Sales as an Outlet for Ministry

Evan Addams was both educational and inspiring in the class he taught us the other day, and there were a few key things he pointed out that really resonated and stuck with me.

One of the main things that stuck out to me was that the way he talked about sales really showed how much importance he places on the person that the client is and the relationship you build with them. Specifically, Evan Addams expressed that sales should be a “partnership.”  Many salespeople can view sales as something that they have to be manipulative in to succeed, but this is not the way that sales should be. Really, you should be partnering with your client to help them figure out what will best suit them. Evan said “don’t try to be an order taker, look at what God is trying to do in their life and how you can be a part of it.” I think this really gets to that relational side of sales that’s so important. A good salesman, particularly a Christian one, should be trying to help their client do whatever God wants them to do in the way that He wants them to do it, even if it means not always closing the deal.

The second thing that stuck with me was what Addams said about how our selling should affect the world; he said “our goal should be to create the world how it ought to be.” This means selling the way that we believe selling should be in the world. I think an industry like sales opens up many, many doors to minister and evangelize to others. That ministry may not be explicitly preaching the gospel, but by showing your client that you care, partnering with them in what God wants them to do, and attempting to change the world through our sales practices, you are in acting as an example of the love and light of Jesus Christ.

And finally, one final tactical point that Evan Addams left us with was that you never know where seeds get to scatter. This made me think of the parable of the farmer scattering seed in Matthew 13. In this parable, a farmer scatters seeds that fall in all different places, most of which are not suitable for a plant to take root and spring up. However, some of the seeds did fall on fertile soil and they produced a plentiful crop. In the same way, you never know what your sales interactions, even the seemingly unsuccessful ones, might result in. Sometimes just scattering a few seeds by having conversations, putting yourself out there, and paying attention and listening to the people and opportunities around you can have an unexpected yield which leads to the best kinds of sales leads and conversations. The story Evan told us along these lines, where he got the vice president of TGI Fridays to notice him unintentionally simply by doing his job and trying to troubleshoot issues himself, really drives home this point that you can never truly know what the result of a planted seed will be until it hits the ground.

Overall, the main thing that came through to me during this lecture was the truly incredible way in which we, as Christians, can use sales as an outlet to show Gods love to the rest of the world.