It has been fascinating for me to take this Sales in the Startup class with Professor Sweet at the same time as I have been taking Evangelism and Discipleship with Dr. Byun. I want to talk about some of the crossovers I see in these to disciplines:
- It’s not a one-time pitch, it’s a relationship. A proclamation of your pitch should not be the end of the process in either of these activities. Dr. Byun talks a lot in class about how discipleship and evangelism are really the same process. The most effective way of sharing Christ’s love and His importance with someone is living life with them and genuinely loving them. Welcoming them into our life where they can see the influence of Christ on all levels. This builds the trust and shows the belief you have in what you are trying to share with another.
- Pain points are what make us receptive to change. Identifying someone’s pain point helps you cater the solution to the needs. The trick is, you can’t be the only one who believes they have a need. If they don’t perceive a need, whether it’s for a new website or salvation, the likelihood that a prospect will bite on what you have to offer is slim.
- Contextualization is key. One thing Sweet talked about is class was not letting our biases of how we perceive things (ex. money or time) influence the angle we use to inform potential clients. Evan Adams talked about how when selling No Wait to restaurants, the angle of “you can eliminate buzzers” connected to customers when nothing else would. This is exactly the same as we when share our faith, especially cross-culturally. The gospel in it’s supernatural way is applicable across all time and cultures- we shouldn’t change the message to capture our audience’s attention, but we should wrap it up in a way that makes sense to them, their priorities, and their worldview.
BoweryJE22
I have never thought about Sales and Discipleship or Evangelism to be relatable but holy cow, they totally are. Your points on relationship and pain are so relevant and true as I think about them. In order to offer anything and have that person be motivated to receive it is through a trust relationship being built and for pain, most of the time it is the pain itself that motivates us to accept whatever solution is being offered. Thank you so much for thinking about this and making these connections.
These are some great correlations! I really like the fact that you mentioned pain points. Sometimes the client may have a pain that they do not even realize, and this is certainly the case with evangelism. Another thing that may happen is that at the time, the pain is not great enough for change to happen.