Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Tap rooting vs. 6-6-8-6-6

BWW introduced the new practice of tap rooting in late 2008. This was going to change the whole face of BWW - so it was claimed.

The concept of tap rooting does make sense. If you sponsor someone and he does not have anyone below him, he gets discouraged. So you try to sponsor someone for him asap. But what happens usually is - out of the contacts the new guy has, you won't get all the numbers. Many new guys have a huge "chicken list" i.e. people whom they are scared of calling. So new IBOs won't share their list with the sponsoring IBO. Also many of the new guys are not properly trained initially to approach people in person or on phone, so they goof up a lot initially. About 80% of the IBOs quit within 30 to 60 days of joining - or they do literally nothing - after 4 or 5 guys tell them NO.

So with tap rooting you sponsor one of your contacts for the new guy. To properly do this you need to introduce the two guys and should let the 1st new guy know that he is now responsible. Then you need to keep them all under one roof in meetings, so that they can build relationship. What do you do for the 2nd new guy? You either sponsor one of your contacts or the 1st guy's contacts or the 2nd guy's contacts - and repeat this process until you go 20 or 30 deep. The expectation is that out of every 4, you will find 1 guy who will duplicate what you are doing in his leg 2. Then you do the same in leg 2 of yours. You should go platinum with hopefully two or three legs.

Just like Bill Britt's 6-6-8-6-6 theory, this concept looks great on paper. It is very nice to hear these kind of new ideas and think how it is going to change your business. I had 3 legs in BWW, so thought I was going to go emerald in 2 years! That was how they hyped it!

BUT - many times the new guys really do not understand anything. I saw several lines of sponsorship get 20 and 30 deep - including mine - but the IBO at the top did not qualify for newer pins. Because the new guys do nothing even when sponsored in depth. The real issue is that with one leg you make no money. You have not really removed the fear in the new IBO when you sponsor somebody for him. The dude has to get out and get his nose bloodied to do anything with the business. But several guys do not share their list or try to build the business even after having 1 leg below them.

IMO, whatever the technique for building the network, the Amway/BWW business model is an extremely tough one to build. Tougher than building it is to keep the people in once you have built it.

Managing IBOs in your downline is worse than managing employees - bcoz if you are the boss then you can threaten your employees, but if you are a diamond you cannot. You need to keep finding ways to keep on motivating your downline IBOs. The typical saying at the open meeting "you can go to Timbuktu after you break 6 platinums and your platinums will not need any help in building their business" is a lie. Diamonds work from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weekdays and whole weekends instead of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. If they qualify diamond, they make good money - else they are just fake diamonds - the guys who do not qualify for Peter island trip. They still make good money in tools and functions and have a glorified job.

The claim of 2 to 5 year diamond is a theory. I did not see a single diamond who went diamond in 2 to 5 years in my 6 year history with this thing.

8 comments:

  1. There are some 2-5 year diamonds but they are the exception, not the norm.

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  2. Ok, I do not know of anyone in the USA market.

    The funny thing is they claim that if one guy can do it, then anyone can do it because we all have the same capability and the same capacity. That is not true, because each one of us has different areas of strength and not everyone has the same brain. Else whoever wants to become a billionaire would become a billionaire.

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  3. My former upline diamond, Scott Harimoto, went diamond in about 3 years. But that was in 1994 and we know how much Amway has grown since then. The internet made information gathering easy so I believe these 2-5 year diamonds will be very rare indeed, at least in the US.

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  4. Tap rooting sounds a lot like stacking, except there's this veneer of IBO #2 knowing IBO #3 (from the upline).

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  5. I dont understand how they can approve this concept of taprooting when they claimed for eons that this was illegal to do!! How is it fair for an IBO who works hard to prospect, shows the plan and these prospects when they are ready to sign up-you end them putting up in depth??? I remember clearing Suresh Raghavan and Sugeet Ajmani and Kumar talking abt how this is not a fair concept and how other non BWW teams were implementing it and also other MLM's. And they would proclaim that BWW is different and is very fair in its approach and all the bull shit you can ever think of. Now since they seem to be in terrible fear of their businesses disintegrating they seem to have lost their so called Integrity down the toilet drain!

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  6. I joined the business in January 2011 and recently became inactive. During this time I built 2 taproots - First 5 deep, Second 11 deep. In the first one not even a single active IBO and in the second one only 1 was active for a little bit and started enjoying the Summer (of Canada) as soon as it got nicer outside ... Yes taproot is great on paper (like 6-4-2) but implementation is another devil altogether!

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  8. The compensation plan dictates which technique you should use to build your business. Taprooting is not effective in your compensation plan. My company's comp plan is designed for taprooting. Taprooting is great if your comp plan rewards that type of building. Binary comp plans don't really support taprooting because you need to match billing volumes to a ratio on your legs. Most of the time you will find though that one leg will explode and grow much faster than the others. If your not getting paid on all of this then its hard to make money with taprooting.

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