Amway is a direct selling company with a history of more than 40 years. Its daily consumer products are sold to companies in more than 80 countries and regions around the world. In 1992, Amway entered mainland China and continued to operate using direct sales methods. On April 21, 1998, the Chinese government issued a ban on pyramid schemes nationwide. Since then, Amway also stopped direct sales in China and switched to store sales. In 2000, Amway once again launched direct sales operations in China. In just three years, Amway has achieved tremendous results and influence. While people marvel at the amazing development speed of Amway China, they also inevitably recall the destructive and evil nature of MLM. What kind of power does Amway rely on to attract direct sales personnel, and how can it avoid falling into the whirlpool of pyramid schemes again? Many people who care about the development of the company are waiting to see. However, among the many influencing factors of Amway, the one that most attracts our attention is probably still the "magic" of Amway's corporate culture. So, how does Amway's corporate culture work, so that such an abstract management tool can deeply improve sales performance?

1. Elements of Amway’s cultural operation

(1) Brainwashing

When it comes to culture, people often think of the important influence of culture on values ??and beliefs. In this regard, we can use brainwashing to describe Amway's cultural influence - helping every employee who enters live a more positive life, change their original negative life attitude, and stimulate employees' enthusiasm and fighting spirit.

Buried deep or shallow in people’s hearts is the pursuit of career or family. However, the torture of reality makes these pursuits either eclipse or disappear. However, sales is indeed a job that requires great enthusiasm from employees, and these enthusiasms come precisely from people's pursuits. Therefore, changing people's passive thoughts about life and stimulating people's inner potential have become the primary tasks of Amway culture. As many Amway people feel, "Before coming to Amway, I felt that life lacked goals. It was Amway that gave us passion. It was Amway that made me feel the joy of life. It turns out that life can be lived like this. It's not really about how much money you make. But we have seen significant progress.”

(2) Dream creation

Dream creation includes helping direct sellers set personal and sales goals, demonstrate career development prospects, and create opportunities around these goals. It is Amway's series of organizational means and measures as well as human and material support to help them achieve their goals.

Because everyone has different experiences, their dreams are also different: family, children, career or realizing the value of life. To this end, Amway must implement personalization for different direct sales personnel to arouse the resonance of different types of people. However, despite the wide variations among direct sellers, Amway's dream-building mechanism generally includes three elements: choice, familiarity and emotion. When introducing dreams, Amway usually does not directly persuade direct sellers to accept certain ideas or influence their thinking, but gives people full freedom of choice. Often, Amway people, inspired by these emotional and familiar dreams, begin to become excited and passionate. "It turns out that we have the ability to choose our own lifestyle, as long as we are willing to work hard." Under the influence of Amway's corporate culture, "I feel my blood is boiling and my whole body is full of strength. We are working hard for our dreams. It feels so clear and it seems that as long as we work hard, we can reach it."

< p> As mentioned in "The Fifth Discipline", the tension of dreams is usually simple and powerful. The power of this tension comes from the gap between the ideal and one's own reality. Through the measures and methods implemented by different corporate cultures, Amway makes organizational members feel that there is still a certain gap between what they themselves have achieved and their ideals, and at the same time makes them firmly believe that through hard work they can approach or even realize their ideals. However, organizational members may also reach the so-called "comfort zone" where they become content with their current life status and do not want to strive for their ideals. In Amway's view, "comfort situation" means failure, and a successful salesperson will not be satisfied with the status quo. Effort is a continuous and lasting process, so Amway dream building is also a cyclical process, which encourages its members to continuously establish new goals or dreams and work hard for them.

(3) Recognition

One of the important purposes of Amway in brainwashing and dreaming up its sales staff is to gain their recognition of the organization. In turn, whether an organization can brainwash and instill dreams in its members also depends to a large extent on their identification with the organization. However, from our contact with many Amway direct sales personnel, we can find that recognition is not based on personal economic success in the organization. In the eyes of many Amway people, this place has changed their negative views on life and given them confidence and vitality in life. It has given them a stage to perform and dreams for the future. The people here are friendly and warm and give them the feeling of home. Feelings, all of which money cannot do. Naturally, these direct sellers identified with Amway and fiercely maintained their relationship with the organization. It is the integration power of Amway culture that prompts them to regard themselves as an organic part of the organization. They regard themselves as Amway people everywhere and are proud of them. Some people even regard the Amway lifestyle as a belief.

