Historical discussions of the ACN opportunity from Scam.comBelow you will find a fair use condensation of material from the scam.com forum. The views expressed are those of the original posters and not the editors or publishers of this site. More detailed info can be found at ACN MLM networking business. ACN Australian Communication Network versus Peter Bowditch. ACN Scam.com discussions 2007-a ACN Scam.com discussions 2008-b ACN Scam.com discussions 2009-b ACN Scam.com discussions 2009-c ACN Multi-level Marketing06/07 - There will be HUGE numbers of people in MLM that do a little and then stop. The question is, will they stick around, remain on their services, keep their customers on, renew, etc? This, my friend, is what I've come to understand as the key to building a residual income - retention. You can recruit as many people as you want, but if you have a 95% attrition rate then you'll never have residual income - you'll be spinning plates for the rest of your life. People who join and do nothing and then quit will quit, leave, and most likely not stay on the services. However, it's the people that produce a reasonable effort and get reasonable results that we need to stick around - because that's going to represent 80% of your downline. For years in Excel I bought into the crap my upline was feeding me - that 95% attrition is normal in MLM. That is absolute bull. Yes, 5% are going to make six figures in MLM, but there is going to be a lot of people (most) who produce enough effort to get results. It is these people that I'm referring to. The company you are with will largely determine whether someone sticks around or not ACN Information06/07 - Sac Global, Shane Douglas, Simon Abbud, Carlos Rey, Andy McWilliams, etc, did not "choose" to join ACN because they saw it as a better vehicle than Excel, they joined because Excel was going out of business. ACN Residual Income06/07 - Approx. 80% of ACN's total payout is paid to 3 people, (the RVP, SVP, and the 7th level person (if qualified). The other 7 people split 20%. In ACN there are 6 ways a rep can have their residual check cut into ( lose a percentage of it, or all) ACN Enterprise Compensation Points07/07 - New Position Qualifications (U.S.) ACN Wireless services now count as Phone Points! In addition, ACN Wireless services will now count as Phone Points and toward TT qualifications for new representatives who start July 1, 2007, or after, allowing new representatives to further leverage ACN’s outstanding wireless product. New ETT Qualifications (U.S.) Representatives in the U.S. qualify for the position of Executive Team Trainer by earning 12 Phone Points plus two directly-sponsored qualified TTs. There is no change for Executive Team Leader qualifications. New Regional Vice President Compensation (U.S. & Canada) To help bridge the gap for all up-and-coming leaders, ACN is introducing a new level of Regional Vice President compensation. Both RVP compensation categories are considered Regional Vice Presidents for the purposes of recognition. The only difference is in the way in which the two categories are compensated 3 Star RVPs 4 Star RVPs 3 Star RVP 4 Star RVP A few important notes: Both 3 Star and 4 Star RVPs continue to be eligible to receive TC CABs and T-CABs. New SVP Qualifications Effective July 1, 2007, a representative can reach the position of SVP with 6 TCs or RVPs in 6 separate legs with at least 3 RVP legs (at any level), plus a minimum of $500,000 in monthly billings of ACN’s services in the SVP's total downline. In addition, ACN has increased the first generation SVP commissions from 0.5% to 1%. The ACN Opportunity07/07 - I am not saying ACN is a scam, by definition a scam is a business that intends to defraud or swindle someone. ACN provides real services to their clients. Again, the problem with ACN arises when you realize that to make any real money in your first few years, you have to recruit...A LOT. Most people do not want to go through that, and not only that but you are competing in a very tough marketplace, the telecom industry. This is why ACN really promotes the whole "ask your friends and family to switch on to the service as a favor", ACN knows that if you walk up to a random person and ask them to switch to a no name carrier for the exact same price as verizon or sprint, they will be laughed at. ACN Company Information07/07 - Let me clear up a BIG misconception many new--and even experienced--reps have had--inculding me for a while--about the New TT Bonus. This bonus is NOT to "get your money back" as WE reps sometimes incorrectly promote. The startup fee for ACN is $499. However, ACN gives new reps a chance to earn a $500+ bonus in their first 30 days for achieving ETT, something they need to do anyway. (For July, this bonus is $1,000.) If you achieve it, great. If you don't, no problem because whenever you achieve ETT, you're still positioned to earn up to $3,000 a month--6 times your intial startup fee. Unfortunately, because of the way we've promoted it, if new reps don't get it, they feel they've failed, and a lot of times they quit. But, in reality, they haven't failed; all they've done is delayed their success. If they don't get it their 1st month, they still can get it in their 2nd month, or 3rd month, or 4th month, or ... however long it takes for them. ACN infinity payout ACN MLM Truth08/07 - Coded Bonuses are the BEST way to go IMO. If you're an RVP or higher, you dont have to worry about someone in your group losing their status (etc), maybe causing you to lose your status, and hence affecting your residual income, like many have experienced in NON-Coded pay plans. Is ACN One of Those Multi Level Marketing Scams?08/07 - Let's do the numbers really quick. If a rep in ACN were to have 100 reps in their organization who each had ZERO customers their residual income would be ZERO. If that very person had 10 reps in their organization who each had 20 customers a piece it still wouldn't be a huge difference. For example, if Joe Schmoe had 10 reps who each had 20 customers you would have a total of 200 customers in your organization. Both of us know that if you only have 10 reps in your organization they will fall on the first couple levels. 