Tuesday, September 23, 2008

My encounter with MLM people

Recently I received a call from an acquaintance, saying that she had a business proposal to discuss with me. I was rather surprised as I did not know her very well, so I was quite curious about the business proposal that she mentioned. Over the phone, we arranged to meet up one day to talk about the proposal, as she claimed that it was difficult to elaborate over the phone.

However, on the actual day, I had another last-minute appointment and wasn’t able to meet up with her. So I sms her about it, and requested for more information to be sent to me via email. She was quite reluctant to email any info to me, and suggested to arrange for another meetup. I was rather busy if my company stuffs and told her that I would like to know more about the business before commiting time on it. So in the end she said that she would drop-by my office to discuss with me and pass me some materials.

At this point of time, I began to suspect that the business proposal was actually some MLM scheme. I do know that MLM people like to refer themselves as business man / woman, and like to claim that they are running a business when they are just sales people or recruiters. So I purposely left my office early and instructed the receptionist to collect the materials on my behalf.

Anyway, when I looked at the materials passed to me, its all about network marketing and how people have misconception about the business model. There wasn’t any information on the products or services offered by the company, as those stuffs seemed to be of a lower priority to them. It seemed to me that it doesn’t matter what they are selling (otherwise they would be promoting to me how good their products are). The only thing that matters is to get more downlines and train their downlines to get even more downlines. Products….who cares?

So in the end, I told her firmly that I wasn’t interested in MLM stuff because I was too tied up with my own company. I didn’t tell her that MLM’s model is against my business philosophy of focusing on offering the best products/services, as I can sensed from our conversation that she is being thoroughly brainwashed already.

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