Good-Humored Salesmen

"I'll be dropping in to see you," Insurance Salesman Steve Nielsen told a farmer on the telephone in Hollister, Idaho. "Suppose we meet at my office at 9 o'clock?" Somewhat baffled by that, the prospect asked: "Where is your office?" Replied Nielsen: "Right in front of your farm--I'll bring my office to you."

And he did. Nielsen drove up in a Chevrolet van that contained telephone, air conditioning, fluorescent lights, desk, couch, wall-to-wall carpeting and drawers of files, facts and insurance tables. He went to work with statistical tables and a desk calculator, and had soon figured out--and sold--a $9,000 policy.

The mobile office is one of two on the road since March for John Han cock Mutual Life Insurance Co., the nation's fifth largest insurance firm. Using them, salesmen have so far written about $1,500,000 worth of policies for farmers and small-town businessmen. The man who conceived the idea had reason to believe that it would succeed. Robert E. Dye, 51, a John Hancock vice president, worked his way through the University of California as a Good Humor man, shifted the chocolate-coated sell from ice cream to insurance.

Dye was concerned because his San Francisco office handles twelve largely rural states where farmers have plump incomes -- in California they average $12,000 yearly -- but tend to buy little insurance. "Life insurance isn't pur chased," he says, "it's sold. So it is vital to take the product to the potential buyer and show it to him." Dye spent $12,000 on two vans, equipped them much more thoroughly than ordinary autos ever could be, and laid out the interiors so that the salesman's desk blocks the doors, making it difficult for a prospect to leave before putting his own John Hancock on a policy application. In the vans salesmen also recruit and train small-town insurance brokers for the company, and help regular brokers explain complicated life and group insurance policies to prospects.

The mobile units are able to make twice as many contacts as stationary offices of their size, and John Hancock intends to add more.

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