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September 29, 2004
Conversation With A Former Quixtar Employee Redux
By QBlog in
After I posted my conversation with a former Quixtar employee we had another little chat. "Quixtar Guy" (as I call him here) had a few comments about IBOs, end of the month ordering and "burntass pizza." What follows are excerpts from that brief conversation.
QBlog: Your interview was a big hit but of course some doubted your
credibility.
Quixtar Guy: Cool. *Reading Post
and comments*
Who got the idea that employees can't be IBOs?
QBlog: I don't know, not true?
Quixtar Guy: Not to my knowledge, at least. We had one guy
in my training class who was an IBO. Nobody cared. I, and I assume other CSRs,
often told IBOs that we couldn't be (IBOs) but that was only because we got
at least one recruiting pitch a week. Read: blatant lie.
QBlog: Well I'll call Quixtar and ask them. Could there be a difference
between temps and full-timers?
Quixtar Guy: Possibly. I really have no idea. I don't think anyone
there wanted to be an IBO. They knew the reality of it. I'm serious. End of
month, every month, we'd get scads of people calling in waiting on hold for
half an hour so they could make their 100 PV. WHO THE (HELL) CARES ABOUT 100
PV? That's like $5. The only people who care are the uplines.
QBlog: How many calls would you say your department fielded each end
of month?
Quixtar Guy: Around 30,000. About 80% of those were the 100 or 300
PV range. We'd average less than 10,000 calls on non-EOM days.
QBlog: Ok I must go get the food out of the oven, doing late night
cooking.
Quixtar Guy: I hear ya. I just finished my burntass pizza.
Don't let yours burn. The only reason it had any flavor was because of the tobasco
sauce I added.
Comments
In our organization we help set people up their ditto delivery to ship on the first of the month. We believe that it is much better to start the month with a base volume than to scramble at the last minute.
That being said, people by nature are procrastinators, and they set their goals in the beginning of the month, then put them off all month until the last day. They are like that in every industry.
Then you need to factor in that in order to receive a paycheck you need at least 100pv. So many IBO's will wait to see if it's worth it or not.
I will agree that some upline will make the mistake of waiting until the last day of the month to call people on their team. My upline never did that to me, but early on when I was running for goals, my team would get calls from me.
Then I learned that you can't just call someone at the end of the month. That you need to work with them throughout the month on their goals, then during the last couple of days, your call won't be a call out of the blue. People will trust you more for this.
With that, I agree with the employee that on the last day, IBO's make the mad dash to place orders. I just wanted to shed some light that in many cases this is normal and not always a bad thing. Depends on how you look at it.
If you are waiting to see "...if it's worth it or not" to get a paycheck, you are in the wrong business. If you are having to spend money in order to get your paycheck, then something is wrong.
Kevin, name a business where you don't have to spend money to make money?
In order to make money in the majority of businesses, you need to spend money.
I agree that it is silly thinking to "wait and see if it's worth it", but just because it is silly thinking doesn't many that many people won't do it.
But to further the example, at the end of the month, even in the last couple hours of the month, you might check your volume and realize you are 50pv away from a higher bonus bracket. And you might quickly do the math and realize that if you hit that higher bracket, that you will make an extra $100.
So you might decide to spend $100 on some products you need or want, and then you will make the extra $100 and so basically it is like those products were free. That is one of many examples of why so many people order at the end of the month.
If you truly needed or wanted those products, the end of the month would be a non-factor, you would have bought them to begin with.
If you buy them when you truly don't need or want them but you want to hit a higher pin, isn't that kind of like stocking?
If the prices were more competitive, you could at least retail them. Most of us here know that this is not the case at all.
I rather go shopping in a used car lot than have somebody phone me to try to convince me to buy more shampoo or toothpaste that I don't need, so somewhere someone can cross stage as a new whatever.
I believe it. So much pressure from my upline to make his goals. I could almost count on a call at the end of the month, sometimes hours before the deadline. And then once the deadline was met, I'm forgotten until the next month.
Ambivalent
Posted by: Ambivalent | September 29, 2004 10:28 PM