With so many Baby Boomers now  looking for extra money, retirement income, a second career, or an online income opportunity, many business opportunity recruiters are surprised at the negative response from prospects who had some exposure to MLM (Network marketing) in that pre-Internet era.

As I had indicated, I joined Amway in 1970.

 This is now a multi-billion dollar success story in the MLM field. You might be surprised to learn they were the first “Green” business that promoted their cleaning products that were not only bio-degradable, but phosphate free. Federal guidelines came later to ban phosphates from detergents because they were promoting the growth of plant life that were chocking and destroying rivers and streams.

Now picture this 1979 MLM business model: no Internet, websites, no back-office account management, no online ordering for both customers and distributors, no autoship, fax machines, conference calls, 3 way calls and telephone long distance charges were very costly.

You received your weekly order through a distribution chain of your MLM network. Your personally sponsored downline distributors called you with their weekly order. You called it into your sponsor; they went upline until the Direct Distributor ordered direct from the company. When the products arrived, the whole distribution chain went into reverse. Your sponsor picked up the order from their Direct Distributor, you picked it up from your sponsor and your downline, in turn, picked it up from you. At every stage of the distribution process, this weekly product order was paid by cash or check (no credit cards). At the end of the month, the Direct Distributor passed out the commission check to your sponsor, they in turn wrote one to you and you had to write checks for each of your personally sponsored distributors. As you can imagine, the paperwork was a nightmare.

Expanding my organization in 1970 meant taking very long drives.

 I sponsored my college roommate who lived in Cazenovia, NY (6 hours away) and my good high school friend in Burlington, Vt. (4 hours drive). I also had a downline group on Nantucket Island. Fortunately my best friend owned a private plane and it was fun to occasionally “fly in” for an opportunity meeting. When it came to products, I had to make arrangements for these long distance distributors to pick up their weekly from the nearest local Direct Distributors as professional courtesy (at a price I might add). If a Direct was not local for one of my distributors, then we had to mail their orders- 8 pound boxes of soap and other weighty products at our own expense, which obviously made the whole effort very unprofitable. Despite this complicated and cumbersome system, people who hung in there actually made money. Most, understandably didn’t.

So, if you tried recruiting a Baby Boomer who had some exposure to MLM from that era, maybe you will now understand why you might be getting such a negative reaction.

 Baby Boomers are prime business prospects and can be valuable team members for your networking opportunity. If you can present them with NEW information about 21^st Century “Attraction Marketing” and the  “New School” Network Marketing paradigm your success rates will really be enhanced. The best way to do this is to simply offer the FREE “Attraction Marketing” report “The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing.” This controversial and educational ebook exposes the fallacy of using out dated “Old School” networking techniques in a very concise and intelligent manner. When an open minded “Baby Boomers” are exposed to the details of this new business paradigm and discover that they too can achieve their personal; and financial goals on the Internet, a lot of good things can happen for everyone.

Ann Seig uses the term “Educational Marketing” as a way to describe the information found in this FREE report.

Prospects can then make a decision base in information and not hype! They can actually visit her Renegade University and view EVERY aspect of her training for 7 days for only $1. Even if they decide that this isn’t for them, in that first week, they have enough time to set up several FREE campaigns to promote a business that they already might be involved with.

My next blog will expose the ineffectiveness of “Old School” MLM Marketing techniques vs. the New School of “Attraction Marketing.” Powered by the Social Media and the Internet.

Be Well,

Rich Kania

http://richkania.marketersmanifesto.com/

Baby Boomers, Cleaning Products, Detergents, Distribution Chain, Extra Money, Income Opportunity, Internet Websites, Long Distance Charges, Mlm Business, Negative Response, Network Marketing, Phosphate, Phosphates, Retirement Income, Rivers And Streams, Telephone Long Distance