Kleeneeze or Betterware?

Morethanconcerned

Peter_Pan wrote: »

I actually like putting out brochures and will do it whatever the weather, as will my other half as in his main occupation he can't work when the weather is bad, we can still put out brochures. If the children are ill i can still stay at home with them without worrying about asking for a day off and can still collect them after hubby gets in, the flexibility means a lot to us. We would rather spend time doing this than sat watching TV etc.

You don't have to teambuild, you can work with 200 brochures, build a customer base over a few months and then earn an extra income from that, i know with Kleeneze our problem was so many other agents and having to spread ourselves over a wide distance to get enough customers to give us that income but it is possible and to some families the extra cash flow each week and the flexibility of it makes a world of difference so i wish people would stop knocking it - yes theres bad (we were sucked in and naive with the teambuilding but have learnt from it) and you can make it self funding if you really wanted to, just reinvest your retail income if your aim is a long term Business, really depends what you want and i think sponsors don't do enough to find out that from their recruits, if each new recruit was helped to get what they wanted rather than pushed to see the potenial of the team building from day 1 more people would carry on and not so disillusioned.

With 200 books thats about 800 drops per period which **if** you get a opund a book should give the 10% bonus - all in with retail income about £270 or there abouts. THis however is going to take *far* more than a few hours here and there. Working just in the evening it'll take all week to get the books back in - the first months money os gone on the startup fee, the second month will be gone in buying new books to replace the minimum 20 a week lost .

After working every night of the week, not just getting books back and out but sorting them all out plus sorting the orders out - and most likely not getting anywhere near the £1 a book ( so thats the 10% bonus gone) plus having to fork out for new books, internet charges, fuel , suddenly the income just isn't worth it especially as it was meant to give flexibility - working all hours for so little?

As to team building - this is *fundamental* to Kleeneze, the whole basis of the company is the MLM model , you recruit a team, their income boosts your which in turn boosts the uplines all the way to the top. The whole foriegn holiday thing , the cars, the big cheques it's all sold on it primarily being MLM marketing. You can certainly try to make a living with the catalogues alone - I did try that , working 7 days a week and breaking 15 - 18% bonus many times. But the amount of work and the massive hidden costs of fuel, books, plastic bags,NI payments, internet charges, printing costs plus not getting anything when on holiday means that taken as an average over the whole year it was hundreds of pounds under what I would have got for just 40 hrs at minimum wage.

Plus to do just retail you'll need a very enlightened Upline - many will completely balnk you if you don't follow the kleeneze plan - going to all the meetings , doing sponsoring activities like leafletes and adverts, you'll be labelled as *not comitted* to the big picture. All this is OK if you are very independant and don't ever need any help but hopless if you need a hand from the person who is getting a bonus of your work.

It's not knocking but home truths , put it this way , if someone followed me for a week when I did it they'd *never* sign up.

Morethanconcerned

ColinAllCars wrote: »

Telling people how it really is warts and all is hardly knocking it .

No criticsim at all can be tolerated - I made the mistake once very early on of bringing up some problems at a meeting, I was laughed at as a fool, I got away with it only as I was so new. No person who has been in a while would ever voice opinions in public. Get the right person in private and they'll go at it hammmer and tongs .

They do make it sound so easy - and to my shame I sold it like that too in my attempts to build a team. Just 200 books once a week , thats £800 of orders etc etc. Come the second or third week, they've been out every night it's taken 5 times longer than billed, they've lost 50 books gone for good. Etc etc etc.

A few stick with it through dogged perseverance and get a few months in , they might get a half decent customer base to start with but the realisation that this never ends , that the customer base will need topping up every week, they might order over 4th time or never again.

Then there is the endless hassle form uplines to go to this or that meeting/function/seminar/ all under the guise of *training* when it's mostly self improvement gurus doing the speaking rounds.

lozza1985

Morethanconcerned wrote: »

Then there is the endless hassle form uplines to go to this or that meeting/function/seminar/ all under the guise of *training* when it's mostly self improvement gurus doing the speaking rounds.

O yes I remember that well....our upline, who turned out to be in Scotland so at least thankfully we had a good excuse of not meeting her lol, was forever saying o listen to this conference while you're sorting your brochures out...erm no thanks, we tried for a couple of minutes and laughed so much...I much prefer to watch the tv while bagging up books up rather than a load of b*ll*cks.

Morethanconcerned

lozza1985 wrote: »

O yes I remember that well....our upline, who turned out to be in Scotland so at least thankfully we had a good excuse of not meeting her lol, was forever saying o listen to this conference while you're sorting your brochures out...erm no thanks, we tried for a couple of minutes and laughed so much...I much prefer to watch the tv while bagging up books up rather than a load of b*ll*cks.

