SALES METHODS

build a house. He explains his needs and leaves the architect to do the work.

One reason why the agent should be educated, therefore, is to enable him to think and act for his client. In short, he must be an expert in order that his prospect shall not be forced to acquire expert knowledge and detailed information about what to him will always seem a technical and intricate subject.

There is another reason why the agent should be a trained expert—a reason quite as important as the one just stated. It is this: if he knows of his own knowledge that life insurance rests on foundations as steadfast as the everlasting hills; if he fully appreciates its values; if he knows exactly how its wonderful achievements are accomplished, his enthusiasm will be so great; his conviction will be so strong, that he will speak with convincing force, and his appeals will be absolutely irresistible in the vast majority of cases.

Are You Licked? By Philip A. Nelson.

I had not carried the rate book two months before the bottom dropped out of everything. In that time I had writ-ten my friends, and somehow I didn't have the knack to solicit strangers successfully. I was ready to throw up the sponge. My luck had turned. I was the prize boob of the agency.

Our agency manager is a good mind reader, and it was unnecessary to tell him that I was licked. He had some dope for fellows in just my fix. He pulled some clippings out of an upper corner pigeon hole.

"My boy, do you know that Abraham Lincoln was a failure in life until a new political party took him up?" he asked.

"And do you know that Woodrow Wilson went into the Baltimore convention realizing that he had small chance to be nominated? He had booked passage to Europe.

"Phil Sheridan rode out of Winchester and met his men retreating. 'We are beaten,' an officer told him. `You are, but not this army,' Little Phil roared. 'Come on, boys.'

"General Grant sat at his desk in a field tent. The news-papers of the North demanded his resignation. President

14