The Sales Force— Working With Reps
This is the sixth in a number of articles serializing The Sales Force— Working With Reps by Charles Cohon, MANA’ s president and CEO. The entire book may be found in the member area of MANA’ s website.
People eating lunch in Bigglie’ s break room tended to spread out one per table until all of the tables were full. By the time Henry Buchanan walked in to wait for his brother David to be ready to go to lunch no empty tables were left, so he had to sit with somebody. Henry recognized Jim from the company’ s Christmas party, and gestured to a seat at Jim’ s table,“ OK if I join you?”“ Sure, have a seat,” Jim replied. A little P. R. with the boss’ brother couldn’ t hurt, he thought.“ I’ m Jim Anderson. We met at the Christmas party. You’ re Henry, right?”
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“ You salespeople are really good with names,” Henry replied.
Jim warmed to the compliment.“ Thanks, Henry. It’ s an important part of the job. You do something in insurance, don’ t you?”
“ I’ m an actuary,” said Henry.“ My job is to decide when two things have an equal value.”
Jim’ s eyebrows furrowed, which Henry interpreted as a signal for explanation.“ Let’ s say my insurance company has three envelopes in a hat. We offer to sell you and two other people the right to pull out a single envelope and keep the contents. Nobody gets to open his or her envelope until all three of you have made a selection. One envelope has $ 40,000 in it, one has $ 50,000 and