Today we are going to dive into, what is edification in network marketing?

First I’m just going to explain what it is and how do you do it. Next I’m going to share with you some funny stories about a lack of edification and how I overcame those. Lastly we are going to talk about the four components that dictate your success in network marketing.

What is edification?

Edification is simply telling one person or a group of people about the great qualities of another person. This is most commonly used when introducing, maybe your upline or your sponsor or anyone that’s helping you in a sale. You are edifying that person to the prospect. You are not over edifying the prospect to the person helping you close. This is a very common mistake where people will edify the person they are talking to because they are trying to make them feel good, but that is a problem in psychology because you actually need to get your prospect paying more attention and thinking that the person you’re introducing them to is a very important person.

How do you do that?

Well there a couple ways.

One, everyone has their favorite trainer or teacher or whatever in their network marketing company. I have actually seen people that said, “hey, come to this event…this guy Joe is speaking there and he’s really good. He’s not as good as my friend Randy but I really like him, he’s good.” What does that say to the prospect? Oh, this guy is not the greatest. Should I wait for Randy? No, no, no whoever the speaker is…they are the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas. This is the person that is “oh my god, they’re amazing. I can’t believe they’re in town.” Don’t ever mention someone who’s not going to be a part of the transaction or event as being higher than the person that’s going to be there.

Now if you’re edifying on a three-way call or even a three-way message, right? People use messenger to get multiple people in a group and have chats. You need to edify that person you’re bringing on because they’re helping you. Now whether you like them, whether you think they’re the greatest or not, you need to edify them.

Here’s an example. If I was getting someone on a three-way call to help me with a sale or help me explain to a prospect what we are doing. I would say, “hey listen, I’m gonna do my very best to get Joe, and wow this guy is super successful. I don’t know if we can even get him. Maybe we can catch him in between meetings.” I try to get him on.

I get them on and I say, “hey, good news. We got Joe. Listen he’s got to run in like three or four minutes so we only have a few minutes with him.  Joe, this is my good friend Barbara. She’s looking at the opportunity. I know you only have a few minutes. (Notice the urgency. It’s like.. “oh okay, oh wow” so people tend to pay attention.) They’re very busy and important and powerful and whatever. You have to use that kind of psychology or else you just being straight shirt or here’s Joe and he’s pretty decent, he’s not bad. No one wants to pay attention to that! You have to edify that person.

I want to give you one example where I wasn’t edified and I think you will like this story. I had a rep in my team named Amy. Although she’s not any longer, at the time she was an executive for HBO. She’s out in LA, she’s around actors, actresses and all that world. Very different world. She texts me and she says, “hey I have a big wig can you help me out with a three-way call. I’m like sure, no problem. She gets me on this call and she says, “Ray, this is Barbara. Barbara runs the biggest talent agency in Hollywood. She knows all the celebrities, she’s incredible, has a humongous business. Everyone in town knows her….Barbara, here’s Ray.”  She did the opposite. She over edified the prospect, under edified me or didn’t edify me at all.

So, Barbara comes in (as you can imagine) as the 80 pound gorilla. Hello, little Ray. I swear this was her tone. Her tone was “hello there, Ray. I told my friend Amy I would look at her little business. How are you doing?”

I’m like, “hi, I’m fine. Hello, Barbara.”

I’m little guy, little hands and this is big Barbara because she’s been so edified. You cannot sell or recruit when the posture is like that, when the prospect is way up here and your itty bitty guy. You have to do something to correct it. I found the sooner you do this, the better. I could have just said, yes, thanks for your time, Barbara. I could have done that kind of thing, but that would have taken a long time to balance out.

So, instead, I just made what I thought was the obvious statement. The obvious statement was “well hey, Barbara. I’m curious. If you’re doing so well, why are we even on the phone?” Why are we even on the phone and I shut up. There was a sigh, there was a pause then a sigh. “Well business isn’t as good as it used to be. We had a few clients leave and I’m really not sure about the industry right now.”

