Write up 2 pages about the case below, including these elements(What is the main idea of the article?,What are you own personalthoughts, ideas, reflections?, How might apply the ideas in thearticle in practice? o Sharing personal experiences is a plus)
Despite millions of dollars spent on combating the high turnoverrate among insurance agents, the rate—approximately 50% within thefirst year and 80% within the first three years—had remained steadyfor the more than 35 years preceding the publication of Mayer andGreenberg’s 1964 article. The authors devoted seven years ofresearch to studying the problem of the ineffectiveness of largenumbers of salespeople. They discovered flaws in the establishedmethods of selection and revealed the two basic qualities that anygood salesperson must have: empathy and ego drive.
Empathy, in this context, is the central ability to feel asother people do in order to sell them a product or service; a buyerwho senses a salesperson’s empathy will provide him with valuablefeedback, which will in turn facilitate the sale. The authorsdefine the second of the two qualities, ego drive, as the personaldesire and need to make the sale—not because of the money to begained but because the salesperson feels he has to. Forsales reps with strong ego drives, every sale is a conquest thatdramatically improves their self-perception. In the dynamicrelationship between empathy and ego drive, each must work toreinforce the other.
Why did the executives that Mayer and Greenberg studied continueto hire salespeople who did not have the ability to perform well?The companies were hindered in the preselection process by flaws inthe prevailing forms of aptitude testing. Test takers could easilygive answers they knew the test givers wanted to hear, in partbecause the tests sought to identify particular psychologicaltraits rather than the personality type most capable ofselling.
