My Experiences at a Quixtar Recruitment Meeting

I’m sure by now it’s become quite obvious that I am not a fan of Quixtar, Amway and similar multi-level marketing “sell to your self” programs. Very often recruiters for these programs use deceptive marketing techniques to try to get people to buy into the systems. I decided that I should go and see for my self if it’s really bad as the people such as my self who bash Quixtar on the internet claim it is. My room-mate happens to be an IBO for Quixtar, so I went with him to one of their recruitment meetings to see what all went on, I was quite surprised.

The meeting was located in a decent sized meeting room at a 3 star hotel in town. When my room-mate and I walked into the meeting room, they said hi to all of the regulars, and a lot of people were interested in just coming by and meeting me, not knowing who I was. I was quite surprised as to how friendly everyone was. A lot of them asked me the very same questions, so I can’t help but wonder if some of they are trained from their recruitment materials to do so.

After some mingling, we all took our seats and waited for the presentation to begin. There were about 50 people in the room; probably about 10 of them were newcomers such as myself. The person who was presenting was an ‘emerald’ level IBO, so he was making quite a bit of money from his down line.

The speaker did an excellent job keeping the audience involved and attentive. It was a very high-energy and fun atmosphere. The first fifteen minutes of the presentation discussed the idea of the “S Curve” which states that the amount of time it takes for the adoption an idea from 0 to 10% is the same amount of time that it takes from the idea to go from 10% to 90% usage. The speaker stated that just about 10% of Americans now buy their products online regularly, and in the next decade it will go up to 90% according to the “S Curve.” He then suggested that we could earn the markup that retailers make by selling products on the internet, and that the amount of money to be earned over the next decade is enormous.

The speaker then switched focuses. He asked us what our dreams were. We heard all of the common things people would like to do if they had more money, such as pay off debt, spend more time with the family, work less, go on vacation, and the like. One of the IBO’s even brought in a large printing of a new prototype Ferrari, suggesting that it would be pretty sweet to own! This actually went on for a good fifteen or twenty minutes.

Next the speaker discusses Robert Kiyosaki’s “Cash Flow Quadrant” and that we spent too much time laboring for money and not enough effort on being entrepreneurial and investing. He argued that the more time we spend working, the less time we have to spend on ourselves and with our family, and that we should create other sorts of income. He said that creating residual income through their business system was a great way to make money while you were sleeping!

We were then told again about the growth of internet sales and how every second a new person shops online for the first time. Finally after 35 minutes into the presentation, the speaker begins to discuss the actual business idea of Quixtar. He told us that manufacturers would give us their advertising dollars if we sent consumers to them. He showed us that if we could redirect our purchasing through our Quixtar portal and to teach others to do the same, we could get a commission on our sales.

He stated that Quixtar is number one in health & beauty and nutrition products online and that Quixtar is the number two online retailer just behind Amazon. He also talked about some of the exclusive products they make and how their energy drinks are much healthier than Red Bull and competing energy drinks.

We were then told we could be a member of Quixtar for just $150, and $100 of that are products for demonstration and sales. It would be an additional $48 a year to be a member. We were also told that we would have mentors from the sales team to help us grow and learn. They also gave us all sorts of opportunities to visit training and motivational events. They were selling tickets for $16 for some high level Quixtar seller in a month or so.

Finally we were brought to discuss the referral part of the system where we could earn a percentage of how much people we refer to the system sell. We were taught a basic way to recruit friends to become IBO members, and then taught to teach our referrals to do the same. We were then shown that if we referred a certain number of people we could make this much, and told some stories about the some of the best Quixtar sellers who made large amounts of money. This is where the first part of the presentation ended. We were given about a ten minute break and told we could leave if we wanted to, but he would be showing us how to create a ‘team’ in the next part.

We are about an hour and fifteen minutes into it at this point, and we all take our seats again. We were shown an ‘8 step pattern’ which would enable us to refer people and create a team. The first step would be to have a dream, and make commitments to meat the dreams that we have. Then we were told to get a list of names, setup appointments with them to show them the plan, recruit them, and then help them recruit other people. We were then told to set some goals and repeat the pattern. We were told to keep it simple in order for it to be very effective. This is where the meeting ended, my room-mate, his wife, and I all headed out to eat with some other people from Quixtar. Most of them were just normal people.

It’s generally agreed that not all Quixtar teams are the same. Some of them are pushy and use dishonest marketing techniques to sell their products, others of them are really quite reasonable and honest. I was brought to one of the better ones. I was never pushed into or even asked if I was interested in signing up. We were merely told after the initial presentation that if we were interested in signing up, just come talk to one of the people up front. We were never really told anything too outlandish about the earning potentials of Quixtar, and that if we wanted to make decent money we would actually have to work hard for it. I was really impressed with the operation that I had found.

No, I am still not a Quixtar convert and don’t plan on signing up. I don’t think they really offer that great of prices, and I really don’t want to bug all of my friends to sign up for a multi-level marketing program so that I will make some money. I do no longer think there is anything inherently deceiving and evil about the business plan, but I still doubt it’s really worthwhile. You have to pay $150 just to sign up for the ability to sell products at slightly above market prices. I have more profitable opportunities elsewhere, and I’ll stick with them. I dove head first into the world of Quixtar, and found one of the nicer corners of it. I’m sure there could have been many Quixtar presentational meetings that I could have attended which would have involved dishonest marketing and pushy recruitment attempts, but I got lucky this time.