200 customers X 40.00 (phone bill for example purposes only) = $8000 $8000 X .0025 = $20.00 residual per month Although there IS a difference between earning $0 and $20.00 per month, I think her point was that it wasn't TOO much of a difference. ACN Success or ACN Scheme?08/07 - Are you making a decision based off of emotion or logic? Don't get me wrong, everyone bases their decision off of some type of emotion, and yes I know sometimes people are taught to "close" people in their business (which makes no sense in my mind) but all it takes is crunching the numbers. Even if you fill out the rep agreement you still have days to look over the compensation plan and plug in the numbers. Back in the day they used to include the different level payouts in their presentations, as I understand it this is not the case anymore. The only thing I wished ACN did was add in the level payouts to their presentations instead of saying "up to 7%". This way people would see that on 5 of their levels if each customer billed $38.00 (used in their example) their residual payout would be .095 (basically .10 cents a customer) Dynamic Compression Could Help Reps at ACN Make Money08/07 - ACN promoters keep saying that the residual for the heavy hitters at ACN is better - up to 2%. It is clear to me that you do not understand how Lightyear's residual works. Our 8-level base commission is 1%. To be qualified to get paid on all 8 levels you need to be a Senior Manager and have 10 active personal customer points. Once you promote to SM and earn $2,500 in total monthly earnings your commission jumps to 2%, once it gets to $5,000 it jumps to 3% and once it jumps to $10,000 your residual is 4% + a true 1% infinity residual commission (regardless of generations of ranks under you). This is 1% to 4% on all 8 levels and is DYAMICALLY COMPRESSED. It is this dynamic compression that I think you're missing or perhaps misunderstanding. Let's say you build a team of 15 levels down that looks like this: YOU - a SM with 10 points Now, here's a test for you. How many of these people do you get paid residuals off of? The answer is ALL OF THEM!!!! Here in lies the power of dynamic compression! See, only 6 of the reps in this line of sponsorship are qualified to earn 8 levels of pay. Therefore, when it comes time to pay residuals, the compression kicks in and compresses the earnings until 8 levels are being paid out. Now, let's assume that you as an SM were earning LESS than $2,500 a month - so you're earning 1% on your residual. Well, if I'm not mistaken isn't that close to what an RVP earns to infinity? Okay then, just with our base commission of 1% you'd be doing very well in residuals. The key here, is all you have to do to be qualified for this is have 10 active customer points and a team of 6 reps - in other words, you simply need to promote to Senior Manager - our first leadership level. You said that ACN's numbers would be bigger for the heavy hitters - with the huge organizations. I actually disagree. One of our top income earners in our company who's billing millions annually has over 30 levels - but because of dynamic compression he's earning 4% on the entire thing! One thing that you should also notice is that Lightyear's dynamic compression doesn't care what titles are under you. I could have 4 people at the same level as me on my first level and because of dynamic compression I'm still earning 4%. The Truth about ACN and Lightyear08/07 - I think the big difference between the comp plans right now is that ACN has bigger residual potential (bigger than LYA) to the top 3% of reps, while LYA has bigger residual potential (bigger than ACN) for 97% of the reps. So the point is to figure out whether you care more about making more for yourself or your team making more. My personal opinion is that I would rather have EVERYONE earning a great residual check, rather than just me... which is why I'm in LYA. ACN Customer Acquisition08/07 - Just to clarify, the "logic vs. emotion" training refers to customer acquisition NOT rep recruitment. It's about getting people you know to try your services primarily because of your relationship with them and not because our rates are lowest. When it comes to recruiting, we want people to be excited about the opportunity but NOT join it just based on their excitement. ACN Presentation SpecificsThe ACN presentation does not include the specifics of what it takes for 7th level qualification. The company presentation is designed to be short ( 1 page ), the presentation is simply a tool to see if someone is interested in finding out more, NO COMPANY puts everything about the entire comp plan or all the rules on a presentation. And just to make sure you understand, all