PREPARATION OF THE SALESMAN

Lincoln was worried. Grant wrote, 'I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.'

"My boy, the only person who can defeat you in this business is yourself," concluded the general agent. "Around the corner is success just as important to you as the success that came to Grant. At one time he supported his family by cutting and peddling wood; around the corner was fame that will endure for centuries."

Building an Agency. By N. E. Spradley.

The most successful and practical method used by the writer is endeavoring to make my system of assistance and co-operation so appealing to the insurance man that many of them apply voluntarily for contracts. In fact, the men themselves secure more new men by telling of their success than I do myself.

In starting my organization I secured two men who were in other lines of work. They appealed personally to me on account of the fact that I knew they would work, and, knowing as I did that work was the secret of this business, I took these men into the office for a week, taught them the rudiments and construction of life insurance in general, the why and wherefores, caused them to become familiar with just two policies, and infected them with the insurance germ that is bound to come to a man of thrift. I would go into the field with them for a week, then leave them alone for awhile and watch their progress. They made good, for they worked. They would tell others, and I had many inquiries from their acquaintances. I would call them into the office for training, then send them out with one of the former two, and so on like an endless chain.

It is not advisable to send a man into the field without such office training.

At this writing I am getting more men than I can handle. It has come to such a point that I can do nothing else except the office training. The older boys in the field do the team work with the "youngsters," and they profit also, for all new men have friends and all business is split with them.

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