One of the things my Amway upline always pushed on us was the tools system. While the tools are said to be optional, they are not promoted that way. They were promoted as vital, necessary, almost as if you were insane to try and build an Amway business without tools. Basically, the tools were a defacto requirement. My upline always claimed that nobody ever "made it" without tools. Some Amway defenders insist that the tools work, and that IBOs who were on the system proved it with higher levels of success and product volume. But the tools work for maybe a fraction of 1% of IBOs who try them. The vast majority of people who use tools make nothing or lose money. Similar to a lottery.
IBOs participating in the system (voicemail, book of the month, standing orders, functions, etc) do more PV. I believe this is true, but it is true, only because once the upline can convince you to participate in the system, then that same IBO is also convinced that they should or must do 100 PV as part of the deal. People who aren't convinced that the system is vital, subsequently do not purchase or sell as much PV because they have not been convinced that moving PV will make them successful or wealthy.Critics and Amway supporters have debated this issue for years, but clearly, the evidence supports my position. Why? Because if there was a true demand for Amway products because of their quality and/or value, then there wouldn't be such a steep drop off in movement of volume when an IBO becomes a former IBO. Many, probably most former IBOs never buy a single Amway product once they leave the business. If the products had true quality and value as Amway supporters claim, why don't people continue to purchase 100 PV per month when they quit? Because they never wanted or needed all of that product in the first place? If former Amway IBOs continued to but products, Amway sales would continue to increase.
If someone is convinced that Amway will be their financial savior and that by using tools and moving 100 PV will result in long term financial security and residual income as claimed by upline, then that is what they will do in hopes of achieving the end goal. When that goal or dream doesn't materialize, the former IBOs realize that the tools and products no longer have the value they once thought they had. How many former IBOs will buy standing order or attend functions? If these materials really made you nicer, or saved marriages, why don't any former IBOs keep buying them? Why do they resort to selling them for pennies on the dollar on Ebay or Craigslist? What happened to the great return policy?
Bottom line is that the tools don't work. They only work for the uplines who directly profit from the sale of tools, plus the artificial demand in product sales created by those IBOs who are convinced that Amway wil make them rich. Once the reality sets in that Amway will not make them rich, and that the tools are simply draining their resources, then the demand or tools and Amway products disappears almost instantly. There is no unbiased evidence that I know of to suggest that these tools work, and basically, the miserable amount of new diamonds emerging in the US seems to confirm this fact.
2 comments:
The tools DO WORK - for those who profit from them. When I was in "the business" I often heard "you don't have to buy the tools, but don't you want to be successful?" I was involved with a group made up of good honest people who loaned out tapes, books, etc. My sponsor quit his job at 55 to go full time in Amway and was in in for for 20-25 years as his sole source of income. He never surpassed Direct Distributor (I'm guessing that's called Platinum now?) and he struggled to make a living the whole time. We remained friendly after I left and he was very willing to say it wasn't for everybody. He got by, never got rich, worked hi s but off. I think he got to an age where he figured "what else can I do?" I was in as a young guy in the late 70s-early 80s during a big growth for period for the company. ALL of the Rubies, Emeralds I knew lasted a number of years but all of them collapsed. There was a young couple I prospected who ended up getting in with another group and built a Ruby distributorship relatively quickly. Both left their jobs as teachers. Turns out they had refinances their house to pay for venue rentals on the large meetings they ran. Eventually got foreclosed and divorced. I have another story, closer to home that I'll write about at some point about someone I knew who was in during the late 90s. What really bothered me early on was the penetration and saturation in my local area (as to numbers of distributors) and yet in their product categories Amway was never more than a blip in market share.
When I was in Amway in 1970 we were told that the city with the biggest concentration of Amway dealers was Montreal, Canada. And yet Amway had less than five percent of the household cleanser sales in that city. Those who told us this went on to say "You don't have to worry about product saturation -- there are plenty of people who haven't tried Amway products yet, even in a heavily penetrated city like Montreal!"
Since we were young and foolish, this sounded great to us. We didn't realize what any experienced real businessman would have figured out quickly: Amway had less than five percent of the market because VERY FEW PEOPLE ACTUALLY WANTED THEIR STUFF.
This is the elephant in the room that Amway freaks do not want to discuss or even acknowledge -- Amway products are non-competitive, and are rejected by the general public. This is why anyone who wants to be successful in Amway has to do it by means of massive recruitment, or the sale of "teaching tools."
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