For those not familiar with the term, Multi-Level Marketing companys are those companies where they have independent reps who go around hawking their products. The reps also have incentives to recruit additional reps, who they sometimes recieve a commission from. They are often erroneously referred to as “pyramid schemes” although they are similar and many of the disreputable companies are, in fact, actual pyramid schemes.
Avon and Amway are well-known MLM companies.
So one thing I have noticed over the years about these companies is that they are very cult like. I interviewed at a couple when I was out of school, not knowing what they were. The people all had that dumb, lobotomized grin on their face. They were very secretive about what the company actually did until the main dude could give his special pitch. The pitch itself often consists of telling you how dumb your parents, friends and teachers are because they will probably turn down their nose at what you do and how they don’t want to make a million dollars selling their crap. And they became very hostile whenever I indicated that I thought it wasn’t for me.
I know people from school and whatnot who are actively involved in these programs. They constantly use self-help motivational empowerment bullshit-speak. They are manipulative, often inviting friends and family to parties which turn out to be marketing tools for their company. Basically, they lose all their friends because no one wants to be pressured by them to constantly buy their products and they don’t want these people bothering their other friends.
So thoughts? Similar experiences? Or is everyone just waiting to sell me knives, waterfilters, makeup or performance supplements so they can qualify for the pink or white or black Mercedes and I’m the one out of his mind?
Okay, glad I’m not the only one this happened to. Had a pair of friends who kept telling me about the ‘great stuff’ they’d been buying ‘from a friend’, and even force-fed… Er… ‘Gave’ me some of it (tasted terrible, but, being friends, I was polite about it.). A couple weeks later, the recruitment speech started. I politely said no, and was promptly never invited back over again. The weirdness was… Weird.
Seen it. Had a friend who told me about an ‘amazing opportunity’, and I could go with him that weekend and experience it for only $700, which was a small amount compared to what I would be making afterward. Accidentally interviewed at one of those places after college, I think it was called Primerica. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, nor ignore their emails hard enough.
Ooh I interviewed at Primerica. I wanted to correct the math in their presentation. Lesson learned, never go to an interview based on a recommendation from one’s barber.
aieeee! Primerica! I’d forgotten about that. One of my best friends (at the time, we’ve since become slightly more distant) got a job with them. He left after about six months, but never said anything about it, really.
Fast forward about 4-5 years, I’m job-hunting and I hear about Primerica. I call up my buddy and ask about them, and his only response is, “Turn around and run away. If they have your phone number, get it changed. Seriously.”
They are strangely cult-like. I used to be a stagehand and the theater where I worked was often rented out for a quarterly, annual, or pep rally-type meeting for an MLM. The “meeting” would last 3-4 days and would cover different subject matter each day. I worked closely with the organizers, and eventually asked one of them to give me the skinny- what’s it all about?
He slipped me some internal training materials once, I think in the hopes that I’d be interested in joining. I don’t think they were the kind of materials they generally provided to anyone who wasn’t already involved in the process. I read through it one night and was really turned off by the sneaky ploys they used to whet the interests of their marks. For instance, one of the suggestions in the materials was for a salesman to call a friend and ask if they were going to be home for the next 30 minutes, because you have to drop something off. Don’t say any more about it.
Drive to their house and leave the car running while you ring the doorbell. When they answer, say “I’m in a hurry and just wanted to drop this off for you- take a look and I’ll call you in two days to talk about it further. Bye!”, then hand them some brochures about the “product” and take off.
It all seemed so smarmy and fake. And these meetings were so odd. Like you said, they all had these smiles plastered on their faces, as if selling hand creme kept them in a constant state of pre-orgasmic bliss. “Sell another 5,000 units and you’ll make the Gold Level this quarter! Another 20,000 and you’ll hit Platinum, and 50,000 gets you into the President’s Club! You’ll be driving around in your Mercedes SLK in no time!”
I did that interview too. The entire time my brain was screaming "Cyberdyne!"and I knew that I couldn’t ever even consider the possibility of that kind of work. When they didn’t ask if anyone had any questions at the end and they just started signing people up I ran as fast as I could to get out of there.
I think the problem comes in when some average Joe makes a couple grand *“following a few simple principles” * and wants to share with the world - Err scratch that - HAS to share with the world to make more money. Money does weird things to people…how they make it can certainly get colorful.
My sister and brother-in-law were selling Amway for a while. They were a huge pain in the ass, and eventually wound up filing for bankruptcy after spending way too much money traveling to places like Boise (seriously, Boise. Who the hell goes to Boise on purpose?) for conventions.
They eventually gave up the Amway, although not the fundamentalist Christianity that seems to go hand-in-hand with it. On the upside, their attempts to sell me God, while equally tedious, at least don’t result in them leaving bags of product around my house.
I was interviewed by Primerica once, too, not knowing who they were, and knew in the first thirty seconds they were full of shit.
But to answer your question, there’s two reasons:
Because it’s what sells it. A fact-based presentation of the sort that would impress a real businessperson won’t work, because it won’t work. If you were to actually present a clear model of Amway’s business to a person who knew what questions to ask you’d be laughed out of the room in four minutes. You’re selling pipe dreams to suckers. The only approach is to push the dream to people who’ll buy that shit on spec, and avoid talking about the real numbers because the people who know enough to think about them won’t buy the shit you’re selling if they know the truth.
