At one point in my life, I was impressed by things like fancy office buildings. Then I got educated!Here are some things to look out for in an MLM company, which also apply to some traditional companies:
Big fancy office building
Big fancy sign
Extensive grounds and landscaping
Expensive decorating
Big staff of customer service representatives
Corporate jet
Payment fees or odd payment methods
Let's tackle the office building first. This is largely a matter of prestige, and not too surprising when you consider the personality type of many corporate leaders. Just as they seem to need expensive jewelry, expensive clothing and shoes, a fancy sports car, and membership at the most exclusive golf country club, they want their office building to scream "we are wealthy."Whom do you want to impress? If your company does most or all of its business on the Internet, and no customers have a need to visit your office, why would they care about a fancy building? In fact, might they assume a fancy building means a higher price for the product? Employees want a nice and comfortable office, but they probably care more about a decent paycheck. Distributors want good commissions, and may never visit the office in person. The size of the staff will dictate the size of the office space needed (more on that later) but it still doesn't mean you need a fancy building on separate grounds.The signs and the landscaping go with the building. If you rent space in a building with multiple tenants, the landlord does the landscaping (probably just enough to make it look decent, not outstanding) and you share outside signage or maybe just have a small sign inside to tell people your suite number.Decorating can be outrageous either way, but the people who want the prestigious building usually want fancy decorating too. Do they have a big fountain or waterfall in the lobby, lots of exotic plants, marble floors, or skylights? The initial cost is high, and there is ongoing maintenance for all of these fancy trappings.Companies do in fact need some customer service representatives. But how many? Every viable company now has a website. The more customers can order online, submit questions via email or find the answer in a FAQ section, the less people you need answering phones. As much as I despise them sometimes, even VRUs (voice response units, those pesky computers that answer the phone and try their best to keep you away from a live person) have their place in streamlining operations. But some companies have made it TOO hard to reach a real person. So you do need a balance to keep customers happy, but in today's computerized world you should not need very many people answering phones.Do you need a corporate jet? In one traditional company I worked for, we learned that the president of the company was using the corporate jet to drop in on golf tournaments where his son was competing. In another company, despite having big offices in 2 cities and needing people to go back and forth all of the time, they did a study and decided that using commercial airlines was far cheaper than keeping the corporate jets. They sold the jets.If you are a distributor for an MLM, does the company assess a fee from every check or deposit? Traditional companies do not, because it isn't necessary! Does your company deposit your commissions to a debit card instead of sending you a check? It might sound cool at first but let me tell you why they do that:
They earn interest on the money you haven't used yet, instead of you earning it
They keep anything left in the account for too long, or after you quit
The first one is obvious. Of course if the company mails a check, they get interest on the money during the mailing time. But once you deposit the check, if you don't need the money right away then you can earn interest on it. It might not be much but why shouldn't you get that money instead of them? The second issue is one that I just realized recently. In some places you can't use a credit or debit card to pay part of the price and pay the rest with another card, or cash or check. Any some businesses have a minimum purchase requirement to use a card. So if you have just a few dollars left on the card, how do you use it? If you transfer the money to your bank account, they assess another fee. So if you have $1.51 on your card and the transfer fee is $1.50, would you do the transfer to get 1 cent? Most people won't! So where does the $1.51 go? Knowing the dropout rate in MLM, think how much money could potentially be left on those cards, and where does it end up? I don't know the answer, except that it does NOT end up with the distributor!Fancy office, or fat paycheck?Are you seeing stars instead of having stars in your eyes?
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