DoubleBlade
New member
I hope James would allow me to post such issues on SOFT.
Anyway here I go...
I'm sure most of you SOFTies have heard from relatives or even family members of being approached by another relative (usually a young adult) to buy a biomagnetic health product on behalf of him/her. I would not be surprised if most of us would have form the equation : BIOMAGNETIC PRODUCTS = NETWORK MARKETING = SCAM , at least in the eyes of the older adults that is....
I myself have experienced it before. My classmate although not as closed suddenly out of the blue called me up and said that he wanted to have dinner with me and before I knew it , I was stepping foot on the company. I will not disclose the name of the company for personal reasons. I was introduced to the concept of network marketing by the manager and was utterly impressed but I WASN'T KEEN IN JOINING THE COMPANY because I had other committments to attend to.
To make a long story short I signed the first documentation of the company which allowed me to distribute the company's products. The next day when I arrived at the office , the 2nd document was slammed in front of me. The document stated that I was must buy the biomagnetic mattress starter kit amounting to 1.4k. The manager said that I needed to produce an "authentic" testimonial with regards to the biomagnet mattress which was part of the starter kit and as such , I had to purchase it. Of course my main concern was how on earth am I able to cough up 1.4k to pay for the starter kit. I asked him whether I could sell the product first and all commission I get from the sales made by me would go to repaying the loan for the starter kit. He agreed to that and I eventually signed the purchase papers but thank god it wasn't a contract.......
What really startled me was that after I signed the purchase paper , the manager called one of his colleagues to give me a booklet which was something like a salesmen bible and then his colleague told me to do a "Relative Profiling" exercise. They told me to list down all relative names from both of my parents side together with details like : age , sex , occupation , pay salary per month etc. They also told me to rate on a scale of 5 , the level of enthuism whether they would react positively to their products and even their health condition on a scale of 5 also. Basically most of the stuff I was required to fill up was revolving around that product.
To cut a long story short , I told them who were my closest relatives and when I told them that I have 4 single relatives living together in a small bunglow , the manager immediately insisted that his subordinate (the one who's gonna follow me to their house) to talk to each of them individually and that would mean selling 4 of their EXACT SAME PRODUCT to each of my 4 relatives. The thing that came to my mind was , "Why can't you just sell 1 product to them and all of them can share together?" Obviously my perception towards them shifted to a negative one in a sense that they just wanted to suck up my relative's money. They retorted by telling me some "modern day fable" about Warcraft DoTA with regards to "drawing first blood" before anyone else did.
The final straw came in when they even tried to teach me how to act sad and in desperate need of money. They even told me to hold my relative's arm and say ,"Please support me" in combo with that sad and depressed kinda look. I felt that I should not be doing this because those weren't part of my agenda , it was like having me to act out a taiwanese soap opera scene in front of my relatives. Anyways they called this so called technique "The Touch of Gold" or something like that lah...I could not recall it...
I was forced to go to my relatives and when I told the manager that my relatives changed their home number , the manager even told me to lie to my parents in order to get their number. Because he did not want my parents to know that I was working in a multi level marketing company due to the general public's perception towards this unique kind of marketing technique.
I arrived at my aunts house and was forced to play along with my colleague in what he said. I eventually lied to them by saying that I was on my way to a friend's house nearby and decided to stop on the way because my supposedly "friend" was not at home at that time. My so called colleague talked to my relatives and tried to gain their trust by talking about his personal life like how he became so outspoken after NS , what a lazy bum his sister is , basically anything which revolved around his life. And then time came when the manager was sick and tiring of waiting and told him to just go all out for the kill. He eventually led out his identity and all I could do was just to remain silent and not play any part in the sale. I refused to cooperate with him and when he told me say something I just remained quiet. Luckily after much coaxing , my relatives still refused to buy. When I finally left their home (I lied to them again that my "friend" has come home and had to leave) , I had a short heated argument with him over the kind of business tactics the company employed in trying to sell their products.
From a salesperson point of view , which of the 2 would matter to him? Getting his part of the commission if he managed to sell the product or trying to save the world if they bought his product?
Although I've found out that network marketing companies must follow the guidelines of the DSAS (Direct Selling Association of Singapore) in order for it to be legal in Singapore based on some exclusion acts being ammended by the law recently and everything they do is complete legal but I feel that they are taking advantage of human sentiments to achieve their aim and that is to sell their products. It was because of this that I felt utterly disgusted and it went against my personal principles when it comes to having no hidden agenda involved when doing business
After that I went back to the company and told the manager that I wanted to leave and he obliged.
The office which I was in had a lot of "propaganda" in it. Every corner you turn , you could see propaganda materials like staff testimonials , car incentive photos , banners congratulating managers for reaching the manageral position and even photocopied pay cheques (which were usually 3k and above) pasted outside their cubicles.
After all this , I asked my friends whether they have encounted this situation before and those who said yes all had very similar experiences with regards to mine and the thing is , they all once worked for different companies.
After having said all this , I would like to know where any of you SOFTies have encountered a similar experiences before?
And also I have a question on my mind for those who have had a brush with these companies adopting the multi level market approach.
I was told that the company I once worked has been around for 7 years but the Senior managers around (the highest rank in the company) only took a mere 11 months to rise up to the highest rank in the company apart from the CEO position. Below the rank of Senior managers was the General Managers and they had like 40+ GMs in the company and I was obviously like WTF lah. I'm not good at reading law texts but I found a website on Direct Selling in Singapore.
http://www.wwlegal.com/index.php?module=subjects&func=viewpage&pageid=49
Anyways if the senior managers took 11 months to rise up to the highest rank and the company has been around for 7 years , what happened to the more senior senior managers around? Like those who have worked for years in the company? What happened to them? Could they have received the golden handshake after 1-2 years of service in the company? 8O
[/u]
Anyway here I go...
