Business Career
After his brief baseball career, Bettger returned to his native Philadelphia, where he started collecting accounts for a furniture store on a bike. He then started selling life insurance for the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Pennsylvania; but was not initially successful and considered quitting after 10 months. During a moment of reflection, he remembered what his baseball manager told him about his lack of enthusiasm. So he made a commitment to himself to start acting enthusiastic in his insurance presentations. He met a successful salesman who told Bettger to read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. So he did. A light went on in his mind when he realized that Franklin's Socratic method of asking "key" questions might work with selling policies. So he tried it and it worked. He began to perfect his technique with great enthusiasm.
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