Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Are Amway Tools Needed?

Buy products, sell products, sponsor others. That is the Amway business in a nutshell. If you have bought and sold Amway products, you already possess the main skills needed to run an Amway business. If you have also sponsored downline, you probably have all the skills needed to build an Amway business. So the question is how much training and tools are needed? Is the investment in tools worth the price for what you get in return? In my informed opinion, I would have to resoundingly say "no".

For many IBOs, the tools are the reason why they are unable to profit. Voicemail for example, is an outdated tool that costs more than most IBO's bonuses. With the ability for IBOs to use email, twitter, or facebook, voicemail is an outdated and frankly, less efficient manner for an upline to communicate with their groups. Standing orders, while some training and advice may be helpful to IBOs, a weekly subcription quickly becomes an expense that an IBO can do without. My upline swore that tapes/cds were vital in sponsoring other, but I had never sponsored, or knew of other crossline who used a tape/cd to sponsor someone. As I said, if you already sold a product and sponsored downline, you probably already possess the skills needed to build an Amway business.

Functions, especially the ones that require airline travel are the most costly and gives the least return on investment. You leave your home and business to attend a function somewhere. You incur a lot of cost and while you are gone, your business is closed. For most IBOs, they will never recoup the expense of one of these functions, let alone having multiple functions througout the year. Also, the functions appear to be more of a social event than an actual business seminar. Sure, the bright lights and touching speeches may inspire you, but how does that translate into business growth? I never observed appreciable growth in my group or crossline as a result of a big function. Sure, there may be exceptions, but overall, the functions were just a drain on IBO resources.

It is my observation that when uplines talk about tools being "needed", they are saying it because upline needs you to buy tools. For many uplines, the tools business is their primary business with Amway being secondary. Some uplines earn far more from the tools sales than from Amway. For that reason, the tools sales are "needed". If you are new or seeking information, try asking upline or your sponsor, what tangible benefit can be received by attending a big function. My sponsor told me that he could not describe the event, that I simply "needed" to attend it in person and see for myself. After my first major function, I did not see what the big deal was. I had to use time off from work, incur some fairly large expenses for travel and it did not result in business growth.

So are tools needed? It is my opinion that some tools may be helpful to an IBO, but if the tools do not directly teach you to sell Amway products or result in you being able to sponsor downline, the tools purchases can be questionable as it won't help your bottom line. However, your continued tool purchases greatly benefits your upline diamond's bottom line. Beware.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Only an idiot would fall for the tool scam, say more that once or twice. These idiots that make these tapes, CD's, pod-casts are just a bunch of cult-like narcissistic scam artists. If people fall for their con-game, they are really lacking in their own self-esteem, have a true lack of business sense and must have flunked basic math. People should do a back-ground check on their up-lines before they commit one thin dime to Scamway. Heck spend a couple hundred bucks to have a PI do it for you because that money would be better-spent with knowing the BS financials of the cons before you give them your hard-earned dollars.

Joecool said...

Good comment. I wonder what background checks would turn up on uplines? LOL. But people believe the BS because they want to believe the possibility of early retirement in 2-5 years and residual income.

Anonymous said...

You forgot to mention exactly how utterly worthless the tools, training and functions actually are. The weekly meeting shows the "plan" aka draw a pyramid on a whiteboard. Then afterwards there is super important high level training "class." It's like 2 hours of purely motivational speaking while also circling the steps on the pyramid board again. No info at all except if you work it it will work, go talk to people don't be scared, I talked to this couple in Lowe's the other day, get excited we are about to be rich wooo fired up! Then the regional meetings and the big functions which you pay to go to are exactly the same thing. Literally no info is given, just motivational speak. The functions are like a church revival culminating in an actual church service on Sunday (with diamonds preaching). "This is what it's like to be rich, you want to be rich! Oh and really this whole business is about becoming a Christian, so even if you don't make money keep on coming for Jesus!" And the weekly cds are recordings of these functions.
At first I was so eager to go to training and the functions and to get my educational cd tools. I remember with each time I kept thinking "where is the info? Is that it?" Literally some of the cds are just a 25 minute attempt at comedy. There is zero to learn from the teaching as there is no teaching.
I wonder how well people could do without any of the "system" but we well never know as Amway won't allow it.
I fell for amway at 19, tried for a year and I couldn't even convince my best friends to join despite me saying I would even work for them and put downline under them. Crazy. I think I only fell for it because I didn't understand that Amway and many other mlms had been around for decades before and that probably 90%-100% of Americans have been offered to join one and already said no.
I just recently reconnected with my upline on Facebook a decade later, yes 10 years, and from ask the pictures it looks like he still has very few and every few months is pics of entirely different people, everyone quit. And I can see he is living in a modest town home, looks two bedroom size.
How come even the dumbest people cant see that after 15 years they are still not at the promised 2 years income level? How can you try to sign someone up promising them what you haven't come close to?
90% of business fail, and they are happy to say that applies to ibos yet they don't think that threw. You and 9 people signed up at the same time, will you be the 10%? You ONLY need 5 people, so at that rate you really have to sign up 50 people right as so many will fail out? And then those people need to sign up 50 and each of those need to sign 50 to get you that 3 levels deep six figure income. Bottom line, it adds up so quickly until the whole world has tried.
The only real hope is chasing broke college students who might have not heard yet, oh wait, wake up now ruined this batch :p
I'm always so anxious to see Amway finally crumple and it certainly will someday.

Joecool said...

Spot on comments. Not sure Amway will crumble but hopefully people can get easily accessed information and avoid being scammed.