Hard Work, Not Hardball, Is Secret of Their Success : Three Valley salespeople are top earners in their professions. But rather than pressure, their techniques include tirelessness, sympathy and patience.

If success in sales depended on fitting the profession’s stereotypes, Michael Moses, Jan Higgins and Mark La Vine would be abject failures.

Immersed in careers that seem made for the pushy, the slick and the manipulative, these three San Fernando Valley salespeople cling to such incongruous characteristics as honesty, patience and integrity. Even their bosses and customers use words like “caring” and “generous” to describe them.

This threesome also happens to sell more cars, life insurance and cemetery plots in a month than some of their peers sell all year. They routinely win thousands of dollars in cash prizes, along with trips to resorts from Lake Tahoe to Hawaii. And even though none of them has a college education, their annual incomes range from $50,000 to more than $500,000.

Sure, they have mastered subtle sales touches that disarm even the most wary customer’s defenses, but all three say the key to their success is the virtues that seem so out of place in the world of sales.

A bright face in a somber business, Higgins, 41, sells burial plots, caskets and markers at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Santa Clarita. She outperforms most of her San Fernando Valley peers 2-to-1, according to her district manager. “I treat everybody the way I would want to be treated,” she said.

La Vine, 63, makes $500,000 a year selling life insurance from his office in a Woodland Hills high-rise. He has just 60 clients nationwide, but they are an affluent bunch who buy big policies, and some trust La Vine more than their attorneys or accountants.

Moses, 34, a former limousine driver, sold 308 cars last year at Saturn of the Valley in Sepulveda, and has been one of the top Saturn salespeople in the country for the past three years. Explaining his remarkable output, he said simply, “I don’t come across as your typical car salesman.”

On a rainy weekday recently, while other salespeople paced impatiently across the shiny tile floor at Saturn of the Valley, Moses could hardly come up for air. Every few minutes, dealership loudspeakers impatiently shouted his name: “Michael Moses, customer waiting at reception area,” or, “Michael Moses, you have a call waiting.” By the end of the day, he had sold three cars.

Instead of coming on strong, Moses speaks in a slow and lilting voice, relaxing even cynical shoppers with an unexpected mixture of earnestness and excitement. Sometimes he comes across as “a little bit phony,” said Dennis McCroskey, sales manager at Saturn of the Valley, one of three Galpin Motors dealerships on Roscoe Boulevard just off the San Diego Freeway. “But when you spend time with him, you realize that this is who he is.”

Moses’ pillow-soft approach surprised Kerry Dustin, a 29-year-old supermarket employee and part-time model. Dustin said she had been shopping for a car for over a month, and that she had been terrorized by the salespeople she encountered. “There were a couple who scared me off the lot,” Dustin said. “Right away it was, ‘Where are you from, can we get your name, what’s your number?’ ”

When she called Saturn of the Valley, she spoke, by chance, to Moses. “He wasn’t pushy,” she said. “He just said it would be great if I could come in.” The next day she did, and Moses made the sale look effortless.

Never pausing to ask whether she would buy the car, he simply removed all the barriers, one by one. When she wondered about financing, he patiently described her options. When she said she was torn between red and white paint, he told her white was his favorite, but then produced a picture of the red Saturn he had bought.

The only hint of calculation came when it was time to discuss Dustin’s trade-in, a worn-out Mitsubishi that she insisted was worth at least $1,600. As the two strolled across the lot to inspect her car, Moses previewed the machinations about to take place. “Watch this,” he whispered to a reporter, out of Dustin’s earshot. “I’ll walk around her car and touch dents or scratches. I won’t say anything, but right away she’ll start with the excuses. It’s funny, they start devaluing the car--they don’t know it but they do.”

Sure enough, as he strolled around the left side of the car, pausing to drag his index finger across a chip in the front bumper, Dustin blurted, “Oh, I know. I hit that.” Minutes later, back in the dealership, Moses skipped across the showroom floor giddy with good news.

“We were only going to pay $700 for your car,” he said, “but we found a wholesaler willing to pay $1,400.” That was $200 lower than Dustin wanted, but by then even she was ecstatic, and within minutes she was signing papers to buy a $17,000 Saturn coupe.

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A consistently good car salesperson will sell between 18 and 22 cars per month, McCroskey said, but Moses usually sells between 25 and 35. He is paid strictly on commission, which means he makes between $120 and $300 for each Saturn he sells. Moses said his income last year, including prize money, was $124,000, even though he spent two months in London with his wife.

All this for a former limousine driver who was turned away by Saturn of the Valley at least six times before the dealership finally offered him a job, and who then went on to fail his training exam three times.

When Moses finally hit the showroom floor, McCroskey said, veteran salespeople scoffed at his syrupy approach, and mimicked his energetic dashes across the showroom to greet customers. But after Moses sold 16 cars his first month, 25 the next, and 30 the next, even the cynics began adopting some of his methods, McCroskey said.