Amway Cultural Communicator As mentioned earlier, for everyone, dreams reflect their past experiences, and the creation of dreams must also vary from person to person. For most Amway people, their most direct and largest connection with Amway comes from the upline, which therefore plays a key and irreplaceable role in the spread of Amway culture. In the process of spreading Amway culture, they first establish good relationships with downlines and gain their trust and recognition. Then, they will help and guide Amway direct sellers to choose and purchase appropriate books and tapes, guide them to adapt to the entire Amway system and learn how to do business. They even become mentors and helpful friends in the lives and beliefs of organizational members. In addition to providing opinions and information, the upline also helps its members deal with the negative impact on Amway from non-organization members and helps them adjust their mentality. The upline has such a significant impact on the downline, coupled with the challenges of sales work, for any Amway person who cannot maintain a good relationship with their upline, it will generally be difficult to integrate into the Amway culture and achieve good results. The interdependence between upline and downline promotes the establishment and development of deep relationships between both parties. Some Amway sales staff even believe that "my upline is like my parents, they care about me." As they get along with Amway members As time goes by, the impact of Amway culture on individuals is also growing. This seems to have created a communication barrier between Amway members and non-members. It is no wonder that the evaluation of Amway between Amway members and non-members is so different.

In addition to going online, Amway also conducts overall cultural transmission through various forms. The most common method is to invite successful Amway direct sellers to talk about their difficult journeys and how they grew step by step at Amway and realized their dreams. In contrast, there is a lack of perceptual awareness through Amway tapes, books, magazines and slides. Even so, impressive success stories can have a more lasting and widespread impact. How could I not hear and see that people who were similar to or even inferior to me a few years ago could earn quite a lot of income and be respected by people, and even similar stories happened to me around me, to my superiors? It makes people excited and eager to try.

Whether it comes from the upline or the entire organization, financial and emotional help and empowerment are the two most important features of Amway's direct selling culture. In most organizations, it is difficult for people to experience real concern. On the contrary, it is more about competition with each other, and the relationship between superiors and subordinates is indifferent (subordinates dare not expect their superiors to help them, and the superiors only care about their subordinates. How much and how well the task is completed). But in the Amway direct selling system, people care about and help each other. No wonder many Amway people lament that "Amway gives people a feeling of home."

2. Amway culture communication methods

Amway training shows us an all-round, multi-level training method and method, and also shows us how corporate culture can be used in training be passed on and instilled.

(1) Professional training

Amway’s product professional knowledge training is quite distinctive and effective. It requires every Amway direct salesperson to have the courage to show themselves, be familiar with the product's performance and cost-effectiveness, and demonstrate its unique sales proposition. After mastering the above-mentioned basic sales skills, Amway also focused on enhancing their communication skills with potential users. During this process, Amway direct sales staff continued to demonstrate product quality and correct usage. Through professional training, Amway direct sales personnel are able to use professional testing tools to improve customers' understanding of the efficacy of products from theory to practice, making it easier to further persuade them to purchase related products.

(2) Psychological training

Amway’s training is not just listening, but more about the sales staff’s self-presentation and the accumulation of behavioral perseverance. In actual sales work, you will encounter various problems, such as customers not giving you the opportunity to demonstrate products or services, and despising your existence. At this time, sales staff need to have a perseverance spirit and good psychological endurance. . This kind of endurance comes from Amway's psychological quality education: it conducts predictive analysis for some problems that each salesperson will encounter in their specific work in the future; provides them with objective solutions and reference methods to avoid their Embarrassment when answering customer inquiries; at the same time, through this kind of continuous training, Amway also increases the cohesion of the entire sales team.

