I ran a cross a version of an article I had seen last year on a sales website by Eric Chester. It caught my attention for two reasons – 1) it was by Eric Chester and 2) it cited Southwestern Company as a prime example as a successful company when it comes to recruiting, training [...]
Working for a direct selling company, and having the role of telling people about our company… I regularly get asked if Southwestern Company is a pyramid scheme. I shrug it off and explain what a pyramid scheme is and then have to explain what direct selling is. Once this is complete and there is still [...]
Southwestern Company was presented with the prestigious Gold Pen Award by the Nashville Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for the blog you are now reading! This is the fourth award in two years for the blog which has been recognized by various organizations for its excellence in communications. Southwestern Difference was [...]
I came across an interesting question online: “Will door-to-door sales jobs lead to a white collar marketing job?” While the scenario of the person asking it was from a much different perspective – vague newspaper ads with little-to-no information using common buzz phrases such as “marketing,” “no experience required,” and “rapid advancement,” it brings up [...]
The summer of 2010 has been no different than any other recent past summers when it comes to traveling sales crews. While the summer is not quite over, the risk that is traveling sales crews is ongoing – a risk that is actually year-round. The Better Business Bureau of Greater Maryland put out a warning [...]
You know, being that Southwestern Company produces educational products for college students to sell to families door-to-door, and having slung the sample case myself, I found this absolutely hilarious… It is from a blog post from August 5, 2010 titled “Yet another door-to-door guy raises suspicions.” It reads: “Today at 8 p.m., just as I [...]
This post may seem a little dry, so I have added a couple of pieces of word art to spice it up. But, hey… the content is very important. I think it’s a good thing to have checks and balances in any public, business-type situation to regulate corporate ethics. It’s especially helpful to consumers when businesses follow an accepted [...]
Often, members of a traveling sales crews can’t seem to get their stories straight – from school trips to London, to military donations, to a semester in Seattle – they all seem just a hair shady. To add to the shadiness was the local factor: saying they were from the neighborhood and knew people in [...]
Having a degree in journalism, I know reporters, and the media in general, are supposed to take a non-biased, balanced approach to a story. However, in practicing corporate public relations for 13 years, I also know the balance is not always there. This is not on purpose, but occurs often when they simply have only [...]
I was reading an opinion piece by CovingtonReporter.com’s Ryan Ryals (who looks a lot like Geoff Kidney, Southwestern Company’s AV/Webmaster, by the way). Ryals has a humorous slant with several unique suggestions on how to handle what he considers to be door-to-door nuisances. This opinion made me think about how, being in the industry of [...]
