LLI Not MLM? Its Direct Sales, But No Selling Required! What?
Today while doing some research and trying to stay current with the Liberty League International events, I came across a piece that was interesting. This was actually a post on a site kind of like this one; it was an older post but still showed an interesting thought process of a LLI member.
On the site there was some discussion as to whether LLI was multi level marketing or not. That’s about a no-brainer but here is what one LLI member said as to why it’s not MLM. They stated it was direct sales because the person buys the product from you and then you pass up the money for the overhead and cost. And because you don’t wait on the company to send you money for your sales, thus not MLM. Here is the definition of MLM; Multi-level marketing (MLM), also known as Network Marketing, is a business-distribution model that allows a parent company to market its products directly to consumers by means of relationship referrals and direct selling.
I truly hope that since that post that LLI has trained their members with a better canned response than that. It’s pretty clear that this entire business opportunity seems to operate in gray areas of the law and is structured to benefit the maximum to established members while not being deemed illegal. Structured in such a way to get by without being legally defined or classified a scam.
In my opinion it lacks a tangible product, unless you want to call a couple cd’s and a binder a tangible product. A product of which a similar can be found for less than a hundred dollars at any local bookstore. This may be what one commenter was referencing in a past post about “sick and tired of hearing get it at Barns and Noble”. Maybe we should say it lacks the type of tangible product one should receive for the money being spent.
LLI makes the claim on every one of its member sites “no selling required” along with make “5-15k a week”. How do you really think you’re going to make that kind of money not selling something? Think about it. Some say this is to take the worry off prospective members so they will join, because at that point, they don’t care if you succeed and recruit new people, they just want to sell you tickets to the next conference. This will probably set you back 8-13 thousand dollars if you are in the United States, more if you are in another country then you have to figure exchange rates. Another thing they don’t mention.
So is it direct sales or MLM? In my opinion and by definition, its both. They claim no purchase necessary to become a member, just a $49.95 fee. You just have to “pass up” your first 5 sales. However they claim, it’s going to be hard to sell if you don’t know the “product” you are selling. So you buy one, then you are only required to pass up two. Strange all this talk of selling when they say it not sales. Even stranger are LLI members passionately defending its “direct sales”, but no selling required stated on their websites. By definition, its definitely MLM. The problem seems that LLI preys upon its own members for its income, with pressure to attend conferences for large sums of money.
Research shows there are a select few within LLI that do quite well on this program. It seems that it was built to do just that. There are companies and services created by LLI founders and major players, in place at a charge to members to use, that in turn, send profits back again to the same people. LLI has a reputation so dirty I truly am surprised it’s been used so long. I do make one prediction…evolution. It’s happened before, we look for it again. What will it become next?
Sources: Research is gathered from sources all over the internet as well as current and former LLI members.
