Sunday is spiritual day.
hope 1. the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.
Who doesn’t hope and create images to make life easier?
Question: When is it good and when does it prevent someone from making a needed change?
1. My friend Lulu has hoped for 20 years that her husband would bring in regular money, and that he’d be nicer to the children. And to this day she’s trying to make it work. So far no luck.
But she keeps creating images of the way she wants him to be, she keeps hoping, and she keeps right on being disappointed. Twenty years now.
2. One gal says she justifies the “PV/BV” double standard of her company’s pay plan like this: “I’ve hated the BV, PV, BP thing for years and had to come up with a way to explain it honestly first to myself and then to my prospects. What I came up with is that BV is what’s left over after the company subtracts its profit from the cost of each product.” (Comment 7 in the post, I didn’t mean to lie. )
She’s honestly hoping that’s why her company uses the BV/PV she’s never liked. Because it makes it somehow right.
But her company (and all network marketing companies) keep about half of all they take in to cover their costs and profits, before they pay out any commissions to the reps. The BV/PV formula just increases the company’s share of reps’ sales. And it’s a way of inflating the commission percentages that companies represent they pay to their distributors.
Painting a rosy picture of situations like these seems to be easier than making a change or seeing things as they are.
Hope: When is it harmful?
Hmmm … now there’s an interesting question 🙂
Can you hope too much? When does hope become harmful …
I think that hope without action (which for me bears some similarity to the vent part of vent vs. change .. one perhaps more positive *looking* than the other) … becomes harmful if there is truly the expectation of things being different in the future.
And, on the flip side, if there’s no TRUE expectation, then where’s the harm??
Surely most of us are familiar with “The definition of insanity …”
Nothing AT ALL wrong with being crystal clear re. what we want … but then we gotta do something about it.
It’s possible Lulu should be in ‘personal development’ action as part of her forward motion solution to where ever she wants her life to end up … or perhaps it’s just a vent 😉
Hubby will follow or not; not something within her power nor is it her responsibility. Ask me how I know the truth of this :-/
As far as ‘justifying price’ or worrying over ‘how much the company gets’ or ‘explaining how BV/PV/CV works’ (again, questions I never get) … why go there? Who cares how much the company is making??
The only thing that matters is how much our downline is making (which btw, our check will directly reflect); that they’re in profit and earning whatever it is they want to and in a manner that works for them.
At least that’s what makes sense to my brain … what say you??
Andrea Goodsaid
Hi Andrea!
Thanks for the good thoughts.
You write:
“As far as ‘justifying price’ or worrying over ‘how much the company gets’ or ‘explaining how BV/PV/CV works’ (again, questions I never get) … why go there? Who cares how much the company is making??”
I agree that there’s no need to worry about how much someone else, including the company, gets.
The issue I was addressing with the BV/PV was the representation that companies using the BV/PV formula make about the percents they pay out – which are used to entice people to rep for them. When those percents are artificially inflated because of the BV/PV formulas, a person has a right to be, indeed, SHOULD be concerned – not only for themselves, since they’re not getting the percent they think they are, but also how they present that information to their new people and prospects.
Think?
I think hope is good for some things that are out of our control that we cannot direct.
When it becomes harmful is when there is an expectation that something will change or happen and that hope continues even after it has been proven it will not, as in Lulu’s case. If Lulu has been hoping for 20 years that her husband will change the way he is and he has not, then having that hope is harmful to Lulu. She needs to wake up and realize that what he’s been doing for the past 20 years is probably what he’ll continue to do for the next 20. Then she needs to decide whether she can be happy with him as he is or whether she wants to truly change the situation and move on. By the way, have Lulu and her hubby tried counseling? 😉
In terms of the whole PV/BV thing, that was one of the things that turned me off my first NM company. Anything that is too darned complicated for me and the average person to understand, I wonder about – why is it so complex? What is it they’re trying to hide? With my present company, almost all of the products have the same amount of points as their retail price, so when we say we’re paid 50%, we really are paid 50%.
Back to the question about the comp plan, I think it’s the same as Lulu’s situation. If you’re in one of those companies that have these complex compensation plans that make it seem like you’re earning more than you really are, I think you have to take an honest look at what you’ve got and see if you can live with it or not. If you can, great – press along. If not, then you either decide to stick with it and be unhappy – which will completely drive you to frustration and unhappiness – and drive away any customer and/or business prospects you might have – or change it.
If you’re “hoping” things will change and those things are things you can impact – directly or indirectly – then it is harmful. If you can’t direct the event in any way, then I can’t see any problem in hoping. I can hope all I want that my child turns out okay, but if I don’t give her the tools to handle life as an adult, all the hoping in the world won’t help her. I must take action to ensure that what I want happens or has a reasonably good chance of happening. On the other hand, if I hope the weather is nice tomorrow so I can work in the garden, it is just that – a hope – and there is nothing I can do to control whether it’s nice tomorrow or not. It’s all up to the man upstairs – so I hope and then I see what happens. No action required, except to have everything ready to work if it turns out to be nice.
HOPE..I have heard is Holding On Praying Expectantly.
