Where your analogy is not all well and good is if you are looking to show someone the Amway Business.

Just like if that mattress company were looking to find another seller/promoter of their mattresses, it would seem kind of goofy, if they didn’t mention their name, and the entity that this potential seller/promotor would have a legal contract with, now wouldn’t it?

1. Amway is a provider of products they are a wholesaler with a generous comp plan basically
2. IBO are private intities, kinda like mattress dealers

So, when you walk into any traditional business, rarely will any business owner share the source of there inventory. As a business owner my source is confidential. If a business owner decides to expand operations and need a partner they wouldn’t say the name of the source they would typically say “I am going to open another “Mattress warehouse” location in whereever” despite their source maybe temperpedic or what have you.

So, no as an IBO one doesn’t have to come out and say “Amway” because their particular business may not be indicitve of an Amway sourced business in Cali and its important not to confuse this business with someone else business.

I hope that makes sense.

When you ask an Oracle Siebel CRM salesperson what they do they tell you they sell Oracle Siebel CRM software.

It’s common business practice and common sense to tell people directly and transparently what you do so you can find those who want/need what you’re selling.

In the world of Amway often that isn’t done. Posturing under the pretext of wanting to create curiosity is done to avoid having to admit its MLM or Amway. The simple question of ‘What do you do?’ is danced around – not creating curiosity but triggering a feeling of deception. That leads to difficult conversations with prospects and high turnover in our industry.

My experience is the argument that you’ll lose prospects by telling them up-front you have a business and products powered by Amway Global doesn’t take into account the more than offsetting number of IBOs that will stay in business because they are no longer stressed about being deceptive.

Retail stores will employ sales staff, even though it cuts down on the per-sale margin. Why? Because it’s hoped the increase in volume will make for greater profit through increased volumes and increased volume discounts from the supplier.

Same thing in Amway. We “recruit” people in the hope the increased sales volume will increase overall profitability. It takes time away that could potentially be spent on higher margin personal retail sales, but down the track it can end up creating sales (and profit) which you’ve put no direct time at all into.

I’m afraid you misunderstood the 1 in 63 odds – that’s not for people who “do everything right”, far from it! That’s just the odds from sponsoring just one person. That’s not hard. Heck, I sponsored 5 in my first couple of weeks. A typical requalifying platinum has likely sponsored 20 or more people personally. As I mention further on in the article, doing enough to earn a bonus on that one person (which means you either have more legs or some customers) increases the odds to 1 in 35. That’s still doing very little!

What if you did what was recommended every month for the 1-2 years it’s suggested it takes to reach platinum? What are the odds then? I saw an informal survey done of participants at a seminar. Almost every person who had done what was recommended for at least the previous 6 months was at “silver producer” or above. Silver Producer means you’ve done one month of the six months necessary to be considered “platinum”. That suggests a success rate approaching 100% (!!) … if you learn and work hard for a period of months or years, as is recommended.

The main point is that very, very, very few people do much at all. They join, maybe dabble a little, and then go and do something else – much like the thousands that join the gym and never follow through.

There’s some income stats for the US, albeit out-dated, on http://www.thisbiznow.com.