Thursday, May 14, 2009

Amway - How Many IBOs Must You Sponsor To Get Ahead?

When I was an IBO, our groups used a 6-4-2 plan. I believe many groups continue to use a 6-4-2 plan or a 9-4-2 plan, except for those teams perhaps who emphasized stacking where you basically work 2-3 legs. But the point of this message is how many IBOs must you sponsor to accomplish this plan? I know the Amway recruiters will say all you need is six (6).

"All you need is six". I heard the saying "some will, some won't, somewhere, six will". But what exactly does that mean? MOST IBOs will not sponsor another IBO. Apparently Amway, formerly Quixtar released a figure that stated 1 in 5 IBOs sponsor another IBO. Amway apologist IBOFightback has said many times that most IBOs "do nothing". Thus if only 1 in five IBO can manage to sponsor others and most "do nothing", one can easily conclude that you cannot sponsor only 6 other IBOs. If most do nothing and only 1 in 5 sponsor another IBO, you may need to sponsor 10 or more IBOs just to find a single downline who can sponsor a downline.

Thus if you go by Amway's numbers alone, the more realistic version of the plan would be 30-20-10, based on the 1 in 5 numbers. Does this still sound attractive? Can you fnd 30 people to see the plan, let alone find 30 people to register? Do you get positive reactions when you mention "Amway" or do you get funny looks? Are you upfront with prospects or do you leave out "Amway" when prospecting?

You could be lucky and sponsor say 20 people and go platinum or higher, but conversely, you may have to sponsor 88 people to find 6 downline capable of sponsoring others. If you have not sponsored a single person or have trouble adding new people each month, you should ask yourself an honest question. Is this business working for me? To me this is pretty clear. You will not go diamond sponsoring only 6 downline, unless your downline never quits, or sponsors people before they quit. And even that doesn't guarantee anything.

Realistically, you will need to sponsor 20-30 people personal width, consistently adding new IBOs, or your group will suffer from attrition and backslide. Where are you at?

39 comments:

Anonymous said...

Joe, there is no limit as to how many people one must sponsor to get ahead. It is not the main factor in an IBO's success. Although granted, you're going to at least need a handful, if you spend your time signing people up and selling them on the business and never helping them, you're garunteed to fail. You may have 1 or even 2 that figure the whole thing out on there own and succeed, but that alone won't garuntee financial success. You can actually sponsor 100, build a respectable organization and then blow the whole thing with an affair, investment schemes and unethical practices. There is an Emerald in Cincinnati that has been qualified since the early 90's and this guy has probably sponsored more than 150 over his career. He never realy built his 3 legs, they all knid of built themselves. However, multiple affairs, bad business deals with downline, ripping people off and generally an overall lack of integrity has prevented him from breaking anything but 1 silver in his group outside of his first 3. So I don't know if one can put a number on it.

Joecool said...

Anon, I understand there is no set number. I have heard but cannot confirm, but did hear that Bill Britt sponsored 32 IBOs and was able to reach Crown Ambassador. I have also heard of others sponsoring 100 and not being able to maintain platinum. I am simply looking at possiby averages based on Amway's own numbers.

Anonymous said...

Times haves changed w/ the way Amway pays of course. If you ask your higher upline, they'll tell you that bonuses have doubled and even shorter time to get one now as well. Amway understands the recession is hurting a lot of people. Most people feel they NEED the urge to sign someone up under them, my advice is make them a customer before you pitch a business. I would rather get a few points a few times and have a better chance of signing them up later than trying to sign them up at first and NOT getting anything in return.

Anonymous said...

You are correct. Britt did sponsor 32. Britt also had many legs that became personal through fall out. Britt was never the norm and in no way an overall indicator to the average success. He and Dexter built the business in a very different time and no one has even come close to duplictaing them. The stars of today are better indicators as to what can be done. Look up the Greg Francis, Matt Grotewold, David Dussault, Markiewicz etc.

Joecool said...

Anonymous May 15th,

I believe it is getting harder and harder to build and maintain an Amway business. I believe that there was much abuse by some major uplines in Quixtar and with the Dateline segment and all, people are aware of or know someone who suffered through some of these abuses. The systems are still pushing tools. It appears that the business in the US is declining.

Anonymous said...

If you would only put as much time into running a business as you do into writing a blog then maybe you would have been profitable! The thing is who cares how many people you would have to sponsor! Are you afraid of hard work to achieve a life style second to none. If you dont want to work hard building your own business of any kind, you will work hard for someone else for virtually the rest of your life!

