I grew up in a house that did a lot of selling. My dad wasn’t in the business field but he was a pastor. As a pastor, the whole goal is to move people. It was simple things like business meetings where he would have to attempt to get people to buy into approving the budget and plan for the next year, which sometimes turned out to be a very daunting task. It was also hard things such as convincing someone that having an affair may not be the best option.
If you think about your own Church experience, you can probably think of a pastor trying to convince the church that they should volunteer to help with the kids, plan a dinner, or any other event that the Church relies on volunteers to help with. My dad has also had to sell “our church” by convincing people to let us use their services, sometimes for free. For instance, as a church plant, we meet in a school. We have to pay the school every week to meet there but my dad had to go through a lot in order to convince the school to let us meet there since the school is very strict about not letting outside organizations use the school.
The last things that pastors really have to sell our related to their sermons. Pastors preach every Sunday and they are trying to convince people to believe and do what the Scripture says. For instance, pastors have to convince the lay people that tithing is not just good to help the Church but that it is mandated by Scripture. Every sermon has to be “bought” by the people. My dad told me about how he has read books about sales in order to help find ways to convince people to “buy” what he preaches about. The only way to tell whether people “buy” and believe what he preaches about Scripture is to see if people really change the way they live. My Church is doing a campaign right now to get more people to come to our Church. Every week my dad does multiple things to remind people about the campaign and to sell them on reaching out to their families.
Typically people think about sales as selling a product or service, but as Pink points out, we are all in sales. My dad was not a business major but yet he has to sell everyday. I have learned a lot about moving people because I was a pastor’s kid. As we have talked in class, trust is the key to sales, and I can say that in a Church, trust is the key to reaching others.
testacr22
I think Professor Sweet is further evidence in proving your point. He served as a pastor for a long time, before moving into sales where he was very successful. I think pastors have a difficult job, but their success in “selling” a free gift is more important than any physical selling that can ever be done. Good post!