Moses is also a tireless and focused worker, who spends 80 hours a week at the dealership, and systematically cultivates the loyalty of his customers. He routinely phones former customers, making sure they’re still happy with their cars, and that they’ll see him when they’re ready to buy again. He and his wife also send thank-you cards to every shopper he meets, even those who don’t buy.

As a result, he estimates that 65% of his sales come from referrals or repeat business. And while many salespeople shuffle around the showroom waiting for shoppers to wander in, Moses is often available only by appointment. “The key to this business is follow-up,” he said. “If you don’t make the sale, but you treat them well, you’ll get them back.”

Jan Higgins works in a world of euphemisms. People aren’t buried, she says, “they are laid to rest.” The most expensive slots in the cemetery’s five-tier mausoleum aren’t at eye level, but at “heart level.” And most importantly, she says, “I don’t sell, I counsel.”

Nevertheless, Higgins collected $50,000 in commissions last year, making her one of the top producers for Service Corp. International, a Houston-based chain with 200 cemeteries nationwide. Brian Surette, Higgins’ sales manager, said she outsells most of her peers 2-to-1, often bringing in $25,000 in business per month in so-called “pre-need” sales, meaning sales to people buying burial plots ahead of time. “At-need sales,” those made to customers who have to buy because of an imminent or recent death, are worth only tiny sales commissions.

Higgins’ job is a delicate one that involves attending funeral services, taking phone calls from families facing the death of a relative, and visiting potential customers in their homes two or three nights each week. Higgins said most of her sales total between $3,000 and $6,000, and she keeps 16% as commission.

She has a natural ability to ooze empathy while firming her grip on a sale. Consider the way she handled a random call on a recent Friday morning: “Hello, this is Jan. . . . Is somebody ill? . . . Your grandfather? Oh gosh. Oh my goodness. . . . Yes, it’s important to fulfill their wishes. But your grandfather is going to a better place. It’s the people who are left behind who need a place to visit. We need to find a place for you to feel comfortable. . . . How do you get here? OK, we’re on . . .”

Now in her third year on the job, after working 11 years as a receptionist in a dentist’s office, Higgins is prone to occasional gaffes. On a recent home visit with Margaret Prickett, a 55-year-old Sylmar resident, Higgins compared enduring the grief of losing a loved one to “being hit by a truck.” And when Prickett said she was growing weary of her job running a small manufacturing company in Los Angeles, Higgins wagged her finger and said, “You can’t work yourself into the ground.”

But despite these missteps, Prickett agreed to buy a plot, and came away impressed by Higgins. “She’s the kind of person you like to talk to,” Prickett said. “She has this caring attitude, and she isn’t pushy.”

Life insurance salesman Mark La Vine believes in customer service of a conservative, old-school sort. He doesn’t send cards or make unnecessary calls, and clients say he rarely cracks jokes. Instead, he woos prospective clients with work, studying their financial records for hours, and often consulting with them several times before recommending a policy.

La Vine’s deliberate approach inspires trust in his clients, many of whom are aging executives who buy huge policies. Ron Silverman, 61, producer of such movies as “Brubaker” and “Shoot to Kill” has been one of La Vine’s clients since the 1960s. “I trusted Mark the first time I met him, and I trust him now 30 years later,” Silverman said.

Despite his no-frills approach, La Vine is a master of subtle sales techniques. He keeps four different briefcases tucked behind the desk in his tidy Woodland Hills office. A worn, fold-over bag is great for casual meetings with longtime clients, he says, and the shiny briefcase with brass snaps is perfect for meetings with stuffy executives.

Whenever possible, he meets with prospective clients in restaurants and other neutral settings. “When you go into someone’s office, people become very dictatorial,” he said. At meetings, “I will try and position myself to your side,” La Vine said. “Sitting across creates an adversarial kind of posture.”

But the driving force in La Vine’s sales career has been a singular determination that stems from his lifelong desire to protect his family from the hardships he endured. His father, a railroad worker, was disabled when La Vine was a child. So from the age of 6, La Vine sold newspapers, magazines, vacuum cleaners and encyclopedias to keep the family afloat.

Today, even though La Vine has suffered two heart attacks over the past 23 years, and has built a multimillion-dollar fortune for his wife and three children, he keeps selling. “I’m not a coaster,” La Vine said. “I tend to keep building things for the future.”

He admits he has slowed down from his peak years of productivity 20 years ago, when he had 300 clients nationwide. But while his average commission was just a few thousand dollars then, it is $40,000 now, he said.

Thanks to such hefty commissions, and customer loyalty, La Vine has been ranked among the top life insurance salespeople in the country for nearly 20 years by a well-known trade association called the Million Dollar Round Table.

One client, Jerry Hollander, said he and La Vine had been members of the same Tarzana country club for 15 years before they ever discussed life insurance. “I approached him, he didn’t approach me,” said Hollander, 71, who owns a manufacturing firm in Sun Valley.

Hollander ended up buying a $5-million policy from La Vine last year, but only after the two had met a dozen times over a two-year span. “He let me go at my own pace,” Hollander said. “He never bugged me. I hate to be bugged.”