Ada-tudes | Amway

Have you seen the latest Quixtar University offerings? The Artistry Time Defiance online course
launched just last week, highlighting the age-defying benefits of Artistry Time
Defiance products and how to help your customers select the right products for
them.   

Also new is the Sports Nutrition course. Learn how to
identify the three types of customers most likely to buy sports nutrition
products, as well as which products to recommend to these customers.

In general, the product
expertise courses on Quixtar
University strive to do
one of two things. Some courses focus primarily on preparing you for selling products. You learn key benefits of the
products, how to match these products with actual customer needs, and see some
selling dialog that you can model in your own selling conversations.  Both the Artistry
Time Defiance and Sports Nutrition courses
fall into this group.

Other available courses
focus more on selling and follow-up
skills. The Artistry Purse-to-Purse
course is one of these. You learn a method for selling conversational or
experiential products in your everyday interactions with others. You can easily
transfer the skills learned in the Purse-to-Purse
course to other experiential products, such as XS Energy Drinks.

Let us know what you think
of these two new courses, as well as any others available in the Product
Expertise group. What features were especially helpful?  What information wasn't necessary? What do you
need more of?  

I experienced Achievers for the first time this month, and was I impressed!  The product expo, entertainment, and venue were all top notch. But what was most impressive was the attendees commitment to transforming their businesses for the future. Part of this transformation includes a commitment to building a balanced business. It was in support of this goal that a presentation called Successful Selling was made available to Achievers attendees. For those who were there, it is no surprise that the Successful Selling Workshop was one of the most popular presentations. Evaluations filled out after the session were nearly uniformly positive. Good content, engaging speaker, great timing.

We thank Joe Pici, the presenter and an accredited Emerald and Achievers qualifier, for sharing his wisdom and knowledge about the sales conversation. Some of the memorable takeaways from Joe's presentation were:

• We often try to understand the ingredients in the bottle when we should be concerned with what is in the person we are selling to (know your customer!)
• Someone isn't really your customer until you've had multiple opportunities to sell to them and follow up. Sending someone to your website doesn't do it, and simply signing them up for DITTO without further personal contact doesn't either.
• Rapport is the ultimate goal with your customer. Rapport leads to referrals (you want to be their trusted advisor).

Having been a sales trainer myself, as well as managing and directing many professional sales programs, I can relate to these insights.  

Those who attended  Successful Selling at Achievers will be receiving an audio version of the presentation along with a PowerPoint presentation in January. We are working on other ways to provide this and other similar selling support for all who want it.

So, given that, what kinds of training do you want on selling?  In-person training sessions?  Online courses, webinars, or  webcasts? Podcasts?  DVDs, CDs? Train the trainer programs that will teach leaders how to train their groups? We are looking into all these options, and your feedback will help us determine which approaches we use.  

Are there any particular topics or content that you feel is especially needed in relation to selling?  Any other requirements that will help us provide you information that is helpful and credible?

We look forward to an exciting year partnering with you and your support organizations. Many IBO leaders have already started conversations with us about how we can work together to help IBOs make more money selling products to customers. Let us and your leaders know what training you need, so that together, we can help you build a successful and profitable business.  

Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on Quixtar University, and please keep it coming! Below are a few of my takeaways from your input, along with my responses.

First of all, I'd like to address the authenticity of the online learning modules themselves. One of the virtues of online learning is that you can pack a lot of information into a very short period of time. This keeps the learning quick and efficient, so you, the user, can fit online learning into your busy schedule. The downside of this is that sometimes in being so efficient, one can easily lose the authenticity or "realness" of human interactions. Real conversations are often messy, and do not contain all the perfect words and phrases that we tend to put in online courses. We are working on better capturing the essence of what real customers and real IBOs say to each other in a sales conversation, by learning from you in the field. So keep your comments coming! (And, yes, you're right, sometimes it is just bad acting and we need to find the right actors for online learning videos who sound authentic).

A few of you commented about usability issues, as you found it challenging to access Quixtar University due to browser or other functionality issues. We are currently working with our software vendor to find solutions. If you have questions or need support please call Customer Support at 800-253-6500.