(3) Emotional training

Simply providing product knowledge education and psychological quality training for sales staff can only improve their work ability. As for the overall quality, work enthusiasm and love for Amway of employees, Emotions have little impact. The charm of Amway culture truly shines through the emotional influence exerted on the basis of professional training and psychological quality training: sales staff who have received effective training have a qualitative leap in their own connotation and quality; they have a better understanding of the prospects of selling Amway products. A beautiful and rational understanding makes them feel that Amway not only satisfies their material desires, but also gives them career and spiritual pursuits.

Amway corporate culture can increase the enthusiasm of sales staff and improve their ability to communicate with customers. But to gain long-term recognition from direct sellers, a company must also have real and reliable capabilities. For example, the entire Amway (China) is a big tree transplanted from abroad.

Due to its good cultural integration and cultural operation capabilities, Amway has attracted many sales staff to join. This big tree is flourishing and sprouting branches, showing a vibrant overall image in front of people. However, in order to achieve sustainable development, this big tree must also have a well-developed root system as support. As the saying goes, how big the tree is and how deep its roots are. The sustainable development of Amway must be based on the foundation of integrity and quality.

3. The foundation of Amway cultural operation

Amway products are mainly non-recycling daily chemical products, with the characteristics of repeated purchases, and rely on the long-term recognition of customers (including employees) ; Most of Amway's direct selling business starts from relatives and friends. If it can be recognized by the people around it, the resistance to work will be much smaller, and the resistance to the introduction of Amway culture within the organization will be correspondingly much smaller; The main problems encountered are fraud. To eliminate people's doubts about direct selling, it is not enough to simply integrate internal cultures. All these require that Amway's corporate culture can not only have a positive impact on Amway's direct sales personnel, but must also be further extended to a larger scope outside the enterprise. Product integrity and quality have naturally become the fundamental guarantee for Amway's survival and are the spirit and soul of the entire enterprise.

For a company that uses the sensitive word direct selling as its marketing method, the company's integrity is very important. To this end, Amway actively expands its influence in China, and all business activities are conducted around integrity: it participates heavily in funding social welfare undertakings in China; direct sellers are allowed to choose to withdraw at any time within the first year after participation and receive a refund; no charges are There is a huge participation fee, and direct sellers are not forced to subscribe for large quantities of inventory; the behavior of sales staff is strictly regulated; if customers are dissatisfied with product quality, they can return it for a refund. As the core content of Amway's corporate culture, Amway Integrity is not just a slogan, but is reflected in all aspects of corporate operations and used to guide corporate behavior. From this point of view, it can indeed have a certain enlightening effect on the operation of Chinese corporate culture. Since the introduction of corporate culture into my country in the 1980s, the importance of corporate culture has gradually been recognized by the business community and theoretical circles. However, due to the long function cycle of corporate culture and the difficulty of operation, coupled with the limitations of the economic operating environment, the core elements of organizational culture still remain more in slogans. Take building an integrity organization as an example. Few companies are willing to pay real short-term costs and resist short-term temptations and stick to it.

We know that only by truly producing high-quality products can we retain customers, so Amway has always attached great importance to product quality since it entered the Chinese market. In fact, many salespeople joined Amway because of the high quality of Amway products. “At the beginning, I didn’t know about Amway. After being introduced by a friend, I started to try Amway products. At first I only bought a small product (spot removal). ), a few months later, my friend said that my skin spots were reduced. After that, I started using Amway a lot, and I still feel good. By chance, I attended an Amway meeting and found it very interesting, so I joined Amway.” Among the Amway direct sellers we contacted, more than one had a similar experience. Excellent quality not only attracts more people to join Amway, but also gives sales staff confidence when selling products.

4. Amway cultural operation trap

Amway has not announced the employee turnover rate, but it is estimated that the employee turnover rate of Amway (International) is as high as 40%-100%. At present, Amway (China) is still in the stage of rapid development from a low starting point. The personal economic and other benefits brought by development can dilute many inherent problems. As a result, Amway (China)'s employee turnover rate is relatively much lower, and we hear unusually few complaints from Amway's direct sales staff. But we can foresee that the future development of Amway China will inevitably face the same high employee turnover rate as Amway in other countries. Although the nature of Amway's direct selling business determines that employees must face long-term psychological and physical adjustments, the high turnover rate under high pressure is indeed understandable. But it also shows that although Amway has a strong corporate culture and is good at it, it still must face the risk of falling into its own trap.

