SALES METHODS

the pitfalls, and he takes hold of the situation with confidence because he remembers the result of the previous time. But it is not necessary for him to have first-hand experience in order to recognize traps or opportunities; he may become familiar with the experiences of others and take lessons from those whip have been successful in his line. That is the reason why salesmen enjoy experience talk when they get together. That is the reason the best part of agency conferences and sales congresses are the stories of experience told by the field men themselves. That is the reason volumes of salesmanship theory are worth less than a simple story of actual experience in the field.

This book is composed wholly of experience talks. The men who wrote it are actual field men going out overy day with a rate book to sell Hie insurance; some have raised themselves to agency managers and field superintendents; all are qualified to speak with authority because they have been through the mill. They know. They relate incidents that really happened and tell of methods that actually were used. They describe how some plans failed and how they avoided such failures again. They present their successful working plans, how they created a desire for insurance where none existed, how they met objections, how they overcame competition, how they closed prospects with sales of large or small contracts. What is equally important, they breath the spirit and viewpoint of successful salesmanship. The field man who uses this book becomes the mental associate of more than two hundred prosperous and happy life insurance producers. He absorbs their confidence, makes himself a partner in their skill, and their experience becomes his experience.

Many of the successful producers whose words appear in this book do not know they have been selected to aid thousands of aspiring field men who will read it. Some of them are too busy to write; they are devoting their time, energy and skill to life insurance and getting rich. We have been fortunate in obtaining their contributions from sales convention proceedings, where they arose and told an audience how they conquered their problems. These experience talks are almost priceless, and to those who gave them to the life insurance world we express thanks that they were available for this volume.

THE PUBLISHERS. 4