I'm sure most of you SOFTies have heard from relatives or even family members of being approached by another relative (usually a young adult) to buy a biomagnetic health product on behalf of him/her. I would not be surprised if most of us would have form the equation : BIOMAGNETIC PRODUCTS = NETWORK MARKETING = SCAM , at least in the eyes of the older adults that is....
I myself have experienced it before. My classmate although not as closed suddenly out of the blue called me up and said that he wanted to have dinner with me and before I knew it , I was stepping foot on the company. I will not disclose the name of the company for personal reasons. I was introduced to the concept of network marketing by the manager and was utterly impressed but I WASN'T KEEN IN JOINING THE COMPANY because I had other committments to attend to.
To make a long story short I signed the first documentation of the company which allowed me to distribute the company's products. The next day when I arrived at the office , the 2nd document was slammed in front of me. The document stated that I was must buy the biomagnetic mattress starter kit amounting to 1.4k. The manager said that I needed to produce an "authentic" testimonial with regards to the biomagnet mattress which was part of the starter kit and as such , I had to purchase it. Of course my main concern was how on earth am I able to cough up 1.4k to pay for the starter kit. I asked him whether I could sell the product first and all commission I get from the sales made by me would go to repaying the loan for the starter kit. He agreed to that and I eventually signed the purchase papers but thank god it wasn't a contract.......
What really startled me was that after I signed the purchase paper , the manager called one of his colleagues to give me a booklet which was something like a salesmen bible and then his colleague told me to do a "Relative Profiling" exercise. They told me to list down all relative names from both of my parents side together with details like : age , sex , occupation , pay salary per month etc. They also told me to rate on a scale of 5 , the level of enthuism whether they would react positively to their products and even their health condition on a scale of 5 also. Basically most of the stuff I was required to fill up was revolving around that product.
To cut a long story short , I told them who were my closest relatives and when I told them that I have 4 single relatives living together in a small bunglow , the manager immediately insisted that his subordinate (the one who's gonna follow me to their house) to talk to each of them individually and that would mean selling 4 of their EXACT SAME PRODUCT to each of my 4 relatives. The thing that came to my mind was , "Why can't you just sell 1 product to them and all of them can share together?" Obviously my perception towards them shifted to a negative one in a sense that they just wanted to suck up my relative's money. They retorted by telling me some "modern day fable" about Warcraft DoTA with regards to "drawing first blood" before anyone else did.
The final straw came in when they even tried to teach me how to act sad and in desperate need of money. They even told me to hold my relative's arm and say ,"Please support me" in combo with that sad and depressed kinda look. I felt that I should not be doing this because those weren't part of my agenda , it was like having me to act out a taiwanese soap opera scene in front of my relatives. Anyways they called this so called technique "The Touch of Gold" or something like that lah...I could not recall it...
I was forced to go to my relatives and when I told the manager that my relatives changed their home number , the manager even told me to lie to my parents in order to get their number. Because he did not want my parents to know that I was working in a multi level marketing company due to the general public's perception towards this unique kind of marketing technique.
I arrived at my aunts house and was forced to play along with my colleague in what he said. I eventually lied to them by saying that I was on my way to a friend's house nearby and decided to stop on the way because my supposedly "friend" was not at home at that time. My so called colleague talked to my relatives and tried to gain their trust by talking about his personal life like how he became so outspoken after NS , what a lazy bum his sister is , basically anything which revolved around his life. And then time came when the manager was sick and tiring of waiting and told him to just go all out for the kill. He eventually led out his identity and all I could do was just to remain silent and not play any part in the sale. I refused to cooperate with him and when he told me say something I just remained quiet. Luckily after much coaxing , my relatives still refused to buy. When I finally left their home (I lied to them again that my "friend" has come home and had to leave) , I had a short heated argument with him over the kind of business tactics the company employed in trying to sell their products.
From a salesperson point of view , which of the 2 would matter to him? Getting his part of the commission if he managed to sell the product or trying to save the world if they bought his product?
Although I've found out that network marketing companies must follow the guidelines of the DSAS (Direct Selling Association of Singapore) in order for it to be legal in Singapore based on some exclusion acts being ammended by the law recently and everything they do is complete legal but I feel that they are taking advantage of human sentiments to achieve their aim and that is to sell their products. It was because of this that I felt utterly disgusted and it went against my personal principles when it comes to having no hidden agenda involved when doing business
After that I went back to the company and told the manager that I wanted to leave and he obliged.
The office which I was in had a lot of "propaganda" in it. Every corner you turn , you could see propaganda materials like staff testimonials , car incentive photos , banners congratulating managers for reaching the manageral position and even photocopied pay cheques (which were usually 3k and above) pasted outside their cubicles.
After all this , I asked my friends whether they have encounted this situation before and those who said yes all had very similar experiences with regards to mine and the thing is , they all once worked for different companies.
After having said all this , I would like to know where any of you SOFTies have encountered a similar experiences before?
And also I have a question on my mind for those who have had a brush with these companies adopting the multi level market approach.
I was told that the company I once worked has been around for 7 years but the Senior managers around (the highest rank in the company) only took a mere 11 months to rise up to the highest rank in the company apart from the CEO position. Below the rank of Senior managers was the General Managers and they had like 40+ GMs in the company and I was obviously like WTF lah. I'm not good at reading law texts but I found a website on Direct Selling in Singapore.
http://www.wwlegal.com/index.php?module=subjects&func=viewpage&pageid=49
Anyways if the senior managers took 11 months to rise up to the highest rank and the company has been around for 7 years , what happened to the more senior senior managers around? Like those who have worked for years in the company? What happened to them? Could they have received the golden handshake after 1-2 years of service in the company? 8O
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