Amway - Building The Business?

One of the battle cries that were around when I was an IBO was that we were building the business. But as I look back at my Amway experience, I was truly misguided by upline about building a business. We were advised to submit to upline, as many IBOs today, apparently are still advised. We should not try to blaze a new trail, but simply follow in the footsteps of our leaders. Why re-invent the wheel,, we were told. Just use the one that upline created. That trail or wheel was the "system" which consisted of tapes/cds, books, seminars. Follow the system and you were assured of Amway success.

As I look back, I didn't know what building a business really meant. For most businesses, you need ot get more and more customers, or to build your customer base. That is building a business. As you get more and more customers, your business grows and gets more income. In the Amway business, most business building IBOs focus on sponsoring others which may not result in any increase of volume as many newbies do not order goods or quit before doing any substantial business. Also, because of the past antics of many IBOs and IBO leaders, the Amway opportunity
has a bad reputation and recruiting and sponsoring is very difficult for most people.

Even if an IBO were to try and build their business in the traditional manner of selling goods and trying to get more and more customers, they will have trouble finding and retaining customers. That is because Amway products in general cost more than big box and local retailers. As you try to build your customer base, retention of customers will be difficult because of said prices. And the reason for higher prices is because the 30% or so given back to IBOs must be included in the prices of the products.

I know many Amway supporters will argue about Amway's quality of goods, but quality is subjective and the average consumer will look at the bottom line (the price), and not the quality. But to address this, I have not seen any unbiased reports indicating that Amway products are superior to others. And because other companies such as Proctor and Gamble advertise, Amway IBOs have a huge competitive disadvantage.

The way that the few successful IBOs make it in Amway is to find enough downline to suffer the losses for you, and eventually enough downline to pay upline through tools and product purchases, in order for you to make your income.

So are you building a business or looking for downline to sacrifice on your way up the (legal) pyramid?