RVP levels and SVP, qualify for 7th level by having only 6 personal customers, not 20 or 40. Our presentation clearly says in box 6 that each person needs 25 customers. At 2 points each, that is 50 customer points and that is 7th level qualified. Showing 4% for your example is just like telling a new person that is what they can get, knowing that only 1% to 3% of reps will ever get it. ACN Comp Plan08/07 - Look, how this all got started was the issue of ACN's presentation not talking about the .0025% that is paid on the first 5 levels and only focusing on the "up to 7%" on the 7th level. To me that is greatly misleading because the presentation says "up to 7%" with an arrow all throughout the 7 levels - leading someone to believe that they'll have the ability to earn up to 7% on ALL of those levels. All I'm saying is that ACN should show the actual residuals on all the levels - just like we do. I don't understand why you wouldn't do this? Saying you make up to 7% with an arrow going from level 1 to level 7 is making people think they're earning 7% on all 7 levels. Why not show people the .0025% on the first 5 levels? ACN Business Plan08/07 - The residual %'s listed on all levels, the way we used to show them, was too cluttered and made the sheet look too busy. The leadership wanted the numbers taken out so we could explain the levels and then hand the detailed comp plan after the presentation to the interested prospects. It was taken out by our request to make the sheet less busy and easier on the eyes with all detail backed up in the comp plan details as a handout. It would take 3 hours to accurately explain all percentages and levels during a presentation. Is ACN for Real?08/07 - I went from a company that paid commissions very similar to ACN's to one that paid a full 1% on all the levels. I saw the same type of commitment levels in both companies (80% being average people who didn't do much). However, my retention rate was MUCH higher than my first company. What I attributed it to was people were content with where they were. I define retention as people who at least keep their business qualified so they can at least continue to earn their ongoing commissions. See, this is what nutritional MLM programs have had over telecom for years - their goal is to get people making just enough to pay for their product and if the product is quality and helping them then why would they leave? This creates their retention. In other words, even if they aren't going to build any longer - they still remain qualified! In Excel, it was very difficult to get people to earn enough residuals to pay for their business and make it worth it for them to stick around. After I left Excel I saw first hand that it didn't have to be that way. ACN is it a scam?8/07 - I think I have clearly stated that 95% of people are not gonna cut it, I might have even said 97%. I have been in business a long time, these numbers are across the board accurate in almost every industry. If you have 100 employees, 5 of them will be real winners. ACN Multi Level Makes Difference08/07 - We all know that not everybody will stick with their company or the industry for 3 years, but what if they did and simply recruited one person each and every month? Sure the average person only recruits 2.x reps in MLM, but those people generally also quit after a month or two. I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that if someone stuck with a company for 3 years that 36 front liners would be out of question, that's 1 person each month for 3 years (I know you know this - don't think I'm trying to insult you because I'm not). Now will a person stick with a company for 3 years if they aren't experiencing growth in their organization? I don't know. ACN Business Review08/07 - If you had a team of 100 reps in your ACN business anywhere between 30% to 50% of those reps will fall on your 7th level. Any leader in the industry knows this statistic. Lets use the absolute worst case of 30%. ACN Example We won't even deal with the 70 other reps because we pay so much more as to render those irrevelevant to analysis. This income can be made by any TT in ACN and you don't have to be an executive at all. Simply have 40 customer points personally. LYA Example Now, that analysis was only at the beginning position. At higher leadership positions, such as SVP, you can make 3 1/2% to infinity in your group. Again, unmatched in the industry. Any top leader will also tell you that at least 2/3rds of your total groups will fall below level 8 eventually. Now you can see why I have never lost a prospect to LYA....they simply pay a fraction of the total payout. PLUS.....they don't even pay a residual on Cellular. Cellular residual incomes in ACN will explode over the next 12 months based upon what I have witnessed. You'll be hearing about these everywhere as they build larger and larger. Selling ACN08/07 - So, let’s say a rep sells a cell phone in ACN. That means they’re earning 1% from their personal volume of $40. That means an ACN rep is earning .40 cents a month for 24 months ($9.60 after 2 years). If someone sells a cell phone in that reps downline they’re going to earn .0025% from the $40 which comes out to .10 cents a month. That paid out over 2 years is about $2.40 cents on levels 1-5. The only place the rep makes a reasonable commission is on the 7th level. Yes, I know the commission on the 7th level is huge - but unlike you 50% of my team doesn't fall on