they get ripped out.
Not everything needs to be a flash sale. In fact, many week-long promotions should probably run two or three weeks. Month-long initiatives might be better served over two or three months.
Short-term urgency has its place, but constant reset prevents momentum from ever building.
7. Keeping the Field in the Dark
For a long time, I believed companies should keep upcoming promotions close to the vest to prevent sandbagging by the field.
I’ve since changed my mind, at least for promotions. In practice, that concern is usually overblown.
An informed consultant who has time to prepare will almost always outperform an uninformed one reacting at the last minute. Awareness enables planning, messaging and leverage.
Yes, some people may hold orders for next month to take advantage of the promos they know about. But the overall lift from preparedness nearly always outweighs the risk.
Transparency builds trust. Trust builds participation.
An informed consultant who has time to prepare will almost always outperform an uninformed one reacting at the last minute. Awareness enables planning, messaging and leverage.
8. Substituting Training & Field Development with Promos
This is one of the biggest mistakes of all.
When the field isn’t moving, many companies reach for a promotion instead of asking why. Promotions become a substitute for training, clarity and development.
Often, what the field actually needs is reinforcement of fundamentals. Education on existing programs. Clear articulation of value.
Your best incentive is your compensation plan. Your best promotion is the value your products deliver.
When companies stop leaning into those truths, they condition the field to wait for discounts instead of building skill. Over time, that weakens the organization.
Promotions should amplify training, not replace it.
9. Forcing the Field to Endure Half-Baked Promotions
A rushed promotion is usually worse than no promotion at all.
Ideas get launched before they’re fully thought through. Messaging is unclear. Assets arrive late. Details change midstream. User experience falls short.
Even good ideas flop when they’re half-baked. And every flop drains trust and attention from the next initiative.
Promotional capacity is finite. Waste it often enough, and the field will stop listening altogether.
Promos, by their very nature, are meant to address short-term opportunities. But don’t sacrifice good planning and execution, and force your salesforce to suffer through your lack of thorough thinking.
10. Launching Promotions Without Clear Goals or Measurement
This one still shocks me.
I routinely ask leadership teams what the goal of a promotion is and get answers like “more sales” or “more recruiting.” Those aren’t goals. They’re wishes.
Every promotion should have a defined objective, success metric and profitability lens. Moving product at a loss is not success. Neither is activity without incremental gain.
I know there’s a time and place to invest in the spark that certain programs can light, and a profit loss can sometimes be a smart strategic decision. But plan for that upfront. Call it out. More often than not, it happens unintentionally.
Promotions should create value for the company and for the field. If they don’t, they’re just expensive distractions.
Bonus: Not Thinking in Campaigns
Most promotions fail to reach their full potential because they aren’t treated as campaigns.
Instead of coordinated messaging across channels and time, they get announced once and hoped for the best. Campaign thinking requires planning, repetition, reinforcement and sequencing. And, when you don’t run promos long enough, it’s hard to make all that happen.
When you don’t think holistically, you limit reach and impact before you even start.
Final Thought
I’m not arguing that promotions don’t belong in direct selling. They absolutely do. As a matter of fact, they are an expectation in every business.
But because we use them so often, we owe it to ourselves — and to our field — to use them better. That means leveling up not just the offers, but the thinking, planning and discipline behind them.
This is the kind of work I help companies with every day — aligning sales programs, compensation plans, promotions, and incentives into systems that actually move the needle.
Promotions aren’t the problem. How we use them is.
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