This is from "Sales Methods of 222 Life Insurance Field Men Told by Themselves" first published in 1923. This is the way we were taught to prospect when I started almost 50 years later and these methods will still work in almost any line of insurance if an agent is willing to diligently use them.
How Shall We Create Prospects? By Theodore A. Waltrip.
There are four or five answers to this question.
1. We create and may find prospects by reading. Reading the .daily papers, the trade journals, the house organs, the advertisements that appear in these, the record of vital statistics, marriages, births, deaths, the mortgage releases, the announcement of new firms, the hotel registers, the society columns, and in fact every page of the daily and Sunday paper bristles with prospects.
2. One can secure prospects by observation. The live sales man will keep his eyes open. He will note the changes in business, the new stores, new banks, new buildings of every description. He will see the contractor, the builder, the painter as -well as the proprietor of the new plant or building. The keen observer will keep his eyes on the ambulance, the hearse, the fire wagons, the construction train, the baby carriage, for wherever these wheels stop there is a chance to write insurance on the first interview.
3. By friendliness and sociability. The friendly salesman will be friendly with his friends. He will make each one he writes the beginning of an endless chain method. There is no reason why business should not be based on friendship and friendship based on business. If our friends are not our prospects they should put us in touch with people who are or will be.
4. Perhaps the surest way to secure prospects is to go out on a straight canvass and search for them. To meet as many people as one can and cultivate all he sees who are probably prospects is a splendid rule. It is no more improper to ask a man who sits next to one in a street car his name and address than it is the man who has given you a ride in his automobile. 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.
How Shall We Create Prospects? By Theodore A. Waltrip.
There are four or five answers to this question.
1. We create and may find prospects by reading. Reading the .daily papers, the trade journals, the house organs, the advertisements that appear in these, the record of vital statistics, marriages, births, deaths, the mortgage releases, the announcement of new firms, the hotel registers, the society columns, and in fact every page of the daily and Sunday paper bristles with prospects.
2. One can secure prospects by observation. The live sales man will keep his eyes open. He will note the changes in business, the new stores, new banks, new buildings of every description. He will see the contractor, the builder, the painter as -well as the proprietor of the new plant or building. The keen observer will keep his eyes on the ambulance, the hearse, the fire wagons, the construction train, the baby carriage, for wherever these wheels stop there is a chance to write insurance on the first interview.
3. By friendliness and sociability. The friendly salesman will be friendly with his friends. He will make each one he writes the beginning of an endless chain method. There is no reason why business should not be based on friendship and friendship based on business. If our friends are not our prospects they should put us in touch with people who are or will be.
4. Perhaps the surest way to secure prospects is to go out on a straight canvass and search for them. To meet as many people as one can and cultivate all he sees who are probably prospects is a splendid rule. It is no more improper to ask a man who sits next to one in a street car his name and address than it is the man who has given you a ride in his automobile. 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.