Joecool said...

Hey anon, could you describe exactly what this fabulous :lifestyle" is like? I'd like to know.

Anonymous said...

The fabulous lifestyle that you can develop is called freedom, being an IBO myself and developing a good profitable team, I must say I enjoy it very much, if you enjoy your work you never work a day in your life. And now with personalized websites, and pqv's we have you dont even have to leave the house to make money. Beats trading time for dollars with a boss

Anonymous said...

I think you are both full of it. I built the Am/Quix biz for 18 yrs and never got beyond the PSDD level. We worked the biz, went to ALL functions, were on system, etc... and never could make it work.

Anonymous said...

Hahaha dude your gonna be broke forever..... and I think its funny :) Have fun waking up to your alarm clock for the next 40 years.
- Proud Member of the West Coast Movement.

Joecool said...

Anonymous loser from Texas, why are you posting this comment from your J-O-B?

Unknown said...

It works!!! The person that said he tried to build it for yrs and gave up probably was one more person away from an explosion. 9.2 Billion in 2010.... it works!

Unknown said...

Why is it that all amway apologists use the same rhetoric heard time and time again that is said at meetings? Talk about your brainwashed idiots who don't even realized they've been conned.

I myself never signed up, went to 3 meetings knowing this was nothing but a scam after the first. But alas my G/F wanted me to go so I went. Each meeting said nothing, just rhetoric and propaganda about how rich you'll be and look at this and that listen to this story, blah blah blah. You ambots are weak minded and are nothing more then pawns in this scheme.

Serious IBO said...

Amway works. The question is will you make it work. A scam. LOL!!! This is not a job where you trade hours for dollars. This is a business. If you are not willing to BUILD your own income then this is not for you. A 25 year old Ibo went platinum with 28 IBO's in his group.

All you have to do is get family and friends to support you by buying a product that they already use, just switching to a better brand. once people see your getting a 400 dollar check for selling some products, the 400 dollar check will sponsor people for you and you wont have to go out and find a bunch of people.

very simple business model. if you couldnt make it work its probably because you were focusing on the OLD business model of sponsor sponsor sponsor. Its pretty hard to build it that way. I tried to build it that way for 8 months and talked to over 150 people people and no one got started. I got frustrated.

BUT When you focus on selling products (like the avon and mary kay businesses do) sponsoring will happen when people see your excitement and your checks.

if you sponsor only 5 people and they sponsor only 5 people and those ibos do 300 pv personal circle with customers and personal volume, your a new silver producer. 7500 pv! IF you focus on selling products. you dont need 100 people to go platinum anymore!!

I'll be retiring my wife in 2 years. right after she graduates. im 23 she's 22. Thanks Amway!

Unknown said...

Frozin, you can't have that much Passion without a solid reason, maybe a member of the TEAM or something. You are totally Acluistic.
Generation Y is tearing this business up because they refuse to listen to unreliable sources. Go ahead, keep your pathetic pessimistic opinions about Amway and stay broke. Those that are building their businesses are going to be free while you send your pathetic life making someone else rich. You deserve itu

Anonymous said...

hey doug, you're an unrealiable source. ah well!

**proud Amway hater**

Unknown said...

Anonymous,
9.2 billion in sales for 2010. Winners know a good thing and take advantage of it.
whiners just whine. They don't even have a reason, they just whine. Anonymous=loser.
Losers do everything they can to drag others down so they can feel good about themselves.

Anonymous said...

i can feel good about myself without dragging others down. but i also enjoy ripping to shreds smutty ambots like you. XD

**proud Amway hater**

Anonymous said...

My problem is that everyone looks to Greg Francis as if he were the Messiah. Please, folks. He reads a few books, takes the authors' ideas and applies them to this business model. Anyone can find success in this business if they are willing to spend the money necessary to do so.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... we joined Amway as IBO's 5 days ago and have already sponsored 3 IBO's under us... so what you're saying... hogwash. :) Sorry! We're aiming on signing up 70 within the next 18-24 months.

Anonymous said...

Wow your going fast track already glad to hear that and to anyone who has any kind of opinion of Amway is just that an opinion so just move on.

Sheila Duhn said...

