Over my Amway and blogging experience, I have come to a conclusion which I will stand by. And this, in my informed opinion, is a signficant problem with the Amway opportunity. The Amway owner, Rich Devos acknowledged this issue back in 1983 in his "directly speaking" tape and unfortunately, nothing apparently substantial was ever done and therefore, the problem exists today.
The Amway opportunity is one part of the issue, with the tools systems being the other prong. Over the years, the Amway opportunity and the tools systems have formed a symbiotic relationship. It is as if Amway needs the system and the system needs Amway. What I mean is that Amway provides the opportunity, and then the system uses the opportunity to sell the system. In the meantime, the system leaders teach 100 PV, product loyalty, and do most if not all of the new IBO recruiting. Amway benefits as the system teaches movement of PV whether by sales or self consumption, and new IBO recruitment, and the system leaders benefit by having a captive audience to sell their cds, books, seminars, voicemail, and website fees.
The conflict of interest occurs when uplines tell their new IBOs that they "need" to attend a certain function, or that they "need" standing order to succeed. The upline is smart enough not to say the system is "required", but certainly, they will put a defacto requirement by sayimg things such as nobody has ever succeeded without the system, but you can try to be the first, or they may say the system is optional, but so is success. Of someone may say so and so diamond (insert) name is a multi millionaire and he advocates the system, but you can go against his advice if you think you know better.
The bigger problem is that these upline leaders will tell you that you basically cannot succeed without these tools, but at the same time, the more tools you buy, the more profit these uplines make. Some Amway apologists will justify this by saying a college professor may sell his own books to his students. But this is not the same thing. A college professor may spend years researching to write that one book. He will be teaching his expertise that is written in the book. When you attend seminars or listen to cds, you do not have one expert guiding you with clear documentation on how they succeeded. You have very general generic experiences coming from various speakers who may or may not have any common background with IBOs. Thus these upline leaders will profit from their downline IBO volume and also from tools that they advise downline to purchasem regardless of downline success or progress in the business.
As evidence of these bad practices by upline, consider this. If upline truly has "valuable" information that would help you succeed, they would get that information to you in whatever means they could. Either by voicemail, MP3, Youtube or whatever. Why would they withhold trade secrets if they really wanted your success? Has it ever occured to IBOs that maybe uplines doesn't want your success? Maybe it is why you must pay for any piece of advice or support you receive. Maybe upline is perfectly happy with people coming and going as long as there are tool purchases because then there are no new IBOs (platinums and up) to share the tool profits with.
There is a definite conflict of interest with profiting uplines advising you to buy tools. The question if whether you see it or not?
P.S. Happy New Year Everyone!
7 comments:
If the System tools were free or very low in cost, do you think this would lead to more success for distributors? While part of me would like to think this would be true, the rational part of me would say that the System and the business would collapse. Upline Diamonds and above wouldn't be able to sustain their purported lifestyles and distributors would continue to spin their wheels not getting anywhere. The corporation could counter by lowering prices, but that would also lower the potential profit bonuses available. Your thoughts?
Amthrax, actually, I believe any tool system or any financial system such as cashflow, or whatever, all have low success rates. This is because these systems are simply not that effective. They all use success testimonials to entice new people, but the fact remains that "success" is quite uncommon.
Lowering system prices will not lead to more success, but it will allow an IBO to play longer. But as you said, the diamond lifestyle would not be sustainable. Lower product prices might allow IBOs to actually sell product and earn some money, but again, not much in it for the leaders.
I believe the leaders would block these measures because their profits would go down.
Eventually, if nothing is done, foreign countries will eventually hit the saturation point as the US has.
Regarding the college professor analogy.
The Amway system would be the equivalent of the college professor selling the student his book, which just contained plugs for that book or other books the college professor had written, instead of containing stuff about the siubject he was teaching you.
The college professor doesn't tell you that you will be wealthy if you read his book. The book has content which will educate you. Most Amway "tools" do not teach you anything about the Amway business. Also, your college professor doesn't sell you additional tools which help you succeed in his/her class.
And - your professor doesn't care if you buy a second hand book or if you get a copy on ebay. Your upline does care. You upline wouldn't want you buying your books from Borders or getting voicemail from another source.
Uhmmm... maybe but I see my upline as my college professor so, I ask that you respect that personal view without your usual arrogance.
Hey, if you want to see your upline as a professor, have at it.
I think it's kind of sad when over 99% of a professor's students fail though.
"...I see my upline as my college professor..."
And I see my daddy as US President. Doesn't mean he is one, though...
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