I was talking to a friend last night and she told me she joined a direct sales company selling weight loss products. She told me the testimonial is very good and a man has successfully lost 52kg as a result of consuming the products which is high in vitamins and proteins. She is still studying in college and against her mother advice, she has invested all her savings into it.
She told me her "teacher" is very kind and taught her selling skills needed for selling the products. However, after asking her some basic questions, I found out that she was not trained on basic product knowledge. She don't even know the function of various vitamins and the maximum dosage a person can take per day. She also don't know the ingredient and nutritional facts of the products. She also don't have any idea how the products will work in the body or how the products help in loosing weight. All she know is that "the product is rich in vitamins and proteins; take it and it will help to loose weight".
This is the similar to a group of direct selling personnel trying to persuade me into selling their products; because my background in the medical line. Unfortunately, they did not do their homework properly. They told me their products can help to "cure" certain diseases like diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and etc. They also told me that all western medicines are harmful to the human body and that is what all the boxes is marked "Poison". They told me that once the patients started taking their products, they can stopped taking western medicines.
In fact, they are testing my patience. I immediately asked them some questions where they could not answer:
- Do you know what is the causes of diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolemia?
- Do you know how "western medicines" works on these diseases?
- Do you know how your products work in helping to so called "cure" these diseases?
- Do you really know the purpose, reason and meaning of the "poison" label on the box of so called "western medicines"?
- Do you know the risks in telling a patients who are well controlled on their current treatment to stop taking their medications and switched to your health products.
- Do your products have any big trials published in reputable journals?
- Can you guarantee the patient will be well after switching to your products?
- Have your products been approved my Ministry of Health for such indications?
- Do you know it's against the law for such off-label claims?
- Do you know it's unethical to sell this way?
None of them can answer and immediately showed me ugly faces. That's not very professional and gave me a bad impression on the company who only wanted sales and not making sure their sales personnel are qualified to sell.
Well, I agree that some direct selling products do have good studies and the ingredients are very good for health. However, I just hope that direct sales company can put in more efforts in training and guiding their sales personnel not only on their product knowledge and selling skills; but also the law and ethics; as well as disease management to prevent risking patients' life by misleading statement.
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