Continuing with the theme of what I learned this past summer at PGC, another sales enhancer that I learned, was the power of knowing a name. It was something that Point Guard College prided itself on being different, and I think that this aspect of the camp was it’s best quality. As a counselor, I was forced to learn 130 names by the second morning. We had to know half of them, just 12 hours into meeting the kids. On top of that, part of selling to the parents, was learning their names, and greeting them by name when they came back on the fifth day. There were plenty of strategies implemented for being able to learn and remember all of these names. Most of the time during the week, as I would talk to the athletes, and call them by name, I would try to also include their parents names in my talking to them. I would disguise this as asking what they did for a living or asking about their families.
Through working with PGC, I believe that knowing names and calling people by their own name is one of the most powerful ways to show love. While this is probably not associated with sharing the gospel in any way, it is counter cultural, and greeting someone with a name and a smile can make their whole day. In our training for camp, we were told that people love more than anything, to hear the sound of their own name. In every language, the word that makes you feel the most comfortable is the sound of your own name. Athletes love the fact that their names our known when they come through our camp, and it makes them feel special, and loved. I believe that enhancing a sale this way is also a ministry, and that we as Christians can love on a lot of people through this. Parents would often comment to me at the end of the week about how impressed they were of our staff that we knew so many names, and the looks they gave me when I called them by their names at the end of the week were often pretty funny. I think that learning everyone’s name through a sales process has a huge affect on how effective your selling is, and even if you don’t make the sale, people are probably wondering what is different about you, and it might open up great opportunity for ministry.
BoweryJE22