You are reading a page from Life Insurance as a Life Work, by Hugh Hart
(1926)
Part of the American Term Life Insurance History Project
Term Life Insurance
CHAPTER V:
FAME—OR AN HONORED NAME
No true and permanent fame can be founded ex-
cept in labors which promote the happiness of man-
kind.—CHARLES SUMNEB.
Norval Hawkins, who for several years
was sales manager for Henry Ford, in his
instructive book, "The Selling Process,"
says: "We recognize that there are three
parts in our ambition. "We want to at-
tain success by achieving fame, by making
money and by doing our fellows as much
service as we severally can.'^ Mr. Hawkins
has omitted to add another and most im-
portant ambition; namely, the desire to en-
gage in a work that is congenial and en-
joyable. Let us measure the vocation of
life insurance selling by these four stand-
ards : fame, money, service, pleasure.
Can you win fame and honor as a life
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FAME—OR AN HONORED NAME
underwriter, you may dubiously inquire.
We emphatically answer "Yes." But we
must come to a clearer understanding of
what constitutes fame, true fame of the
sort that conduces to an honored name.
Only that fame is desirable which is made
up of the good opinion of worth-while
people. No other fame is to be coveted.
The common conception of fame is based
upon the false notion that spectacular ap-
plause is its necessary accompaniment and
that a widely extended field must be cov-
ered. We commonly think of the politician
as being famous because he appears before
great throngs of people, is greeted with loud
applause, and because his name frequently
appears in the papers. But notoriety is not
true fame. The surgeon who performs al-
most miraculous operations may be seen and
known by few men; his name may rarely
appear in the papers and the music of hand-
clapping may never fall upon his ears; but
so long as he assuages the sufferings of his
fellow men and has the good opinion of
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
those among whom he works, he may be said
to have acquired the very essence of fame.
Those who need his services will flock to him
to receive the blessings of his handiwork.
The men of his profession will have respect
for his name in proportion to the excellence
of his work. A business executive may sit
quietly in the obscurity of his office and
direct tremendous business operations, with
perhaps thousands of employees depending
for their very livelihood upon the proper
functioning of his mind. No (' gallery god"
is he. The clamor of the multitude would
abash him, and yet he too has fame—fame
of the sort that causes widows to invest
their savings in his enterprises, that induces
capitalists to stake their fortunes on his
judgment. No, fame need not be spectac-
ular. It need not be accompanied by "the
boast of heraldry, the pomp of power."
That is the old conception of it—a concep-
tion born of a false philosophy of life, when
the race was young. Those who still retain
that view are reflecting an out-of-date idea.
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FAME—OR AN HONORED NAME
True fame is nothing more than the de-
served confidence of good people who know
us and our work. It is the faith they have
in our character and in our ability success-
fully to do the tasks we undertake. It is
their tribute to the service we are rendering
for the common good. Fame may be great
or small in proportion as our services are
great or small.
The life insurance agent is, in a sense, the
link between his company and client. He
is selling money for future delivery, for
which the purchaser makes deposits over a
number of years. The company takes care
of this fund as a trustee for the widow,
orphans, and other dependents, who may be
named as beneficiaries. The life under-
writer who sells a policy is, in fact, selling
a trusteed bond and he establishes the first
contact by which confidence in the trustee-
ship is created. If a life insurance sales-
man has a tarnished name, if he be in any
way unworthy of confidence, then the first
link in the chain of mutual faith and
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inter-dependence may become strained and
broken, and the whole chain weakened. If,
on the other hand, the personality and meth-
ods of the agent reflect genuine manhood,
imbued with a sincerity of purpose and a
desire to serve, coupled with knowledge of
life insurance, then confidence will be bred
in the prospective purchaser of insurance.
Thus the true life insurance salesman
goes from one man to another, urging each
one to deposit a portion of his fortune with
the company the agent represents, to be held
in a trust of supreme responsibility by the
company until a time when the dependents
of that man come upon an hour of need.
For one day death will come into the home
where the life underwriter has brought
about a trust relationship with his com-
pany. Then, with the passing of him on
whom the family had become accustomed to
lean for support, the life insurance com-
pany sends back to the dependents the
talents, multiplied, that had been entrusted
to it. What is the family's gratitude to the
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FAME—OR AN HONORED NAME
agent for his good counsel in bringing about
the trust relationship that has inured so sub-
stantially to their benefit save the founda-
tion for fame of the most substantial char-
acter? These beneficiaries become boosters
of the agent who has served them so inti-
mately. As his patrons and beneficiaries
increase in number, the fame of the agent
correspondingly grows. There is nothing
spectacular in this type of fame, but cer-
tainly nothing could yield a man a more
complete satisfaction than the grateful con-
fidence of those whom he has faithfully
served.
If a dash of the spectacular is necessary
to satisfy your ambition, the life insurance
business offers ample opportunities for the
gratification of your temperament. A pop-
ular magazine stated not long ago that a
great many people have what it pleases to
term the "prima donna" instinct. Such
people enjoy admiration and find pleasure
in performing activities that bring them
before the public gaze. This is no unworthy
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characteristic. It is no more to be con-
demned than the temperament of those of
the opposite type, who function best when
doing things unobserved.
Necessarily the successful life insurance
underwriter must have a large personal ac-
quaintance. His clients must be, as we
have intimated above, transformed into con-
fidants, otherwise they would not entrust
the future of their families to the life in-
surance company that he has counseled
them to patronize. This broad acquaint-
ance, and the intimate confidential nature of
it, gives him a following which men in many
other vocations who aspire to leadership
may well envy. Therefore, when matters
of civic and public importance demand ac-
tion on the part of all good citizens, the life
underwriter occupies a peculiarly strategic
point for obtaining a position of public
leadership. By reason of his following and
capacity to deal with people successfully, he
is sought out by clubs and public institu-
tions to play an important part in their
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FAME—OR AN HONORED NAME
movements. Circumstances and training,
therefore, should enable the life under-
writer to exert considerable influence in his
community and to increase the measure of
his fame.
But it is not necessary that he go beyond
the limits of his own craft to win that fame
to which we have just alluded. Within the
domain of life underwriting itself are to be
found opportunities for leadership, and for
the exertion of a constructive influence, that
are adequate to justify the zeal of the
most ambitious. The so-called gregarious
instinct is strong among life insurance
salesmen; that is, they are constantly
"flocking" together at banquets, conven-
tions, sales congresses, local and national
underwriters' meetings. At these gather-
ings must be straightened out the manifold
problems of the business that in three-
quarters of a century has grown to be one
of the most colossal factors in our economic
life. No business can expand to such mam-
moth proportions in such a short time with-
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LIFE INSURANCE AS A LIFE WORK
out producing tremendous problems that re-
quire for their solution the efforts of the
ablest minds. Those life insurance sales-
men who have the gift of great intellectual
powers owe it to their chosen profession to
lend their abilities to the solution of these
complex problems. It is both their privi-
lege and their responsibility to think of
plans for the guidance of their fellows
through the pathways of the future to the
end that the inestimable benefits of life in-
surance may be more widely and efficiently
distributed among all classes of people.
The life insurance vocation occupies a
very high place among the callings that
offer an opportunity for the winning of
the only kind of fame that is worth ac-
quiring—a fame that rests upon the con-
fidence of those with whom we deal, upon
the service that we render, and upon the
benefits that we confer. This is the new
conception of fame—fame that is the inci-
dental reward of a useful life resting on
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FAME—OR AN HONORED NAME
confidence and inspired by appreciation.
This type of fame is to be found by the con-
scientious life underwriter who does well
and faithfully both his private and his pub-
lic duty.
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