CHAPTER I

PREPARATION OF THE SALESMAN

Success is No Accident. By Edward A. Woods.

You go to a theater and see a wonderful play. You say it was perfect, that it held your attention every minute. Do you think those actors you saw and heard went out on the stage unprepared and spoke the lines of the characters they were representing? A building was erected, a well ventilated and well equipped theater building, built on a definite plan. A skilled man wrote the play, which was then examined and passed upon by critics. And then the persons who were to play the different characters of that play were carefully chosen, but after experienced players were selected they were drilled and drilled and drilled; the scenery and surroundings of each act were prepared and criticised, and the finished product that you saw was the result of the most careful thought and effort and the expenditure of thousands of dollars in preparation. And yet some of us will give a new man a rate book and expect him to walk into a man's office and sell him insurance, and then we wonder that he fails. Is it not a wonderful tribute to life insurance that we have sold so much? You people who have been in this business ten or fifteen years, is it not a wonder that people bought from us at all?

Advantages of Thorough Knowledge. By William Alexander.

The life man's position is now like that of the lawyer, the doctor or the architect. The client does not wish to listen to a learned disquisition on the technicalities of the law, but nevertheless he would not employ as counsel a man who was not supposed to be learned in the law. The patient does not expect the doctor to lecture to him on physiology or surgery. He comes simply to be cured. The man who wants a home does not go to the architect to learn how to

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