And if that is true… then I dont like the thought of hoping. I think I must DO something and not just HOPE. I believe that THINGS do not change unless PEOPLE change them.
When HOPE promotes denial maybe the truth is covered up?
And maybe we need to make some changes…. in whatever?
Just my thoughts on this at this moment.
Mary
Jim Rohn says it best:
“Hope is not a plan.”
That being said, there’s nothing wrong with hoping as long as you’re addressing your situation with a plan of action AND IMPLEMENTING IT.
You may rest assured that if you do not have a road mapped plan for yourself someone else will do it for you — and you might not like the destination they have in mind.
I believe that there is little in life that is totally out of our control — it’s how we choose to deal with the forces that be (or not!).
🙂
Linda
Thanks, Linda, for the “Hope is not a plan”.
I will remember that.
Mary
start living today! What’s the use of hoping for tommorrow and what life will be like if you can enjoy what life is today! Your husband loves you for who you are today, why not love him the same.
As far as the Pv,BV, or SP, if it’s that big of a problem for these guys whay are they with the company they’re with? EVERY business is in business to make a profit and goodness regular companies pay a LOT smaller percentage of their profits to their reps. I say stopp “biting the hand that feeds you”. Just explain it that “there has to be a system and this is the system developed by this wonderful company!”
I went back and reread Kim’s response….yes, it’s wrong to misrepresent…start today to not do it in your business! Who cares what the other reps in your company do if you know you’re representing it planinly?
What do you do if you love the products, but not like about the pay plan? The pay plan is purchase $150 with 100 pv. Something is not right.
Marian – yes, agreed. It’s about the misrepresentation, not the amount or percent actually being paid.
Anon: The pay plan is what it is. Your decision is, is that acceptable to you or not? If so, present it honestly to someone else. If you are paid 30% on a product sale on $100, when the person pays $150, then you can’t say you’re being paid 30%, because you are not being paid that on the purchase price of $150.
THAT is what most people assume – if they pay you 30%, it’s assumed to be of the price the customer pays, since that is what the sales person has to get.
If that is NOT the case, lower the percent you represent to another rep prospect, and to yourself, so it’s honest…in this case…it’s 20% of the product price to the customer. Then you don’t have to get into the nitty gritty of PV and you are being straight about it.
“They pay us about 20%…” Or whatever the range is, which depends on YOUR level, of course, how much business YOU have brought in to the company.
Yeah Kim I see how I wasn’t addressing the point directly 😉
I guess I never get the % questions ’cause I know that the numbers on the payplans are deceptive … I’ve always converted it into appx dollars on new customers assuming a starting out distributor payout.
After that, people can see for themselves (as their checks come in) what the results are depending on levels of payout / rank / whatever… and strategize further to suit their personal goals.
See what I mean?
Linda … LOVE that hope quote.
Suzanne … I was just thinking about you. Cool!
Andrea
Just my 2 cents on this…
With my company, you have basically 2 kinds of people, those who just want products, either at retail or wholesale, and those who want to build a business.
A business builder will get to the top discount, 40%, whether they purchase the volume themselves or work till they generate the volume. Why would you want to be in business at less than the top discount? Nobody in traditional business would, I wouldn’t either.
So if I have someone buy products at retail, the company pays me the diff, 40%. Whether they buy direct from the company or I have the product on hand & they buy from me.
If someone pays their $50 annual membership fee to buy at wholesale, they get a 20% discount, & I get the other 20%, because I’m at the 40% discount. They can also get a higher discount, 25%, 30%, 40% if they purchase more products in a pay period, & they will stay at that higher discount as long as they are a member. I, as a business builder, get the diff between my discount & theirs, until they reach the 40% discount.
Where the BV comes in with my company is when a business builder joins my team, or a wholesale customer reaches the top discount. Both me & him are getting our products at 40% discount, and getting the difference in discount for our wholesale customers.
I can’t get a difference in discount for him because we’re at the same discount. So the way I get paid for what he does is I get overrides, 7% of the BV of what he purchases. The BV is 50%. And my over-rides go to 3 levels down, of business builders.
On top of that, there are “infinity” leadership bonuses, extra percentages for leaders that get paid down to the next person who is at that particular leadership level. So I guess they’re not really infinity, because they stop at the next leader who has earned that level.
My main point in explaining all that is that it makes perfect sense to me that the BV for calculating overrides & leadership bonuses is 50% of the retail value. 40% is already knocked off in the beginning, either going to the wholesale member by way of a discount or to the 1st business builder “above” them.
Not that I explain all that to the new person. What they need to know is how to market the products & how much they will make per customer sale, which is very easy at 20-40%.
Nor do I feel like my company hides any of that, or presents it in a dishonest way, or takes “fees” off paychecks. If I was with a company that did that I would find a different company. I would think a company like that would mostly attract people who are the same type. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that type of company or environment of fellow business people.
Just so you know, there really are some companies that do business in an honest & straight-forward manner, supporting the netWorker.
The company I’m with is one of them, plus I absolutely love the products, so as far as I can tell I have a long future ahead with them.
Thanks for listening & have a great day!!