Monday, August 6, 2012

Is Lying Important To IBOs?

One of the things that got me upset after I left the Amway business was the amount of lies and deceit used to attract IBOs, and to keep them in the business. My first encounter with the Amway business was being invited to a beer bust that was actually an open board plan at someone's house. I later attended a meeting and eventually sign up when a very good friend of mine had gotten in and had qualified as Gold Direct (at that time).

As an IBO, I was told that NOBODY made profits from tools. I was also told that WWDB was a non profit organization. Both were lies and to date, as far as I know, not a single WWDB leader has been held accountable for these lies. Other questionable statements were "we don't make pennies until you make dollars", and that upline truly cared about us, and that's why they put on functions. At the time, nobody really knew that some uplines might have been making a living off tools and not from Amway.

Things changed a bit later, with the advent of Quixtar, but then more lies came from many IBOs, such as Quixtar is not Amway and is not even related in anyway. Seems that tricking people into meetings has never changed over the years and still occurs today. There are pockets of IBOs who are ethical, but they are the exception and not the rule. We also saw the perfect water fiasco where IBOs were selling $48 cases of water that allegedly had magical powers, only to find out it was mostly a hoax and Amway finally stepped in to stop some of the wild claims.

The there's the age old lies told about IBO income. I recently had a conversation by email with an IBO who swore that he made $1000 a month from Amway and he said he would shut me up by sending me a PDF copy of his check. Well, none came and he blocked me from contacting him. Now I don't doubt that people can earn $1000 a month from Amway, but the cost will be a bunch of downline to eat losses so you can earn that magical check. Trying to get a straight answer about income from most IBOs is like decpihering hyroglyphics at times.

If you are usinng deception as part of your recruitment process or using other deceptive practices, then you may ask yourself what your prospect will think if and when they discover the truth? This may be why Amway IBOs drop out like flies, where more than 60% of IBOs drop out the first year. I have just touched the tip of the iceberg by the way, I may have to do a follow up blog post to cover more on this interesting topic.