Word: life
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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...
...whom Penn Life selects to be the local managers are crucial to the system. Each is expected to be a father image to a five-man group of 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...
...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 in 1955 bought the nearly defunct Pennsylvania Life Insurance and moved its headquarters to Los Angeles. Using that firm as the major building block, he then formed a parent holding company, Pennsylvania Life Co., which could make acquisitions more easily than an ordinary life insurance company. Pennsylvania Life has expanded to include a mutual fund, Pennsylvania Securities Co., National Central Life Insurance Co. and other insurance firms. Last month Pennsylvania Life joined with H & R Block, Inc., tax consultants, to form a new, jointly owned subsidiary. It will sell mutual funds and insurance to H & R Block clients...
...public again, one critic has observed, would be like presenting Christ to Christians. Nevertheless this is a splendid job. Calling upon more than 50 years of devoted research, the Belgian art scholar Marc Edo Tralbaut has put together the most satisfying study of Van Gogh's life and works...