The Out of Town Expert with the Briefcase by Doug Wead

The Out-of-Town Expert with the Briefcase

“The most effective way to build a sold organization is to master the knack of promoting your upline. It is really an art.”
- Jerry Webb

“It may be the oldest business principle of all time.”
- Susan Ross


Not too many years ago I sat down with my accountant to review my finances. “You need more life insurance,” he said. “Your estate is out of balance.”

I wasn’t surprised. Like many people I had avoided life insurance salesmen like the plague. So, with great reluctance, I made an appointment with the best life insurance salesman I could find. He came highly recommended. Among his clients were some of the most famous people of my city. Too make the whole boring process easier, we agreed to meet at my favorite Mexican restaurant. And we both agreed, the appointment would last exactly one hour.

When he arrived at the restaurant he was not alone. Another, well dressed, young man was with him. Now, I’ve been a student and a teacher of sales for most of my life. Instinctively, I knew who this stranger was. He was what we call “the third party” or “the out-of-town expert with a briefcase.”

All through the meal my salesman talked on and on about the stranger sitting next to him. “He is much, much better than I,” my salesman assured me. Had I seen the quote about him in The Wall Street Journal? Had I seen the magazine article in Success Magazine? “Oh, I just happen to have one here.” Did I know that one of the stranger’s clients played for the Phoenix Suns basketball team?

Throughout this whole enthusiastic monologue, the stranger, “the third party,” sat listening very quietly. He never said a word.

What is interesting is that nothing was said about life insurance. Which again, shouldn’t have surprised me. All sales, even insurance, is the art of selling people, not products. If one “buys” into the sincerity and enthusiasm of the person, one will ultimately buy the product. Even so, I was growing nervous. Did my salesman remember our deal? He only had one hour and time was running out. We had only talked briefly over the phone about what I wanted and why. Life insurance was now a very complicated business. The salesmen themselves hardly understood it.

Finally, they brought the check. Time was up. My salesman had spent his whole hour talking about someone I had never met before in my life and would probably never see again. Oh, he had been convincing about his friend. I had almost felt ignorant, even guilty, for never having heard of this stranger before. Bur we were about to leave and they had not sold me any insurance.

Then finally, even as he was picking up the tab, the stranger opened his mouth for the first time. “Mr. Wead, I have been in insurance all my life and I’ve never seen a policy that provides any more coverage for less money than the one you chose.”

Well, that was it. I had just been indoctrinated for one hour. This man was a genius on life insurance. Would The Wall Street Journal lie? And he had confirmed my own first impressions, my own instincts into what I needed. I signed the papers and bought another $500,000 in life insurance.

This experience included all of the elements of one of the most important secrets to building a network. Indeed, it is one of the most important secrets to any kind of sales, as well. You can’t do it by yourself. You need a “third party.”

There is a proverb that is thousand of years old. “A prophet is without honor in his own land.” If you are building your business right, if you are sponsoring peer and above, you probably don’t have much credibility with them. You are their upline in the network but in their minds it is only because you signed an application for a few days before them. They have little respect for your knowledge of networking. They won’t listen to your counsel. And yet, you are their ling to the changing nuances of how a network can be built quickly. Their ignorance of some to the basics of networking will cost them wasted dollars and wasted days.

You need an “out-of-town expert with a briefcase.” you need to bring in a “third party.” In this case your upline, the “hunter pelican” who is helping you build your business.

In the last chapter we talked about promoting your downline, the distributors you recruit in your business. We talked about the power of using recognition to motivate and inspire them to work. Now, you need to learn to power of promoting your upline, of using whatever credibility you have to promote “the third party” who will teach your new distributors and eventually give you the credibility to become the leader of your own network.

But you say, do I really need him? How can I trust him?

The answer to the first question is yes. No matter how great you think you are, if you have sponsored peer and above, they are not impressed. When I sponsored a Governor he ran in to the same problem. His friends respected him as an executive and as a politician, but they were in impressed with his knowledge of network marketing. They knew better. He needed “an out-of-town expert with a briefcase,” which in this case was myself. Of course, with all of his credibility and power it was very easy for him to convince his friends that I was “the expert” and if they listened, good things would happen.

This lesson was brought home to me in a much more dramatic way during my years in government. I was serving as a Special Assistant to the President in the Bush White House when we brought onto senior staff a writer whose primary job consisted of writing letters defending the President and his policies. Now this was only one person, sitting at a word processor. But, believe me, she had impact. When we would get attacked by the New York Times or the Mayor of Chicago, our staffer would go to work, point by point defending the White House and discrediting the arguments against us.

Now comes the interesting part. When the letter was finished, the White house staffer contacted one of our friends or supporters living far away in Idaho, or Indiana, or Oklahoma. Never anyone from Washington, D.C. Our staffer would fax the letter to the friend and ask him to re-write it in his own words and send it on his own letterhead. The letter had to appear to come from someone far removed from the White House.

Why? Why didn’t we just send it in ourselves? The White House is a pretty important place with lots of credibility. We could have made lots of trouble for the New York Times. We could have made trouble for the mayor of Chicago. Our letter could have said, “This is our position. Your criticism of us was unfair.”

The obvious answer is that no one has any credibility when talking about himself. Even the White House needs someone else to defend it. And you to need somebody else. You can’t promote yourself.

Remember the story of my insurance salesman? He did all the work. For one house he sold his friend. The stranger just sat there. If my salesman had spent the hour talking about how great he was I would have not been impressed. He needed the third party to pull it off. When the time was right the stranger spoke. And armed with all the credibility for a full house of effective selling, he spoke with power.

You may say, “I have no credibility. How can I promote my upline.”

The answer is this. You don’t need credibility when promoting someone else. While it is true that nobody can really promote himself without a third party, it is also true that anybody can be the third party. Anybody can promote anybody else. Objectivity is assumed when we talk about others.

On your way into a theater you may ask a complete stranger “Was the movie good?” Sometimes you will stop along the road to ask, “Is there a good restaurant near here?

Who is this stranger who is giving you the information? How do you know the person’s tastes for food and movies are the same as yours? You trust another’s judgment because it is random and you can be reasonably sure that person neither produced the movie nor owns that nearby restaurant.

When the Mayor of Chicago got on of our letters signed a White House friend in Idaho, he didn’t investigate the person. He didn’t demand, “Where did he go to school? Where does she work? Why should I trust his judgment? Who is this person? What qualifies him or her to comment on my speech?” Objectivity was assumed because the person was not an employee of the White House. It appeared to be a random opinion.

You can promote your upline who is helping you build your network, and people will listen.

You may say, I am older than my upline. I am better educated. I have more wealth. My house is nicer.”

Then it will work quicker and better. Your credibility will help you sell your upline to your new prospects or new distributors.