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December 18, 2003
Passport Response
By QBlog in
My post yesterday about Passport generated a response in the comments that I would like to address. Here is the response from mlmblog:
1. Passport is a privately held company meaning it can pick and choose what information they release.And here is my response:I don't think that Passport is concerned with what the critics would say about any of these numbers. But bear with me for a second. If you are in a poker match with a number of other companies in the industry, why would you show them your hand?
2. Passport makes no income claims. There is no 2-5 year buy from yourself to $250,000 plan. Passport says that if you sell X you make X. It is a drastically different compensation and business plan.
mlmblog,I completely agree. Passport is a privately held company and one of the benefits of such companies is that they can choose what information to release to the public. However, private companies should recognize that there may be (not a certainty) consequences in the form of negative public perception when certain information is kept private. This is a reality that I did not create. Companies that fail to recognize this reality and plan for it are being naive in my opinion.
Now, I also understand your poker analogy but I think we should analyze it closely. You make the logical assumption that showing "your hand" equates to a competitive disadvantage. If this is true then fully disclosing information (showing all the cards in one's hand) puts a company at the most disadvantage while keeping all information (hiding all the cards) provides the most advantage. In this scenario those private companies that are most secretive and hidden from public scrutiny would achieve the most competitive advantage and therefore have little incentive to disclose ANY information to anyone, ever (except the info required by the government for tax and legal reasons).
But if you're still with me, you see how this logic breaks down because it omits a very important factor in this equation. That factor (or one of possibly several) is public perception. As a company becomes less forthcoming with information, it's possible that the public becomes more suspicious of its actions. This is why the poker analogy doesn't hold.
I view this issue from a public relations perspective. One of the first rules of good public relations is honesty. Not simply truthfulness but complete honesty, within reason. A seasoned PR expert understands the importance of going "above and beyond" what is required to establish trust and a sense of integrity with the public. This begs the question: were my inquiries unreasonable? Maybe they were. They were the same questions I've asked of Quixtar from the beginning and probably the same questions I'll ask of any MLM-like business in the future. Sometimes I get specific answers, other times I don't.
Finally, I think that's great that Passport doesn't make any outrageous income claims. However, the fact that they don't make any claims does not change the reality of public perception. If Quixtar suddenly and miraculously ceased promoting income levels and bonus numbers would specific questions about the business be immediately pointless? Maybe to many but not to me. I, and at least a few others, want answers regardless of the claims or non-claims of an MLM-style company. To ignore this reality is to deceive one's self.
Comments
Ok..I'll bite. I'm a Passport associate as you may well know by now. Actually a part of Ty's group. I'm not posting to defensd Bo Short or put a feather in Ty's cap...just another guys opinon.
I have no clue what Passport's numbers are. I can only venture a guess as to how many are involved or what last years profits were. I don't care if Bo has 100 or 150,000 associates...I only need to be managing what I am doing.
This is a straight up commision sales deal and if you produce you get paid. As long as Passport offers a good product at a fair price, and they do...does what they say they will do when they say they will do it, so far so good...and writes the checks when they need to be written then who cares.
My job is no different. They offer a good product I sell it , I get paid. What I do in my business for work and for Passport is just that...my business.
What ever they, they being the owners/CEO's, want me to know about the company is there business. I know enough to feel secure in my decision to represent them and that includes Passport as well.
Happy New Year!
JBNET
So Ty has a downline of one! Sounds like the perfect associate too. Keeps his head down, doesn't ask any questions, just working hard to push down to Level 3 before going wide. You hang in there JBNET, and before you knowit, you too will have a Passport downline of ONE!
Q,
I see your point, but allow me to expand on what I was trying to convey before.
First let's address the "honesty" factor. There is a level of integrity involved when someone says, "I don't want to answer that question and here's why". I don’t think you got a “no comment”. It appears that your questions were answered honestly, albeit not the answers you were looking for.
I don't think your questions were unreasonable, I simply think there may be more to this than what is obvious on the surface.
I'll be more specific about my earlier analogy about showing your hand to the competition. What if your competition thinks you have 10,000 people and in reality you have 100,000 people? Do you think they would look at you differently? Perhaps even change a business strategy or two based on what you are doing?
Perhaps it is in the best interest of Passport and it's associates to keep the number of associates private at this time.
I think you better than most people have a grasp on public perception. I think there are people within our little online community that do not have a grasp of how many people read certain boards. You have alluded many times that the average Joe doesn't have a clue about Quixtar. If they don't know anything about a billion-dollar giant, what in the world are they going to know about a two-year-old company?
Let's by frank, impressing 37 people on a message board by releasing some numbers is not going to help Passport gain market share, even if the numbers are out of this world.
Posted by: mlmblog | December 19, 2003 1:13 AM