I started in January under my brother, might as well make him money instead of some idiot factory that I worked at for 22 years. Yes, I quit my job in May to run Amway and our newly purchased replacement window company with my husband & son. My biggest point here is that I don't need to make thousands of dollars but the products are out of this world and I have helped so many people with health and skin issues it ridiculas. The repeat customers love the fact that they don't have to go to the store because I'm here to help them. The Braveheart team from Iowa and MN is going to rock this world! I just signed on my first leg and have 2 others looking to make a little money. The key is that I'm helping my downline meet their goals so I know I'll succeed.

Anonymous said...

would you like to make some extra money? I know a great company that if you put some work into it could pay off huge dividens

Anonymous said...

Don't know if anyone will read this but here goes. The simplicity of the business is mind blowing. Just use the products and let everyone else you know and see use the products. Make some money and at the same time have some tax advantages. Help other people and have some simple fun. If everyone in the world would not buy from the stores as a walkin customer but rather buy as a business owner the products they use everyday at home or in their business everyone could be successful because they are buying as a business owner and have the same opportunity to have a business that has pretty much the same benifits as larger companies. Stop complaining about high prices that the other companies are charging and take the profit that you give them and keep it in your own pocket.

Anonymous said...

Were you once an IBO?

Anonymous said...

it took me 17 months to reach the Platinum level. My sister was my diamond. I quit when i was making between 2-4 thousand a month, here is why. You have to put in about 20hrs a week minimum to maintain your group growth, yet, i had a full time job. My wife never saw me and we almost got divorced (she found someone who would spend time with HER!). We salvaged our marriage after i quit the business. But, here is the shocker that got me to settle down and evaluate the business. The chance of going Platinum, after their 53 years of keeping track, is .01% !!! the chances of going Diamond is .005% !!!!! those 'facts' suck! When we hit platinum, our 17th month, we had over 350 existing downline, but twice that many had signed up to 'build' it. All quit and left us with 350. My sister and her husband had about 10,000 downline still in when they went diamond. But, about 30,000 signed up , most quit and left about 10,000. do the numbers yourself. I was a platinum that had over 700 sign up at one time thinking they would make it to at least platinum. 1 divided by 700=.0001. I asked quite a few diamonds at the different functions how many downline they had in order to reach the Diamond level, everyone had at least5000! so, 1divided by 5000=.00002 ! this is no joke! they don't tell you these numbers when they show the plan. My conscience finally got to me, i was losing sleep realizing I was giving 99.999% of my downline and future downline a 'false hope'. Amway should figure out what the problem is and fix it. It could be a very good business.

Anonymous said...

yeah...not gonna happen. sorry! :)

Anonymous said...

You are obviously an idiot. Don't blame the business just because you didn't make it work. You must have a pretty low self esteem to slam a business just because you failed. Hey, wanna buy some soap?

Anonymous said...

hhj

Anonymous said...

Amway can be a very profitable business. However, Many people treat this business like a hobby. I find it to be like any sales(which I sell real estate during the day) More no's lead to more yes's. The largest difference is I am selling myself and knowledge with real estate rather than a business model with Amway. With that said, Greg Francis has stated on numerous occasions that he consistantly showed 20 personal plans a month. He never sponsored more than 2 per month and never sponsored less than 1 per month. Those numbers don't seem amazing, but there was consistant action. My real estate business didnt blow up the first year, but I kept building relationships and was building some skills(helped through Francis thought process)and eventually, things started clicking. Many people ask, "Why do you build Amway when you are doing well with real estate?" 1. Best life insurance I have. If I die, I know that my wife and kids will be helped to succeed by our mentors, now best friends. 2. I want to coach my kids baseball/football/whatever games when they are old enough. I can't do that showing homes at night. 3. My income in real estate eventually gets capped out unless I start to hire employees or take on a lot of risk. Yes, there is risk involved in Amway, but I can control a lot of the risk by continuing to show the plan. I can't keep the housing market from falling flat. The more I show the plan, the more people will rise up if they want to "move on". There will be quitters. There will be naysayers. There will be excitement. There will be some disappointment. But isn't every job like that? Atleast I was given the option to hang out around good, positive people on a daily basis. I grew up in a nasty area where everyone was negetive, violence was high, belief in anything was low. I don't want to be like that. When it comes down to it, there will be people that succeed and people that will fail. I'm not jacked up about selling cleaning products, makeup, supplements, but I know that the business model is something that I can win with. It's not always about what feels good, but what produces good. Amway is not for everyone. Haha We can tell that by the people that trash the company. I used to hear this as a referree. "If you make everyone happy, then you aren't doing your job" Amway is just a distributor and they produce a business model. That's it. I've been showed the opportunity 3 times before starting. I chose to work with a winning team, true entreprenuers rather than people that were chasing a dollar bill. It's all a thought process. While many people won't agree with this post or will agree with my thought process, I'll be proving to my friends "back home" that this does work if you apply yourself. If you don't, you can't expect to succeed, just like most stuff in life.

