SALES METHODS

who give their entire time and attention to it. I don't believe a man can do really big business if he permits himself to be distracted by the varied details of other lines. There is no more similarity between life insurance and fire insurance than there is between groceries and clothing in merchandising. It is true that everything from a casket to a mousetrap, from a loaf of bread to a bottle of perfume, can be and is handled in a department store and that each department of the big "emporium" is handled by an expert in his line, but you will notice at the same time that when a man wants a fine tailor made suit or a woman wants the supplies for a banquet, they don't go to a department store.

It's the same way with doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers —big business insists on specialists in all professional lines and the life insurance business of today is just as professional in its character. No particular ability or profound knowledge is required to initiate and complete a contract for a few thousand dollars, but when the complexities of college education, current indebtedness, partnership or corporation obligations, inheritance taxes, have to be adjusted and provided for, the salesman must know what he is talking about. lie must know more than the man does with whom he is negotiating.

Some men may be able to jump from the completion of a big life insurance contract to a discussion of full coverage collision on an automobile or from a $500 a month income policy to competition between a mutual and a stock for a big line of department store plate glass, but I don't believe he can be so successful as the man who confines himself to the one line and makes an intensive study of all its phases.

For the New Salesman's Wife. By Rollin H. Harris.

Let's follow a new salesman. He visits twenty people, or perhaps thirty, the first week with no result except that two or three agree to buy of him later on. Of course, there is nothing coming in for that week and there is an explanation to make to his wife, who feels it her duty to say what she thinks about life insurance. This naturally, does not create an amicable feeling between the two. That's the first stumbling block. The salesman really feels sorry for her because she is unable to see things in the right light; which, of course, is as he sees them.

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