One of the things that many Amway defenders will cite is that the people who don't succeed didn't work or try hard enough or didn't put in enough effort. While I agree that one must work hard to succeed in many endeavors, I will also state in my informed opinion that working hard and success in Amway may not be related. I say this because I have seen so many testimonies of people who worked the Amway business hard and achieved little or no results. Even those who took the time to learn everything upline taught and put in the hours did not succeed in Amway. My former sponsor was all out hard core. He started Amway in 1993 and is still in Amway, plugging away with little success.
Part of the problem is that many uplines emphasize recruiting as their focus, even though there is no direct compensation for doing so. In fact, recruiting downline often comes with much expenses such as gas, babysitters, and the false belief that an IBO needs standing orders and seminars to learn this. Also, Amway has a spotty reputation in the US, thus making recruiting potential downline a very diffcult task. Even IBOs who sponsor people will find out that many recruits will quit or do little to nothing. And en emphasis on recruiting is a red flag as identified by the FTC. (Reading the recent Herbalife and FTC findings will shed light on this issue)
An important part of any business is to find customers to buy your goods. Because IBOs already spend much of their time recruiting and not selling, they are already at a disadvantage over many other businesses. Add in the seemingly uncompetetive prices of Amway and Amway partner store products and you give IBOs yet another disadvantage over most other businesses. If there were better value in these goods and services, then IBOs who sell instead of recruit would be much more common. Also, the Amway compensation plan often rewards uplines rather than the IBOs who actually do the work of moving the volume. And take a moment to think about this. What business can survive by recruiting other business owners instead of selling products to customers?
I also believe that the Amway business is so outdated and inefficient. While you may have a website to sell your goods, you have restrictions that severely limit the ability of an IBO to drive traffic to their website. The person to person touch may sound nice and flowery, but it is the most inefficient way to make sales. It is why people pay millions to advertise during the Superbowl, because you may have a hundred million people watching the adervtisement and can drive up your name recognition and sales.
While working hard is definitely important to succeeding in any venture, I don't believe there is any bonafide correlation that working hard equates success in the Amway business for the reasons I have outlined in this post.
As John Doe has pointed out, face-to-face sales were originally what Amway was all about. It was a small-town operation that involved selling a limited range of products to neighbors and friends, for the purpose of making a little extra income. Recruitment of others into the business (as "down-line") was possible, but secondary. Early Amway literature spoke of a young boy in Florida who wasn't old enough to recruit a down-line, and who therefore simply sold Amway products to his local community. He made himself a nice bit of extra spending money by doing this.
ReplyDeleteIt was when people started having dreams of being bigshot millionaires that all this changed, and Amway became a racket of recruitment and self-consumption.
Yes, the business seems to have consisted of part time product peddlers and became corrupted by a few high ranking Amway distributors who found that selling false hopes and dreams were far more profitable than selling Amway products.
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