The cd's that used to come as part of the MLM phone line before they introduced Eezereach were awful - real american style *lifestyle* guru stuff, real pap. Though with a darker edge too as I heard one with Gavin Scott say what to do about *negativity* when friends and more importantly family question the time effort and money you might be putting into kleeneze - he said they should be ignored and worse *avoided* . That aside it's the utter cringeworthyness of many of the cd's and dvd's that are supposed *training*.

You mentioned you puttingthe books together - they show a happy couple stiitng at a table in the DVD , they don't show 200 soaking wet, possibly cat!!!! soaked palstic bags to wade through , the ripped and wet books. Or indeed the £67 total orders from 200 books! Been there.....

billsavings

Their rather a sensitive lot their MD recently took umbrage on Twitter when someone twittered suggested people join Avon, as it's a more recognised brand, with a better return policy and only £15 compared to £80 . He assumed the twitterer was touting for Avon, when in fact they were apparently only making an observation.

Lady_Python

Yes, Morethanconcerned. Essence of unneutered Tom Cat was the worst as it not only stank up the other books, but stank up your hands too - and the car - and everything it came in contact with. Yuk!!!

Billsavings. I can well imagine their MD taking umbrage.

Avon's a lot easier and cheaper to get started with, has set territories (although there have been problems with some) and their products are good. I'm just waiting for my second order to arrive and I'm like a kid waiting for a new toy - hoping the weather doesn't delay it.

Avon is going down the MLM road as well - from what I can see those that make a reasonable to good living from Avon are ASMs or SLs with teams under them but some of the ordinary reps who have built up a good customer base do very well too.

The thing with Avon is, no-one seems to give you any hassle unlike Kleeneze upline who were breathing down your neck all the time.

The thing that got me with Kleeneze was a few months before the Farepak disaster when there was a memo on how rocky things were on the Kleeneze website for all to see.

The upline really were in denial - or the biggest liars on the planet as they denied there was any problem at all, that there was absolutely nothing wrong - yet it was there in black and white for all to see.

Even when the parent company went belly up, they still denied anything was wrong :rotfl:

They must have thought we were born yesterday!

Peter_Pan

Are Avon still running the old sales Management system alongside the sales leaders Lady Python, last time i looked at Avon this put me off as one seemed to be you were given an area while the new sales leaders were saying recruits could drop anywhere so i felt there was internal conflict (this was a couple of years ago so wondered if its sorted itself out now?)

I agree about pushy uplines in Kleeneze, i didn't feel they had our best interests at heart sometimes, everyones situations are different and i think its important to listen and find out what each person wants from joining and react accordingly. There are a few opps out there where uplines aren't pushy, looks like we have both found one, there are probably more. Its down to finding an upline in the opp you choose that sees you as an individual with individual circumstances thats important in my opinion.

Debbie

lozza1985

Yes they still run the management alongside to help keep the territory issues sorted out. They brought a new system in last year so sl can allocate territory to new reps when they join - so territory problems are fairly minimal. Before you could be waiting weeks to hear back from a manager about what streets someone could have which is why a lot were probably told to drop where they like. Now we can do it ourselves and it literally just takes a few minutes so it's improved things enormously.

ColinAllCars

Peter_Pan wrote: »

Its down to finding an upline in the opp you choose that sees you as an individual with individual circumstances thats important in my opinion.

If you dont like your upline , it shouldn't affect your ability to build your business , yet its is often used as an excuse for failure. Even if you do get on well with them it doesnt guarantee your be a success. As its your business surely its what you do that counts.

Morethanconcerned

ColinAllCars wrote: »

If you dont like your upline , it shouldn't affect your ability to build your business , yet its is often used as an excuse for failure. Even if you do get on well with them it doesnt guarantee your be a success. As its your business surely its what you do that counts.

Theoretically thats true, however with folk being signed up online with 50 books by someone in Scotland when they live in Cornwall it really doesn't done well at all. I'm wondering how many folk leave for the utter lack of care in the first few weeks?

There can be no doubt there is an ethos of *recruit or die* in place - sigining up 10 a week for the big players will keep them in a very decent percentage even if they only do one order each. 9 will drop out , 1 might struggle on for a few weeks or months. Out of ten of the individuals left just 1 of them will go anywhere with it - Gold perhaps.

Of course some will leave regardless of support - we know full well it certainly isn't sold on toiling around chasing lost catalogues, trying to complete orders, having to replace lost books etc etc. I've done the standard presentation with the circles - it means nothing when tramping the strets with no orders.

Note how I've typed *leave* instead of *failure* - I spoke to a distributor who had been gold for quite a while then left for a better job , he was branded a *failure* , yet gaining Gold is no mean feat indeed.