my 7th level. I must admit, I'm in awe of you, you're the only Network Marketer I've ever met that had half of their entire organization on their 7th level - so congrats to you buddy! ACN Expansion08/07 - Don't be absurd. I never said an entire team. I am referencing your absurd example of 100 reps only for a person. In those first 100 reps, I would expect at least 30% to be on the 7th level. As your and my company both know....over time the first 4 levels become very small in relation to the exponential growth and the bottom levels very large. That is why your high percentages on the throw away levels of 1 to 4 are nothing but window dressing. To refute this, I simply carry three commissions statements with me of people who have 1 personally sponsored rep and make between $1,300 and $2,100 per month in residual. Levels 1 to 4 are nothing....but of course we all know levels 5 to 7 are the meat and potatoes of any residual for a small builder. ACN Tips08/07 - First of all, you should NEVER stack people under someone when either rep has no idea of why this is taking place. Doing so can be very dangerous to your group. I understand your idea of creating this fear of loss - but there's a MUCH better way to do this and I'll get to that in a second. You need to understand that by stacking people you're actually creating a dependent organization. The rep who you're putting someone under is thinking "well, I'll just let my upline TC do all the work for me" - or he's thinking "wow, this guy must not think I can do this on my own if he feels he needs to put people under me." Then, the rep being stacked will be thinking to himself, "gee, I guess this TC doesn't think enough of me to personally sponsor me, he has to give me to someone else." And, he's also now saying to himself, "well if he's going to stack me under this other guy then he better stack people under me." As you can see this does more harm than good. ACN OpportunityYou keep referencing the SVP position as having a big residual - and it does - 3 1/2% is great for the SVP's. Again, how many of those are in ACN? Maybe 10 out of 400,000 reps? Is ACN a Scam?08/07 - I love your constant examples of the 7th level. I'm sorry but I have a lot more people above and below my 7th level so that's why I'm not impressed with the 7th level. I also have a lot of average people on my team and almost all of them have a bulk of their organizations above their 7th level - so I'm only basing my opinion off of what makes sense to me. I'm just not a superstar like you Matt - I don't have 50% of my team on one level alone (you still have yet to show us how you've done this). I also love your examples of being an SVP in ACN - but in your company I would not be an SVP - just as you are not (yet). So that comparison really doesn't mean anything to me. I also know that most of my reps wouldn't get to SVP - so why would I be excited about something that most will never get to participate in????? The bottom line is that the 7th level bonanza is the greatest chance for a small builder to make a significant income. So when you say things like "those first 4 levels are just for window dressing" - this is why I disagree with you - because I don't see that as the case in my organization. To one of the 10 SVP's in ACN - yes they could care less about the first 4 levels. But to the 399,000 people who won't build to SVP - those first 4 levels (in my experience) are VITAL!!! acn bounty bonuses Compare ACN08/07 - You're saying that ACN pays out more than twice what LY does. Now, the question I have for you is - is that best case scenario or is that on every wireless customer? I'm not arguing that there's a total payout POTENTIAL that's higher with the ACN wireless - never said otherwise. What I'd be curious about however, is whether the true ACTUAL payout is higher. For example, what is the average personal commission that ACN reps are earning? Is it 1% or 10%? Does the average rep in ACN have a bulk of their wireless customers on the 7th level? Because if they don't then ACN is NOT paying out more on their wireless - they're only making it look like they do. Another question: are 100% of the reps in ACN qualified to get paid off of all their 7 levels from the wireless customers on all those 7 levels? Or, what is the percentage of people in ACN that are fully qualified to get paid on all their 7 levels? Because if they aren't then ACN isn't paying out 100% of their payout for their cell phones. ACN Downline Not Paid on CompressionBasically, customer volume that is generated from a rep who is unqualified to receive residuals gets compressed up to the next qualified rep, therefore unlike many companies, the residuals are going to the rep and not the company itself. Also, anyone who is qualified to get paid residuals 8 levels deep CAN make up to 4% residuals. It's all based on their leadership bonus earnings. Upto $2499 in leadership bonuses pays 1% ACN Representative Qualifying Steps 08/07 - This is the commission payout qualification requirements for ACN reps upto the 7th level. LEVEL Cust Points or Cust Points/Directly sponsored Qualified TT [Level 1 ] 1 point [Level 2 -4 ] 25 points or 10 points and 2 QTTs [Level 5-6 ] 35 points or 15 points and 4 QTTs [Level 7] 40 points or 20 points and 5 QTTs ACNs commission qualifications are based on Total personal points or (total personal points and qualified frontlined TTs). ACN Gossip
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