(1) Profit-driven orientation

Corporate culture works by influencing corporate employees and is strengthened with the help of economic interests. However, if Amway employees misinterpret this meaning and focus too much on making huge profits, it is likely that the negative effects of MLM will spread among Amway direct sellers. This will not only fail to achieve the purpose of Amway direct selling to save sales costs and facilitate customer service, but may even fall into the crisis of pyramid selling again.

There are two sources of income for Amway marketers. One is their own sales revenue; the other is the so-called "market development fee." The former comes from the profits created by serving customers and selling products. The latter is obtained indirectly through the development of downline employees. It is an economic measure used by Amway to encourage sales staff to train and coach downline employees and thereby promote the growth and development of the enterprise. It should be said that both incentives are indispensable parts of the entire Amway marketing incentive system. Since serving customers' sales revenue requires a lot of energy from marketers, the scope of services is very limited. Therefore, for most Amway direct sellers, the proportion of service income will gradually shrink as their careers develop, and even reach an insignificant position, although the proportion of service remuneration for a single product is indeed not small.

However, developing downlines can gradually place themselves at the top of the pyramid by creating a sales pyramid, and gain benefits from the successful sales and development of downlines. This method is relatively easier and faster, so it will get more attention. However, profit-driven excessive attention to attracting downlines is precisely the most fundamental reason why MLM is banned in China.

Although profit-driven is an important means of marketing, profit is also an important factor that causes people to forget the essence of things. This is the so-called profit-driven mentality. Amway is also aware of this problem, so it has repeatedly emphasized that "our business requires diligent labor" in Amway's cultural propaganda. However, even correct and well-intentioned dissuasion may be ignored, not to mention that the quality of Amway direct sales personnel is still so uneven, which puts forward higher requirements for the penetration of Amway culture in this area.

(2) Breakdown of upline and downline relationships

Amway’s upline and downline relationships are bound by emotions and economic interests. Emotional inability to accept each other or conflicts of interest may lead to breakdown of upline and downline relationships. .

Under Amway’s incentive system, upline income depends largely on successful downline management and communication. Therefore, relatively speaking, the upline is more inclined to maintain the relationship between the team, and usually does not create a sense of separation from the downline in consciousness. Even if there is, it will not show easily. On the contrary, downlines may feel that their uplines are too involved in their personal lives. "Sometimes when I'm in a bad mood, my upline calls me and asks me to attend an Amway meeting. This makes me feel restricted, so I get angry with her." Some downlines feel that "I can't agree with my working methods" and their values. There are relatively large differences. Although Amway's strong cultural operation can reduce the gap in people's ideological concepts, and the training of working methods is almost step-by-step, after all, personal experiences and backgrounds vary widely. Juxtaposed with emotional conflict is financial conflict. Although the close economic income relationship between the upline and the downline can be diluted by Amway's powerful propaganda, it will inevitably make people feel more or less exploited. Once this feeling is brought into the communication between the upline and the downline, it becomes a potential factor that threatens their relationship. The breakdown of the upline-downline relationship caused by the above reasons can be improved by re-selecting the upline, but the greater possibility is to choose to leave.

(3) The dream is shattered

When the dream and its corresponding plan are successful, its members will redefine their meaning in the organization and strive for the dream; on the contrary, Failure can result in members disengaging from the organization and ultimately leaving.

From the success of Amway’s corporate culture in stimulating the work enthusiasm and enthusiasm for life of its direct sales staff, we can see that although corporate culture is abstract and seemingly impenetrable, it is indeed operable and can bring benefits to the enterprise. An effective management tool for efficiency. Of course, companies should have different corporate culture operations due to their different industrial backgrounds and development histories. For Chinese companies, it seems that there is more to do.

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