Ah, okay. See, now we are eye to eye. By me challenging her saying why are we even on the phone, it balanced out the force there. Now we can have an actual conversation. I can’t have a conversation like this and an end in a positive result. This is one of the reasons that edification is so important. It is making your own job easier when you edify someone else. Don’t be worried about it. Some people are worried to about giving someone else credit that they shoot themselves in the foot. Be willing to edify.

Do this next.

Before we get to my last point…. As you grow your team, don’t you want them to edify you? Don’t you want to be edified? Feel free to share this with them. This may really help you solve a lot of problems. I don’t want you to have to fight uphill like I had to so many times. Feel free to share this post or the video above with your team. Feel free to post it in your Facebook groups or wherever or however you get messages to your team. Feel free to share.

What are the four components that guarantees your success in network marketing?

They’re four P’s. We will go through them fairly quickly because I do cover these in other parts of this blog and our YouTube channel.

Number one, pipeline. I’m going to spend a little bit of time on this one. What is pipeline? You ever have someone say, “very few people make money in network marketing.” Do you know why that actually is true? It’s because very few people do the work. What’s the work? Pipeline. Pipeline is the work. How many people did you reach out to, how many people did you follow up with, how many appointments did you set, how many videos did you send out, how many samples did you send out (if you’re a company that does samples)? It’s all about your numbers. This is not magical or mystical, it’s not like, “oh wow, what a weird concept.” No, no. This is anything in sales.

When I was in mortgages a million years ago, guess what? I had a pipeline. I had the last name of the family, where they were at, are they about to be CO’d, are they in underwriting, are they about to get an appraisal or what’s the status of their first loan, second loan. I had a pipeline that helped me keep track of where my prospects were in the process. That means, no pipeline, no money. I have to make money. You know network marketing is incredible but it’s not magical or mystical.

When people say very few people make money, well very few people make money in anything that’s performance based. If they have the option of doing or not doing that work, it’s not magic. Understand that how many people you reach out to follow up with et cetera and so forth is the work. Of course you want to improve your skills along the way which leads us into the next P. The next P is posture.

Number two, posture. Posture is how much belief do you have in what you’re doing regardless of external acceptance or approval. If you are someone that needs people to agree, accept and approve of what you’re doing then you’re going to struggle with network marketing because it’s different. People will applaud your job, but they will boo that you started a business or they’ll boo that you’re in network marketing. You have to be tougher than that. When my wife got started her family was making fun of her until she hit 10,000 a month and they all joined her. You have to be tougher than that need to be accepted, approved or agreed upon. Posture is managing your energy and the energy of the conversation. 

Number tree, position. Position is knowing where your prospect is. You should never try to close someone that you don’t know is open and hasn’t received any additional information. You should never go to a friend and say, “hey you should join me” if they haven’t received any information and you haven’t found out that they want the benefits of your product, service or opportunity, that’s just spam. Understand position because position is very powerful if you want to be a better closer.

Number four, perspective. So, it’s pipeline, posture, position, perspective. Perspective is what do you spend the majority of your time in your mind thinking about? What do most people do? Most people are easily influenced by the opinions of others. They are easily influenced by other input such as the media. What does the news report on? Do they report on the officers saving the cat out of a tree or do they report all the negative stuff? Most people are susceptible to all this negativity and they are being bombarded with on a daily basis. So they think about negative things. They think about all the things they don’t want and so that’s what they tend to get more of in their life. Perspective means you’re starting to change what you focus your energy and thoughts around and going toward what you actually want in your life. Perspective is one of those game changers and we do talk a lot about that on this blog and on our YouTube channel.

Let us help you.

Do you need more help in what to say to your prospects, how to handle posture, how to handle position, how to close more sales? You may want to consider getting our social media scripts book. The social media script book really teaches you word for word what to say to increase your chances at getting more sales, getting more customers and reps so that you start to rank advance and reach the top of your company. Here is the link rankmakershop.com/products/so. If you would like to learn more about our social media script book and some of our other resources, click the link above and check them out.

Ray Higdon

Play Bigger. Make An Impact.


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