In the Amway business, most active IBOs are advused to trust upline. To think of upline as a coach or a mentor. These upline mentors or coaches are supposed to have your best interest at heart and they will guide you to success if only you will be open to learning. Many uplines, including my former uplines used to coin the term "copy" or duplicate. If you can do that you will be successful. Even the simplest of people can copy. The upline may crack a joke about getting thru school by copying. Thus, many IBOs follow exactly what their upline advises them to do.
But then uplines turn the responsibility away from themselves. Many Amway defenders will also claim that downline should not simply follow the advice of upline. They may make a ridiculous claim that standing orders and functions contain advice that must be discerned. That information is like a buffet. You pick and choose what you need and discard the rest. If you are a new IBO or prospect, let me tell you that is a load of guano (crap) that is being heaped on you. Your upline is touted as having experience and wisdom in the Amway business, which is why you are paying good money for voicemail, books, cds, and functions. So why would their advice be something you pick and choose? How would a new IBO know what to pick and choose?
Imagine hiring a guide for a trek in the wilderness. The guide is supposed to be an experienced outdoorsman, perhaps an expert. So if he recommends that you eat certain plants or fruits, you trust that he is going to guide you right. Imagine eating something that made you sick to your stomach, only to have the guide tell you that he just points out plants and fruits and you have to discern which is good for you and which is not. You would fire the guide and tell everyone you know not to use that guide anymore.
But here we have these "systems" such as Network 21, WWDB or BWW that have been "guiding" IBOs for up to 20 years or more in some cases, and the number of diamonds are negligible. Sure there are many new platinums, but many tool consuming platinums have been found to be losing money or making very little money for their efforts. What's more, it would appear that Amway is losing ground in North America based on sales. One can reasonably guess that any new platinums that break are simply replacing the volume for a platinum that no longer exists or a platinum that no longer qualifies. My former upline diamond appears to have all new qualifying platinums from the time I was in the business and here's the kicker. My former diamond had 6 downline rubies. As far as I know, none of these rubies are qualified as platinum anymore, although I have heard that some of these are still active.
Uplines also program their downline to take responsibility for the failure. Thus you have IBOs who did everything that was asked of them, only to fail. Yet these IBOs often blame themselves for their failure. It is my opinion that former IBOs who did everything asked of them only to fail should file a formal complaint against their LOS with the better business bureau. Amway defenders like to think that a lack of formal complaints means that the system works when clearly, there is no unbiased substantial evidence to suggest that the system works. It looks like some succeed in spite of the system, not because of.
The catch in all this is uplines skirting responsibility for the outcomes of those they "mentor" and profit from. IBOs should ask if upline really cared about their success, why do you have to pay for any help that you receive from your upline diamond?
I think 99 % of uplines are clueless. They just repeat what they have been told and have no idea what a business strategy or sales plan looks like. I wanted to run this as a business. When i asked how to sell products that were so expensive i was told this is not about products. When i asked how to help people not able to sell or sponsor i was told i needed to believe and it would work. This is why i think so many people quit. They see customers astonishment at high prices. They see keen recruits unable to sponsor. And there is no training to help them. The big pins have no interest in seeing the business increase. They make money from tools. They just need to ensure their groups sponsor as fast as the quit rate. Then they are ok. I reached platinium in less than a year. Then i quit. I wanted a business this is not one. This was over 20 years ago. Since then ive seen hundreds of diamonds going broke. With the way its run its the only outcome possible.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that post. It's amazing how many former platinums I've spoken to over the years. The real money is when you sell seminar tickets and standing orders. You're right, the upline doesn't give a rat's ass about your success, they just want you committed to the system.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in, it was tough to cough up money for 100-300pv a month. So I started selling cellphones from Amway's wireless store and created a lot of PV every month b/c you get 100pv per new account. My upline hated this b/c it wasn't the way the business was being taught. But he couldn't deny the fact that I generated a lot of pv's for his team. I told him who cares, I'm still meeting and surpassing the standard of 100-300pv monthly. But he stressed the "duplication" part of the business, that only I can do this and it's hard to duplicate what I did. He say's I never follow instructions well. I never told him this, but I didn't have to follow his instructions b/c all I had to do was look at his other downlines, my cross-lines and realize that they were like robots who followed his directions to the T. and they can't even surpass my "pin" level. So, why follow his guide when I can see how sorry it was with my crosslines. Main thing is these uplines don't have a clue about business. Everytime I bring in new IBO's, they get all screwed up b/c I teach them how to generate pv and make a profit, then the dumb class teaches them something differently, like lose money on personal use. All ends up confusing for my team so they quit b/c they didn't know what the heck to do. Thank goodness some of them followed me into my new venture and all of us are trumping Amway IBO's incomes right now.
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