Direct selling is a powerful channel of distribution for unique, high-quality products and services. It also is an effective pathway to entrepreneurship, offering people from all walks of life an opportunity to start their own businesses with little overhead and plenty of support along the way. But as we know all too well, that doesn’t make it easy—for companies or for independent business owners.

To make it to the top of the direct selling space and secure a place as one of the best in the channel, great companies must excel at customer acquisition, recruiting and onboarding new distributors, and building a sense of loyalty strong enough to retain the salesforce.

The best practices outlined in our series are critical for companies to achieve prosperity. Taken alone, each can shore up a company’s business model. Deployed together as part of an overall strategy, these keys to success let a company present itself as a powerful force that will drive change and set the standards in the direct selling space.

When salespeople become invested in themselves they gain more than the ability to earn income and build a network of customers and distributors. They gain the ability to become self-empowered, to change their lives and to improve the lives of others through hard work, dedication to a cause, and the ability to leverage a collective social capital network.