22 WOMEN IN LIFE INSURANCE EDITION; INSURANCE ADVOCATE January 27, 1923
SARA FRANCES JONES —service to others. Few women are so happily situated financially as to lightening the burdens of others. Yet if more women realized it, writing life insurance offers just that opportunity. Think for a moment of the endless uses to which insurance is put, aside from its original purpose of the settlement of a certain sum of money upon the widow at her husband's death. They are endless.
More women than you or I shall probably ever know have been spared, through the friendly interest and guidance of a woman underwriter, the indignity of dependence upon charitable institutions when illness has come, or poverty. Probably every college and university in this country numbers among its students, boys and girls who could never have had the advantage of a college education had not the liberal provision of suitable endowment policies been explained to their parents by some underwriter with the vision to foresee their future needs.
To say that I entered the profession of writing life insurance because I thought it offered more opportunities for women than any other, would be a neat and fitting introduction, but as it happens, such was not the case.
It is difficult to speculate as to why people start in any particular field of endeavor. Chance plays such a large part in determining what one shall undertake. But my entrance into in-
My first real contact with the public was in the handling of disappointed policyholders at the Home Office in New York. If anyone thought that his insurance was all wrong, that he had not been given the contract he applied for, (usually as a result of the unscrupulous methods of agents of other companies), and was fully decided that hereafter he had no further use for life insurance, it was my duty to endeavor to analyze his situation, find out what need prompted him taking the insurance in the first place and prove to him, if possible, that the need which existed when he took the insurance was still there; in other words, to show him the loss he would suffer in sacrificing a contract already in force. Sometimes this was accomplished by making a change from one form of contract to another, but in every instance there was the big opportunity for real service.
Such a position, naturally, had its drawbacks, but it did suggest to me that if I had achieved any success whatever in restoring satisfaction to disgruntled policyholders, and as my desire to sell remained unchanged, I owed myself a trial at those not prejudiced against insurance and every-one remotely connected with it.
Consequently, in 1911 I left what horrified acquaintances considered a handsome salary for a woman—$2,400 a year!—and came to Chicago to cast my lot in the long coveted role of in surance agent.
Naturally, everyone interested in insurance and the possibilities it offers, wants to know just what one's best efforts may achieve. When I started selling, I regarded the $100,000 club as the last word in success. If I could reach that goal, nothing would lie ahead of me. But every policy written, every person interested, was a step toward it, and after arriving at that milestone, the Quarter Million Club was the objective. The next
year Miss Anne Russell of New York and I were the two only women en-rolled as members of the Quarter Club, but as more women now enter the field, more women's names are yearly added to its roster.
Since my return from overseas service during the war, I have not devoted any entire year to the writing of insurance, the longest period I have worked in any year being nine months, but my sales are now computed on a yearly basis of $400,000 with the Half a Million Club as my present objective.
I wonder if I have given the impression that insurance is the one profession free from the discouragements and obstacles so common in all others. It isn't. There are just as many disappointing days, uncertain-ties and wet feet in the insurance game as in anything else. But unstinting use of head and heels does much to overcome them.
No matter what one does—whether it be teaching, or the study of law, or writing of insurance—the same principles of earnest application, fair play, patience and loyalty build a solid foundation for the success which comes to the persevering worker in any field.
So far no mention whatever has been made of the relation of the life underwriter to the insurance company itself. This is really important, more important than at first appears. For to a great extent, what a company stands for determines the possibilities of its sales organization. There are so many ethical enterprising companies looking every day for energetic, conscientious women, that an unfortunate choice is wholly unnecessary.
The alert, wide-awake organization does not expect its men and women to give all and receive no help. The Equitable Life Assurance Society (and I quote it because it is the one I know so well) fully equips each man or women in its selling organization to face each of the problems it knows will confront him—giving a training so thorough as to stand him in good stead in anv other sales capacity.
The world is the field for service through life underwriting to any woman who is conscientious, persevering, earnest in purpose, and who values her efforts so highly as to choose to become part of an organization where sincerity, hard work and earnestness receive an unfailing and fair response.
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EVERY SALE A SERVICE TO SOME ONE
By Fannie R. Dunbar, of Provident
Life & Trust, at Pittsburgh.
There are great opportunities in life insurance for women; and there is no age limit though I do not think the very young women should be in it. It needs a very level head; patience; tact; perseverance, and a
LIFE UNDERWRITING OFFERS
GREAT LATTITUDE TO WOMEN
By Sara Frances Jones, The Equitable Life in Chicago
Life underwriting offers great lati- surance work was one of sheer neces-
tude to women—the choice of her cli- sity—in 1898 reverses threw me on
entele, financial success, comparative my own resources, and the position of
freedom from the drudgery of office stenographer in the home office of the
routine, and the comfort of deriving Equitable Life Assurance Society was
certain repeated yearly benefits. Im- an immediate and available means of
portant considerations, of course, but earning a livelihood.
these features alone, as I look back From the very start, the selling end
over the years, do not distinguish it of insurance seemed more attractive
from a score of other opportunities to me than the secretarial work which
open to women. was the next step for one in my posi-
Its real satisfaction, I now know, tion. My whole thought was that
may be summed up in a single phrase holding a secretarial position on a
straight salary cramped one's earning power.
Salesmanship'as a game must have appealed to me, for I remember that I was always trying to prove to my-self that I could write insurance, by selling in a small way outside of my regular stenographic duties.
