FINDING PROSPECTS

It is easy to go from office to office picking the prospects that are ripe. Many people are waiting for the salesman to call. It is not so easy to find the prospects in the bud, all closed up with no sign of opening, but if the salesman has the patience to wait until the light of reason and the warmth of love, and the glow of enthusiasm has been brought to bear on the prospect he will find it less difficult.

Whatever the method used in securing prospects, whether by reading, observation, friendliness or the straight canvass, there must be a desire awakened or created for the contract one has to sell or there will be no sale.

Getting and Cultivating a Clientele. By J. B. Duryea.

Many beginners seem to think that "prospect" and "acquaintance," are synonomous words. I have frequently heard them say : "I do not think I can write insurance here because I am not acquainted." And I have known life insurance rate-book carriers to spend a lot of time getting acquainted with people before broaching the subject of insurance. I am going to dispose of the question of acquaintance in one short sentence: Any man who makes personal acquaintance a condition precedent to talking insurance has not yet grasped the first faint conception of the great service of life insurance. Such a one becomes the "pest" and "bore" who hounds the victim until he takes a little $1,000 policy to get rid of the fellow who thinks he has made a sale.

Prospects are obtained from many sources, varying with. the characteristics of the salesman, the locality of the work, and the conditions under which he works. Many of these sources are not available to the beginner, nor to a salesman starting in a new field.

Therefore, we will assume a source of prospects that is accessible to a beginner starting to work in a city of 50,000 people and up, and to make the illustration more concrete I will describe a list of prospects 1 am now cultivating in San Francisco. My list contains 6,000 names.

1. I secured the San Francisco list of men worth $50,000 and up from Boyd's City Dispatch, 19 Beekman Street, New York City. This list is known as Boyd's List. (A similar list may be obtained for any city or state.) I examined this list and

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