Not surprisingly, the highly successful agents—as determined by their sales volumes—knew more about the various insurance products than the less successful agents. But more to the point, researchers found that the highly successful agents had much more complex and integrated “knowledge structures”—what we’re calling mental representations—than the less successful agents. In particular, the better agents had much more highly developed “if . . . then” structures: if these things are true about a client, then say this or do that.
