One day last winter, insurance broker Matthew Kornreich made a sales presentation in Manhattan to representatives of a potential customer, a national real estate concern. The next day his identical twin Morton delivered a similar pitch to executives at the same company’s California office. When the people in New York started comparing notes with the people in California, they said, `Hey, this guy is terrific. One day he shows up in one place, the next day he shows up across the country. He’s aggressive and energetic. He’s the kind of guy we should do business with.’ And we got the account, says Matt, laughing.

Or is it Mort who’s laughing? It’s hard to tell, because the 62-year old Kornreichs are as identical as newly minted pennies. And as the above story shows, they have spent nearly two lifetimes (twins, remember) parlaying their dual identity into one sales triumph after another. They are a two-headed, four-legged unit, tag-teaming clients to take full advantage of the lifelong bond only identical twins know and understand. And as such, the Kornreichs can do what most salesmen only dream of doing: being in two places at the same time.

The result of their success is the Kornreich Organization, a New York City insurance brokerage founded by their father in 1917 that generated $165 million in property, casualty and life insurance premiums in 1987, enough to make it the twentieth-largest commercial insurance broker in the United States. Among Matt and Mort’s clients are Jacques Cousteau (a tough sale, says Mort: You think it was easy swimming that far down?), fashion designers Calvin Klein and Geoffrey Beene, mink ranches, presidential candidates and the bull in Merrill Lynch’s television commercials.

Matt and Mort are mirror twins. As they sit in their identical chairs, both dressed in blue and white striped shirts. Purely a coincidence, they maintain as one rests his chin in his right hand and crosses his right leg over his left knee while the other rests his chin on the left hand and crosses his left leg over his right knee. They finish each other’s thoughts, and tell what the other thinks. No fights, no competition. We take delight in each other’s success, they agree.

Any salesman worth his per diem knows that most clients are besieged by people who want to sell them something. Any edge, any foot in the door will help the client remember you and, hopefully, give you his business. The Kornreichs have four feet to stick in clients’ doors, and they make the most of them.

The unique aspect of being a twin is self-evident, says Mort. In a sales job, anything that makes you distinctive is an asset. Being identical singles us out. Even if customers didn’t remember the words of wisdom that flowed from our mouths, they remember we’re twins. And that gives us higher visibility. People sometimes think they’re seeing the same guy, but it makes no difference; it has the same end result.

Besides the ability to gang-tackle customers, the Kornreichs have the advantage of having a very like-minded individual to bounce ideas off of. Mort and Matt share a huge office at the company’s headquarters. Their desks face each other, which Mort says makes it easy to sit and watch yourself grow old. It also makes it easier to hear what your twin is working on, and to offer help. We can come up to each other after phone calls and offer ideas, says Matt. Mort listens to what I’m doing when I’m on the phone and knows what’s going on. That way we can fill in for each other because we know at least a little bit about the other’s problems. We make a great team.

Of course, there have been lapses in communication when their identity has caused problems. A client Matt had just sold a huge policy to was walking through a lobby of a building when he saw Mort and said hello. I just kept walking, and didn’t say anything. I had no idea who this guy was, says Mort. The client didn’t know the man who sold him the policy had a twin brother and was incensed that he wouldn’t give him the time of day after he had taken his money. We almost lost the account, but we smoothed things out and explained the situation, Matt says.

But there is more to the Kornreichs’ success than the mere novelty of being identical twins. The brothers work very hard at what they do, and have developed a corporate philosophy that reflects the lessons learned during a combined total of nearly 80 years in the business.

Selling insurance is similar to advertising, says Mort, who tried his hand at advertising right after the twins graduated from the University of Pen-nsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. In both fields you’re selling a concept. You have to paint a picture and convince the client he’s buying something good.

What a client is buying from the Kornreichs is a commitment from a full-service insurer. This, they say, is a key to their success. When we talk with a law firm, we don’t want to talk with 14 different people, says Matt. We want one person who can do it all for us. Our clients think the same way. We can offer people all types of insurance. We’re a full service shop. And it makes a big difference if you can do everything for a guy. We speak eight (insurance) languages and we’re fluent in all of them.

Another key is what every politician knows, and every salesperson should know: you’ve got to press the flesh. You have got to see people, says Mort. The common denominator of every good salesman is `How often do you see your clients?’ The two of us have seen the gamut of personality types in this business. We’ve run into intelligent, attractive, glib people who you would think were big successes, and they haven’t been able to make it work because they didn’t see people. And I know people who on the surface look like they shouldn’t do anything in this business, and they are the most successful people I know. We succeed because we see people. Knocking on doors is success.

Sounds like the mark of a professional, doesn’t it? And that’s another ingredient in the Kornreich recipe for success. We’re pros, Mort says. We both have CLU degrees and we attend professional workshops and seminars and read all sorts of insurance journals, just like any other professional would. We’ve always been sensitive to training, and do a lot of home-office training sessions. We also treat our customers the way we want to be treated. We reverse the chairs. This is a sensitive business. You’re talking about death and the safety and well-being of loved ones. You have to treat people well and know what you’re talking about.

To know what they’re talking about, the Kornreichs do their home-work. Before going to see a prospect, they check up on him by asking associates who know him, or by reading articles written about him or his business. If we just went in to talk to him and didn’t know anything about his industry, he’d never do business with us, says Mort. And if we don’t know anything about him, we can’t fully assess his needs. You’ve got to do your homework.

Another aspect of their success is something that can’t be learned or taught, it can only be earned. Experience, says Matt has its own rewards. We know what pitfalls to avoid and what opportunities to grab. The two of us have learned a lot along the way, and there’s a synergy between the two of us here that makes a big difference.

Finally, the Kornreichs have never forgotten the reason they think they have gotten as far as they have. We never see fit to give up the personal touch, and that more than anything else is responsible for the maintenance of our success, Mort says. Lots of people get to our level and say `Oh well, some of our backup people will take care of it’ when something comes up. But we don’t do that. They could; the Kornreich Organization employs more than 150 people, including many sons, daughters and in-laws of the twins.

We could do that, but we wouldn’t, Matt continues. Our meat and potatoes over the years have been moderate-sized accounts. We have a responsibility to those people, and we have never given up our touch talking to them, checking up on how things are going, or even just doing personal accounts for them like auto insurance. It’s not our big money maker, but we give a damn, and people know that and appreciate it. And that’s what sets us apart.