Anonymous said...

rubbish

Anonymous said...

Well said. Amway is the real deal. Created more millionairs than Microsoft. Target is to create 30, 000 new diamonds in North America by 2020.
Rocket ship ride!

Anonymous said...

well you have to consume the products is not just about going to function and getting people in is about helping your team and making your points every month products are of great quality

Anonymous said...

any business can be profitable if you put the time and care in to it lol about your wife

Anonymous said...

You have to be in the business to really know how you will be successful in what we are doing, we are not looking if amway works.... it works period.... joecool i feel you are like a lot of people do.. trying to understand something from the outside... not making it work from the inside... the ones that had succeed in this business are the ones that pay the price they had to pay for their freedom... looking the business from the eye of a employee you never gonna see the greatness a lot of people including myself see doing these... like my upline said.. we are in the best moment, with the best people to do these business.. to make other people dreams come true.... to help the world be a better place to a lot of people to our countries..

Joecool said...

What are you talking about? I was an IBO at 4000 PV. I paid the price, I drove the miles. My upline deceived me and lied to me.

Platinum Formerly said...

When I was in, my immediate sponsor (my best friend at the time) made it to platinum with several legs over 1000PV. His sponsor -- another friend of mine -- was a qualified Ruby. I had both of them go down my initial list of 500 friends / family / acquaintances / business associates and we showed over 50 plans combined between the 3 of us.

How many of those 50 got in? Not a single one. I say this not to complain, but I am hard working and have been successful in business (outside of Amway -- am currently a multimillionaire with zero debt) so if others had experiences like mine in Amway then it is no wonder that 50% quit after a year like I did.

Since leaving the business 10 years ago, I have built 3 other businesses (non-MLM) and done well for myself. My former uplines -- the Platinum and the Ruby -- have both since quit. They spent many, many years each trying to go Diamond and are left, sadly, with a heavy heart and some broken promises.

We were all part of the WWDB system, which was actually my favorite part about the entire business. I even kept a few of my favorite motivational CDs and substitute the name of my own business for "amway" when I would listen to the speakers.

Kingpins such as Greg and Brad Duncan -- who were triple diamonds when I was in -- were purported to have over 100,000 downline in their organizations. Even for them, the 50% attrition rate is a killer, because -- if nobody sponsors a new IBO that year -- roughly 50,000 members of their organization will be gone. Since they have downline who actively build the business, they are obviously not going to shrink by 50,000 -- but I saw many of the Diamonds constantly fighting this attrition.

Mike Woods (who was an EDC in WWDB) is now listed on the website as a regular Diamond. And many of the regular Diamonds from 10 years ago are no longer listed at all, suggesting they are qualified Emeralds or below. I heard that more than one Diamond fell all the way down to Ruby, but I don't know if that is true.

It makes me sad because I know how hard they worked to get to Diamond and above. Now they have to face the harsh reality that things aren't really as good at the top as everyone promised or they can continue the "fake it till you make it" paradigm. I hope they finally chose to stop lying to themselves.

If you are in Amway now, decide whether or not you are going to go all the way. About 4% of the general population in the U.S. are financially free by the time they reach retirement age. In Amway, they say you can get free when you reach Emerald. To make it to Emerald I would imagine you have to get fanatical about Amway, the way you would about a business or job you really love. It should be the type of thing you could do all day and not feel like a chore. You should get time shift while doing it and it should be the type of thing you don't want to stop doing. Your spouse or loved ones should have to pull you away from it, practically kicking and screaming, if your heart is really behind the business you are in. If you bring those traits in you will be successful at anything -- amway or not.

Unknown said...

I'm not sure if you have the right information.Bill Britt offered 1200 people the offer.. 900 said no. 300 got started.35 actually did something and only 11 made him a billionaire.its his own words..theres no shortcut and no way you can become a crown with 35 people. Try researching not just searching or hear opinions from people who have no knowledge about what they're talking about..

Joecool said...

Lies. Bill Britt was never a billionaire.