Business Marketing Advertising

Dr. John A. Stevenson relates a plan for selling insurance which he gave to 241 new salesmen before they were placed in territories, enabling all but 13 to make a success of their work, while insurance author?ities claimed that it was impossible to get more than 25 successful salesmen out of 241. The plan he imparted to those salesmen is the same one that helped Dr. Stevenson climb to his present position and it is of interest to all salesmen.

The first step in the plan is what Dr. Stevenson terms “task analysis.” This is “old stuff” to most of us, but the part that needs explanation follows. He then asks two questions based on what he calls “frequency of use” and “error occurrences.” To illustrate:

Considerable money was leaking out of the profits of a great department store through the errors of salespeople in figuring. Instead of instituting a school for teaching arithmetic, an expensive and elab?orate undertaking, thirty thousand sales slips were analyzed (”task analysis”). It was discovered that most errors were in adding six and eight, subtracting nine from fifteen, or carrying over a figure in multi?plying (”error occurrences”). Then they tabulated the arithmetic problems the clerks were called upon to solve with the most frequency (”frequency of use”).

The clerks were then drilled on adding 6 and 8 until they shouted 14 in machine fashion. Over and over again they subtracted 9 from 15. They were drilled on all errors occurring most frequently.

“List the mistakes which come to your attention and the questions you are unable to answer,” Steven?son advises salesmen. “Make another list of the things you have to do most frequently and improve your method of doing them. Complaints will be ‘mis?takes.’ Then make a list of all the questions your buyers raise and which you cannot answer. Learn the answers and you will immediately improve your sales work.”