Just wondering ... after watching different members of my family go through equally exuberant selling phases for different vitamins and what not ... is it typical for mormons to fall for these things or are nomos just as susceptible? My family has been through so many (Shaklee, Melaluca, Usana, crazy gas reducing pills and now Visalus). It is starting to really piss me off that I never know when some "normal" conversation will be ruined by a sales pitch. Hell, I won't even buy tupperware unless I can get it in a "normal" store because I don't believe in USING friends and family members to move up the success ladder.

I'm a nonmo. Avon is rather common -- it's not unusual to have a coworker or neighbor selling it. I've seen Mary Kay a couple of times. Once I ran into someone selling Amway, and I was completely uninterested. I thought their goods were overpriced, and that's not how I want to buy that sort of thing. Tupperware seemed to go through a phase where I live. And right now, I've got a coworker selling a line of cute but very overpriced lunch bags and totes.

I'm with you, I'm not really interested in confusing my social life with business. My immediate family has never been into that sort of thing.

A cousin of mine who never ever (that's NEVER) contacted me otherwise, wrote to me out of the blue and tried to get me join some Aqua-whatever, can't remember. Googled and saw in two seconds that it was your ordinary MLM and what's more, some authorities in my country had forbidden the selling of the product because they promised it healed about everything or improved health with no accepted scientific basis.

The red flag in my cousin's letter was "There is no risk at all." Yah right.

when I was a young convert teaching Primary, another convert older widowed lady also teaching Primary casually mentioned she was having a "party" at her house. She was in our little single convert "misfit" [because we were not married and converts are so not sheshul] home evening group. I even asked her if it was Amway. "Oh, no, no." So I was surprised when a guy jumps up and drones on and on with his sales pitch. SHE LIED! I was speechless.

And the mishies lied too. Hmmmm...

BI Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My family has been through so many (Shaklee,
> Melaluca, Usana, crazy gas reducing pills and now
> Visalus).


And what they evidently haven't learned yet is that the products aren't the reason they haven't attained the fabulous wealth promised by those companies (or even made any money). It's that the MLM business model guarantees most people in the chain will fail.

People involved in MLMs will ALWAYS be hitting you up to buy stuff (and worse, to sell it), because the math of MLMs requires millions and millions of participants. They quickly run out of enough people on the planet to keep the chain going.

Yes, Mormons are suckers for MLMs because Mormonism is essentially an MLM where you pay to work for the company. MLMs are also essentially faith-based enterprises. You need faith that the bogus system will work for you, that if you believe strongly enough and work hard enough, if you just knock on a few more doors today and share the good word with enough people, you, too, will attain glory.

I got suckered into one with a well know Jewish-mormon who does tours to Israel... He once told me that he knew the mlm was 'true' because it followed the same structure as the morg. Weekly meetings, regional conferences, area conferences and semi annual company meetings. I didn't have success in it... And now I don't wonder why, I couldn't believe in it, just like I couldn't believe in TSCC. I now know I will never be suckered into one of those again.

Yeah, I fell for a bunch of those MLMs around the same time I was JW and then Mormon. The thought process in belonging to an exclusionist religion is so similar to the MLM recruitment process that you're essentially pre-programmed to accept.

Shortly after my TSSC baptism I tried Amway's new website, Quixtar. Not only were the products overpriced, but the website was so poorly designed there was no way anyone would buy from it.

The only MLM that I at least got SOME good out of was a telephone company. I got great long distance rates for several years from them...but I couldn't recruit most of my family because the company didn't offer service in their area "yet". (They never did, and eventually shut down.)

I agree. I tried Avon, Amway

not for me but good for some

if I sense a sales pitch, well, I get outta there. lol

"You have to buy soap anyway..." Yeah, but the store doesn't call me up and its always on my time-table.

One of the big reasons MLMs fail is that each person is trying to sign up people who will then be in competition with them for more customers.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2012 05:01PM by Stray Mutt.

I think the Key for selling those items is pretty much the same as Selling Mormonism:

It's about establishing a personal relationship.
At least in my experience, those were the successful missionaries... er Salespeople.

It sounds like you need Pla$ Ebo!

It's a revolutionary product that will take ALL your worries away.

What's more is that you have the oppurtunity to help sell Pla$ Ebo as well.

This is your chance to get in on the ground floor!

You'd be a complete brain dead moron NOT to!

Now come on, and make all your wildest dreams come true!

Pla$ Ebo!!!!

on the trust built on a common background.

Utah has the most MLMs of any state in the union. The Utah legislature has made laws favorable for them.

It isn't your imagination, and no, other areas aren't as infested as those with Mormons.

http://mlm-thetruth.com/markets/markets/utah-mlm/

I think it's desperation to get rich quick because of the tithing, big families, etc. And training all your young men to push an overvalued product at age 19 gives you a ready sales force for when they come home with no education, bills, and no future.

Back in my member days, I was the MLM queen. A gung-ho friend suckered me into joining all of them with him, one by one. Heresy is right about big families, tithing, lack of education, and financial pressure causing Mormons to flock to MLMs.

It's a case of economic math: the Mormon model of family financial life is not sustainable anymore without large incomes. Since most Mormons follow the "plan of happiness," they will make a lot of moves that set them up for poverty during some or all of the years they are raising kids, stockpiling food storage, sending those kids on missions, buying big black SUVs, paying tithing, etc.

So, they can either work a whole bunch of jobs, or get higher education (in which case they could likely end up leaving the church), or join an MLM.

I also think MLMs are dying because they use person-to-person selling and supply chains, when most business is moving towards the internet. Why would I want to wait for my Mary Kay or Avon or Tupperware distributor to bring something I ordered weeks ago, when I can go on Amazon and shop in my pajamas 24/7 and have it delivered right to my door in a couple days -- for a lot less $ ?

I have two DS (one mo, one exmo) and a SIL (never mo) that are in Mary Key. They only tried to sell me something once. That only one time lasted awhile but because of my response it did not happen again. But I can tell you that big chuncks of conversations during family get-togethers revolve around MK.
I eventually made peace with it...
In any case, let's suppose I want to buy something, from which one of them would I buy... It could get ugly ;-)

"This" is exactly the reason why I do not trust organized religion either. There is always a hidden agenda. Two-faced people who pretend to care about you, but they don't. They only care about your money.

Thanks for the link Heresy. I might just pass it on! Yes, it does make me sad Raptor Jesus. I wish I could help them see the parallels ... but it is their life and not mine.

I’m proud to say that I’ve never fallen for an MLM sign up pitch.

Growing up in Utah I was hit up by such all the time. I remember working with a guy that I worked together well with. Finally he wanted to “Tell me about his business” I asked what it was and he squirmed out of it. I let him know that if it was AMWAY then I wasn’t interested.

Finally I relented and met in the evening with him, and it was AMWAY! When I said that I wasn’t interested, he had a ton of questions trying to make me explain myself to him.

In the end I got frustrated and finally said, “Because if I do I won’t have any friends. Everyone will be potential down line candidates, not friends. And I want to have friends.”

While AMWAY was still going fairly strong, I had to use that line a few times to get rid of a pesky down line hunter. It never failed to shut them up and end the conversation.