Because that’s who gets into it. The dumb, lobotomized grins you see are in large part there because the people who get into MLMs are, for the most part, dumb as hell. The few who aren’t learn to act that way to get along with the dumbasses. You don’t see dumb, lobotomized grins in advanced rocketry science classes because there are no dumbasses there. You see them at MLM meetings because it’s mostly dumbasses.
I’m not trying to sound elitist - I’m no Einstein - but it’s mostly just that MLMs are preying on people who are really goddamned stupid. As I mention in my other post, I have relatives who get into this shit, and they’re all idiots. The relatives I have who are not idiots are not into MLMs. The ones that are, are. I’ve never known a single person in my entire life who was sucked into MLM who was not, at the absolute best, uneducated or naive, or the sort of person whose greed turned them gullible. Most were just dumb.
Thanks for posting that link again, RickJay-it simultaneously was the most amusing and most appalling post I’ve ever read on this board. I once was approached by a couple of Amway guys, and almost bought their bull until I did some research and also trusted my gut instinct.
I was asked to “interview” with one of these companies. I’d been unemployed for several months, and they’d pulled my resume off of Monster.
It was smallish, maybe 30 people, and they were selling water filters. After the first pep talk, I mentioned that it seemed like Amway, which they pooh-poohed vigorously, so I consented to stay for the second part of the pitch.
The instant they mentioned the $89.95 “starter kit” that you needed to get to take advantage of this incredible opportunity, I stood up and left.
Oh yeah! I interviewed with the water filter guys back in 96. They had rented out some temporary office space in Hartford, CT and one of their “selling points” was how awesome thier office was. I’m like “it looks like an office”.
I got in an argument with their glorious leader because after 20 minutes of no one telling me what the heck I was doing here I’m like “look, if you aren’t going to tell me what this is all about, you’re wasting my time and I’m out of here”. He immediately became very hostile and I thought I might have to beat him down.
Since this is in IMHO, I feel I can contribute (GQ would require more effort on my part to provide sources and whatnot than I care to exert).
People involved in MLM are so cult-like because MLM schemes are so cult-like. As has been noted above, the relative success of these groups comes not from having a sound business model that people invest in after much thought - it comes from the same sorts of techniques that cults use. Boiled down, these techniques use a lot of emotional pressure, reinforcing “proper” behaviors via public commendation and even love-bombing, and punishing behaviors and speech that do not serve the purposes of the group via public humiliation and ostracism.
So a lot of the cult-like behavior comes from a strongly reinforced group-think. It seems strange indeed from the outside, but for someone who’s just come off of a weekend intensive with like-minded folks, it’s the norm.
Highly intelligent and well-educated people tend to be more cerebral (but isn’t it just truthier to go with your gut?) and to favor rational thinking, but there are plenty of people who are of average or above average intelligence and education who succumb to the emotional and social pressures applied. And of course, as RickJay notes, these companies often go after the low-hanging fruit.
Actually, it occurs to me that since the techniques used aren’t exactly conducive to critical thinking, being involved in MLM groups might actually make people “stupider” in that sense, at least until they have the sense to leave.
One thing that I think is key to understanding how so many people can be sucked into such schemes is that these groups don’t spring the weird on you all at once. They get you to invest a little time and maybe money, and to give them a chance to get their hooks into you, before they try to sell you the rest of the package. When you wonder how anyone could be fooled into investing their whole lives, the key is that the “foot in the door” was something as innocuous as agreeing to a dinner party invite or a job interview.
Once a female co-worker who I thought was cute and had a mini-crush on came up to me one day and said (in a friendly way) “Hey Rigamarole, I want to talk to you. Come see me later”
Needless to say I was psyched!
When I had time to go talk to her later, she starts her pitch, “I want to tell you about this amazing opportunity. How would you like to travel and make up to $X/week doing it?”
AFAIK, it still doesn’t use MLM. Avon sells cosmetics as their primary business, and uses a network of independent salespeople. You aren’t required to recruit anyone other than customers for the product; there are no fees, just purchases of cosmetics.
Comparing the web pages of Amway and Avon is instructive. Avon gives you plenty of opportunity to buy product online – there is an online store as well as a link to contact a local rep. You can sign up to find out about being a rep, but there’s no talk about how wonderful it is.
Amway doesn’t mention a single product on their main page. If there’s a way to order online, I can’t find it, and every page that mentions products (all in very general terms) also suggests that you’d be better off if you were a distributor. Its products are always second to the “business opportunity.”
It strikes me as similar to the difference between a legitimate publisher and a vanity press. A legitimate publisher talks only about the books its published, with maybe a small, almost hidden link about submission policy. A vanity press talks about how they can get you published, but the links to books being an afterthought.
An aspect of this is also the cost to the seller both financial and psychological. Often the representative does not understand why they are not moving their quota and are often brow beaten and made to feel as losers. The meetings showcase sellers who made millions so why are you a loser? You must be doing something wrong so you need to use the companies motivational tapes and courses to be a better seller. At a hefty price naturally.