Word: beyers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Other companies have used the single-policy idea and door-to-door peddling. They have even copied Penn Life's presentation-and have done less well. The company's personnel policy is more difficult to duplicate. As Beyer says: "From the minute we hire a man, he is in our house for the rest of his life-he, his wife, his children, his dreams become our responsibility. There is no firing in this company. A man has to be a thief to be fired...
...Scout Pack. Once in, the salesman-typically an ex-farm boy, gas-station attendant or school dropout-receives Beyer's brand of inspirational leadership. "You think of what a psychiatrist does or how a good father brings up a child," he says. "If a salesman does something terrible, we convince him that under normal circumstances he would never have done that, that he's a much finer person than that...
...salesmen. The manager is trained more in lay psychology than in selling, and acts as a moral-rearmer when the salesman's spirit flags. "The manager's whole life, his home, his wife, his family, become the center of social activity for that sales force," says Beyer. "An army is disciplined out of fear; our men are disciplined out of loyalty to a leader, like a Cub Scout pack would be. A man cannot have the choice of whether he comes to the Saturday meeting or not. He wants to come." Vacations? "We think working...
...Extension. The inspiration for Penn Life came originally from the late Roy Markus, a pharmacist, who in 1939 decided that disability income insurance could be sold profitably door-to-door to small businessmen. He built up a chain of agencies in the Midwest and on the Eastern Seaboard. Beyer joined Markus at 18, and by 23 was earning $340,000 a year as manager of the Minneapolis office...
Markus died in 1965, and the parent holding company is now run by a triumvirate of Beyer, Chairman Joe D. Bain and Vice-Chairman Burton Borman. "We are beyond working for a living," says Beyer. "We would like to build a billion-dollar company. It has become an extension of our egos, because pur egos soar, and we want to keep building and getting accolades. We also enjoy money." Apparently these father images also enjoy the responsibility of looking after an ever-larger family of salesmen...