You also suggested that Quixtar provide leaders with reports on who in their organization have taken the online courses. This is a great suggestion, and we are looking into how we can support it. You said this may be especially helpful for courses such as Welcome to Quixtar, which is a prerequisite for special new IBO incentives. If your downline have not all taken the course, you may like to know that so you can encourage and help them. After all, this is not about Quixtar educating IBOs. This is about a partnership between Quixtar and leaders in supporting and developing new IBOs to help them have a more successful business.

Finally, I'd like to preview some of the new courses coming your way. You've heard that a "How to Sell Ribbon" online course will be available by the end of this year. This course is designed to show how easy it is to sell Ribbon to a friend, family member, or acquaintance. An instructor led version of this course is also available now for leaders to book for their meetings (Call 616-787-5442 to book a program for your event). There are also online classes on Artistry Essentials and the Nutrilite Brand coming your way. And, you'll soon be seeing some courses available in French, Spanish, Korean, and Mandarin–in fact, a Spanish version of Simply Nutrilite has just launched – all to better support you and your groups.

Once again, thank you for entering in the conversation about learning. How fantastic that we can so easily communicate with each other, and learn from each other every day.

Many of you have heard by now that Quixtar has taken some serious actions on some IBO businesses during the past day or so. Check out the following statement for more details about that and then visit the Alticor Media Blog for any additional information as it becomes available.

Quixtar Statement on Team 

After working with Team training organization founders, Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady, on issues related to teaching by the organization on positioning of the business, the practice of “stacking,” or inappropriate depth-building, the use of unauthorized business support materials, and because they told company executives that they intend to start soliciting IBOs to join their new competing MLM business, the company has terminated Woodward and Brady’s Quixtar businesses.  Moreover, they, together with other Team, Legacy and Team 5K IBOs, plan to file a class action lawsuit in Federal Court against Quixtar.

Woodward and Brady have taught business practices about positioning of the business and “stacking” or inappropriate depth-building that put affiliated IBOs and Quixtar at serious and immediate risk for legal and regulatory action and had to be stopped.  They also had issues with use of unauthorized business support materials and solicited others to become part of their training organization despite warnings to discontinue such practices.  

Quixtar proposed solutions and options to address these issues that would bring Team-affiliated IBOs into compliance with Quixtar’s Rules of Conduct during a meeting August 9.  Team’s founders refused to even review the plan and consider changing their practices.   Team’s founders stated that they intended to start a competing MLM.   In fact, they suggested we waive the non-compete clause that protects all IBOs to allow their new company or any other opportunity to prospect existing IBOs for competing opportunities. 

Quixtar is unwilling to put its business and the businesses of hundreds of thousands of IBO businesses at risk of legal and regulatory action caused by Woodward and Brady’s practices. Ultimately, their unwillingness to address these issues and their stated plans to form a competing business resulted in the termination of their IBO businesses.  

We are working with Team-affiliated IBOs to support them through the transition of leadership in their organization. 

Some great posts on Ada-tudes regarding QBI — thanks to all.

QBI means Quixtar Business "Incentives." Part of our transformation goals is not only to increase sales volume but also IBO profitability across the board. Our commitment for this additional QBI money is for two years. We will then re-evaluate the results against our goals and decide to modify, continue, or rethink our incentives based upon the results. Frankly, my hope is this QBI generates so much success that we don't have to change anything. 

I would have preferred to wait to post the QBI incentives until all the details were worked out but inaccurate discussions were beginning to occur and I thought it would be best to get the correct information out even if all the details were not worked out. Obviously, inaccurate discussions are still occurring but now they are mostly around the "requirements" to qualify for this new money. There have been discussions about requirements, guidelines, goals, etc, but these are not finalized and will not be until we have further discussions with IBOAI (Independent Business Owners Association International). When any criteria or guidelines are established, they will first appear on our web site. I've already posted one correction this month and do not want to do another, if possible. Please look for a flyer later this summer providing an overview of these changes and stay tuned to the Quixtar Business Incentives section on http://www.quixtar.com/About/ for more information as it becomes available.

Finally, in reading the posts, I was reminded of a commitment some months ago by a blogger who is participating in this string that he would insert his issue of "tool profits" into every string if we didn't change the format of our blog to keep his issue up front. We didn't change our format, as he already had a place to discuss his issue and he kept his commitment again with my post on QBI. Please know there is no "one issue" that if fixed would make everything right. If there was one issue, we wouldn't need a business transformation. We would just tweak the one issue and keep doing what we are doing.

