Sunday, June 22, 1997

Insurance salesman keeps customer doors open

By ALYSON WARD/ Abilene Reporter-News

Salesman.

Look - just reading the word triggers a door-slamming reflex. But for 50 years now, Guyn Pannell has been succeeding at keeping those doors open and convincing the Abilene residents behind them to turn to him for life insurance.

Pannell has been an Abilene life insurance institution for 50 years, and he doesn't plan on quitting anytime soon. Now 73, he says he's "semi-retired" now, working 20 or 25 hours a week. But the life insurance agent has made a pact with his clients - he'll be there for them as long as he's able to work.

"I said, 'As long as I'm alive, I'll be here to serve as your business. You can buy insurance from anybody, but you can't buy my service. I'm the only one that can give you my service, and I'm going to pledge it to you for life,' " Pannell said. "I told everybody I sold that. Now I can't retire - I really can't quit unless I get sick."

Pannell has stood out in his profession almost since the time he started selling life insurance in 1947 for the Abilene agency of Republic National Life Insurance Company, which became American General Life Insurance after a merger in 1986.

In 1950, Pannell became one of the two first agents in Abilene to produce $1 million in sales in a year. Since that time, he hasn't stopped. He has been rewarded by the company with numerous gifts for outstanding sales, including rings, watches and five different automobiles. He's been featured in "Newsweek" and "Fortune" magazines for continuing his record-setting sales - he sold $1 million in insurance during a month-long contest seven years in a row in the 1970s.

He also has qualified for every one of his company's conventions. It was at one of these conventions, Pannell said, that a fellow agent asked him how he managed it all. The agents were riding horses in Estes Park, Colo.

"He came up to me and said, 'Guyn, what would you say makes you successful? How are you so successful?' " Pannell said.

Pannell didn't remember that conversation, but the agent reminded him later of the advice he gave that day. He told Pannell, "You just whipped your horse and ran off and said, 'Work, work, work!' "

Work, work, work. The career Pannell has excelled in was a job he simply fell into. He was born and grew up in Merkel, but after four years in the Air Force, he was set to become a flight instructor at a California Air Force base. Then his mother had a stroke and his father asked him to stay in Merkel for just one more year to help him. Pannell stayed, met and married his wife Peggy, and decided to settle down in Abilene.

"I started hunting everywhere to go to work," he said.

His mother always had thought he might become a preacher, he said, and his father had expected him to go into law. But Pannell didn't go do either one.

"You know what I tell people?" he said. "They wanted me to be a preacher or a lawyer, so I decided to become both of them and go into the life insurance business. You've got to be everything. You wear a hat of all people."

The salesman's job is not an easy one - approaching people and convincing them to buy when they are usually not interested at all in what a life insurance agent has to say.

"When I showed new agents I was hiring what you had to do to get in the business, about nine out of 10 said, 'Bye,' " Pannell said. "Very few people succeed - I'd say probably 10 percent of the people that try it."

The key to selling is persistence, Pannell said. Sometimes he made as many as 20 calls in one day and made perhaps one sale.

"I just never hardly quit," he said. "Because every time somebody said no, I knew I was getting closer to a yes."

Pannell also believes in what he is selling, which makes him all the more convincing.

"Every time somebody said no, I blamed myself because I didn't explain it thoroughly, or they'd have bought," he said. "I figured everybody in this world that had a need and the money to buy it would buy life insurance if you explained it right."

And finally, honesty can never be compromised for a sale, Pannell said. It's important to never lie to people or misrepresent what you're selling, he said - "and if anything, undersell your product."

When he was about 30, Pannell's picture was on the cover of a magazine; he represented the answer to the question, "What is an insurance man?"

Pannell is an insurance man. There's no doubt. But what makes a salesman a salesman? Is it a certain personality?

"It's a lot of things," Pannell said. "Everybody alive is a salesman to a certain extent, and they make their money accordingly."

All people are in the business of selling, whether it's convincing people to buy life insurance or convincing people of their own professional credibility. It's a process that takes work to pull off, Pannell said.

When talking to prospective agents, he said, he and other trainers would tell them what they needed to do to be successful. It meant making at maybe 10 calls a day, learning the sales talk, going to school to get the degrees they needed, and much more.

"If you didn't do that, we'd guarantee you to fail," he said. "But if you did that and you were qualified, we would guarantee you to succeed."

Selling is a learned technique, Pannell said. It took him a little time when he started to figure out how to be most effective.

"When I first started in the business, I bought a lot of insurance back," he said. "I'd go out and I'd sell them and boy, they'd be ready. . . and I wouldn't quit. I didn't know exactly when to quit, and before I knew it, I'd bought it back. In other words, they'd gotten out of the mood and they were going to think it over and they were going to call me later. I never got that sale. Never. So you've got to know when to quit. I learned that the hard way the first two years."

Pannell said the business has changed since he got into it 50 years ago. It's made the job more difficult and the art of selling more of a challenge.

"Used to, you'd just go in a house and they wouldn't even ask you what company you were with, because it was accepted then that all life insurance companies were good," he said. "But a lot of them went broke. And now. . . the first thing they want to know is, what's the rating on your company?"

Furthermore, Pannell said, there are fewer agents now.

"I'd say we've probably got about a fifth of the insurancemen licensed today that we had 20 years ago," he said. "Look at your companies. We used to have 500 companies just in Dallas."

Now, he said, buyouts and mergers have reduced that number to about 100.

"I tell you, I'd hate to be going into the insurance business today," Pannell said. "But I would like to be 20 years younger knowing what I know today."

Pannell said his wife Peggy, was supportive and instrumental in his success. Their two children, Ronnie and Karla, are both married and live in Abilene. The Pannells are members of South Side Baptist Church.

How has Pannell succeeded as a salesman for 50 years?

"I always thought the secret to success was to do everything that was expected of you and then some," he said. "If you always do exactly what you're supposed to ... every bit of that - and then some - you won't ever fail."