Welcome to tip #8 - on a slightly different theme.......
This wasn't the intended post for today, but was inspired by an event I attended last night - basically invited round a friends place to view a 'business opportunity'....
...Of course that was the first hook, I (and OH) were intrigued so went along wondering what to expect.
The meeting went along these lines - got there, some familiar faces, others I didn't know, 10 mins of nervous chatting whilst everyone turned up, then a presentation (more on that in a mo), a product tasting, a (brief) look at some figures, and finally, the sell.
So the crux of this blog is really about the presentation - our friends, although not presenting themselves tonight, helped the guys who were as they were still fine tuning. It wasn't initially clear what was going on - the presentation was talking about earning a residual income in ones spare time without much effort (suspicions immediately aroused), berries, a large corporate company in the States, a business opportunity and some very rich Americans.....we were becoming a little lost.
Anyway, all became clear when a dvd was played - this piled it on emotionally - lots of images and clips of wealthy so called part time workers driving expensive Mercs etc. I still had no idea what the business was, but the sales approach was to hook me into 'the dream'.
Cutting back then to the presentation - we were told that the product behind the success stories witnessed was a simple health juice made from berries. And even better, to earn our residual income, we didn't have to sell it, but just to share it with friends ("share" later transpired to mean in exchange for £26 a bottle - in my book that means sell, not share).
After a tasting - the product actually tasted good, the presentation flew through some figures. Now, I'm an accountant, and have a head for these things - I didn't understand where the income was being generated from - aside from recruiting your friends into the system and selling the stuff. Perhaps the fact that direct sales of juice are made stops this from being an illegal pyramid selling system. What I do know is that a substantial portion of the 'residual income' I would earn was due to come from recruiting other distributors - that is a classic sign of a pyramid system where the guys at the bottom earn diddly squat.
What I did pick out of the facts was one that read 87% of all distributors earned an average of $1700 (not exact figs) in 2009.
Most worrying was that those who'd bought in to the system were evangelical about it. My friend cited cases of millionaires being made and cancer being cured.
We were then asked to rate the opportunity on a scale of 1 to 10. The guy before me said 9, and that he wanted in there and then. Hmmm - I was deeply suspicious of that - he'd not asked a single question. Could he be a plant? Surely not!
My turn - well, I didn't bother rating it. I chickened out and politely said it wasn't for me but thanks for the opportunity to hear about it. I may buy a bottle of the stuff - it was quite nice. The sales approach was classic American - hook people emotionally rather than rationally, with the power of the group to speed things along. Not my cup of tea (or glass of juice for that matter)
I really hope it works for my friend - he's in early in the UK so it may just do that. Money doesn't grow on trees, or does it?
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