This has been a FABULOUS business for almost 50 years and has impacted positively the lives of thousand and thousands of people. But the business IS almost 50 years old. If we are going to continue to impact people positively for the next 50 years, we must do a thorough examination of all aspects of our business … products, pricing, brands, distribution, training, IBO profitability, IBO/consumer/prospect experience, reputation, etc, etc, etc. Too many issues to list in one post but topics we have been talking about over the past months in this blog. Personally, my life would be a lot simpler if there were only "one issue."

Our commitment, this blog, our life and our legacy is ALL about an overall business transformation so the generations that come behind us can continue to use this business to achieve whatever their goals may be in life. It will not be easy, but nobody ever said doing the right thing was going to be easy.

It is an exciting time to be part of this business right now but I firmly believe that the future will even be better, brighter, and bigger.   

Thank you all for your comments on the Opportunity Zone regarding our request for ideas to help improve IBO profitability and continue to grow the Quixtar business. The response has been overwhelming. We are consolidating these ideas with the one's we have generated internally and are prioritizing how they might fit into our overall strategic plan. One consistent request was for more training by the company. The good news is that we have already begun work on this and below is some information to share on what we are doing.

1. Training is the key to our vision of creating clear pathways to profitability for IBOs at all levels. We believe that Quixtar must offer the best possible training, at the least possible cost to the IBO or the consumer.

4. Over the next 3-5 years:

• IBOs at all levels of achievement thoroughly understand the earnings potential of a balanced business and have realistic expectations of what they must do to reach their goals.
• IBOs are confident that they have the training and support needed to build a balanced business at their own pace and to whatever extent they desire.
• New IBOs, as well as the LOA, view Quixtar as a key source of training and support, and Quixtar-developed content is recognized as an indispensable component in successfully building a balanced business.
• All training, whether mandatory or optional, is delivered through a combination of Quixtar and field resources coordinated to produce the most effective results.
• The majority of field-produced support materials emphasize the "how" of building a profitable, balanced business.

There have been varied and many opinions on motivational tools and their impact (pro or con) on the business. In my opinion, motivational tools, when used to support the Quixtar or Amway business, have a positive impact on the overall business. I am not aware of a successful IBO organization in the world that does not use some form of training, support, and motivation for their business. However, we also acknowledge that business support materials are not positive if the primary purpose of an IBO’s business is to create sales / income from that material. The name “business support materials” is also the proper positioning in that they should be designed to support and assist a Quixtar IBO in their effort to build their Quixtar business.

While not perfect … yet … a lot of good work has been done with IBO leaders and the Independent Business Owners Association International (IBOAI) in this area. Significant changes have been and are being made —- the launch of the Quixtar Professional Development Accreditation Program (PDAP) is just one example of how we have improved this issue for the business.  PDAP is new to our business and today is voluntary. It is an important step forward in our efforts to become more transparent. We will continue to refine this process in collaboration with the IBOAI and the Line of Sponsorship (LOS) until it meets our intended goals. I see more and more organizations moving towards PDAP as the marketplace demands greater transparency in all that we do. In the meantime, through our combined forces with IBOAI, specific rules have been instituted. For example:

·         Every prospect must be given a disclosure document that advises the average earning experience of IBOs, and that some IBOs make money from the sale of privately produced Business Support Materials (BSMs).

·         All IBO–produced materials shown to prospects must be authorized by the company prior to use.

·         Any IBO–produced materials showing the compensation plan must be authorized by the
company prior to use.

·         Messages are given to purchasers of BSMs that indicate the voluntary nature of these materials. I know some folks have talked about the "unseen pressure" of buying BSMs. I believe this one must be decided personally by each individual. If they feel pressure, they should walk way and not participate. Walk away and join another organization. No one is holding a gun to their head that I am aware of … if so, let us know. The Business Support Materials Arbitration Agreement (BSMAA) supports this.

·         Sellers offer a 180-day buy back of any materials.

·         Producers of functions, etc, offer a satisfaction guarantee on the meeting ticket price.

Business Support Materials have a place in our business. They are there to support the Quixtar business, they are not THE business. Progress is being made, transparency in this area is being asked by the marketplace. I believe IBO leaders understand this and are working with us to find the "common ground" that is required to enhance and grow our overall reputation.