Over\nthe past spring break, I was hanging out with a bunch of the 20-somethings from\nmy church at a local restaurant. It had been a couple months since I had been\naround because of school, so there were several people that I don’t know. I was\njust sitting at a table with a couple of other guys when the rest of the crew\nshowed up, including a young woman that I had never met before. I won’t lie. I\nthought she was pretty dang cute. Naturally, I start trying to chat her up and\nget to know her a little bit, and, naturally, she wasn’t having any of it. I\nthought “alright, shot my shot” and then we all sat and talked for a\nwhile. There were about eight of us at the table and we were all talking and\nhaving a good time when I asked to see the quote that was on her lock screen.\nIt was something about trusting God in the midst of anxiety, and she said\n“I’m just going through some hard stuff right now and it’s a good\nreminder.” I asked her if she wanted to talk about what she had going on,\nand she shared with me that her husband left her about a month ago. Here’s a\ntwenty-four year old woman who thought she knew where her life was going, and\nit turns out that everything was going sideways. Over the course of the past\nweek, we got together for lunch and spent time with the rest of our young\nadults ministry, and it’s been awesome to see the way God is working on her\nheart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So,\nwhat does that have to do with sales? When initially approaching her, I had no\nclue about her emotional state for this lunch. Social interaction is pretty\ntaxing on her, and she didn’t know anyone at our table. She was already tired\nfrom a bad night of sleep, a major cause of which was missing one more warm\nbody that’s typically in the bed at night. Then add on to that the emotional\ndrain of her situation with her husband. Put yourself in those shoes, and\nimagine a cocky, happy-go-lucky, 21-year-old punk making corny jokes and asking\nyou tons of questions about yourself. I can understand why she wasn’t super\ninterested. After talking for a little while, the tone of our interactions\ncompletely changed, and I discovered where her heart was. I was trying to sell\nmyself as a romantic potentiality, when what she needed was to be sold on a\nperson who is trustworthy, caring, and ready to listen. When we sell products\nand services, we can only adjust so much before we can’t offer solutions to the\nproblems others are experiencing. But when it comes to selling ourselves, we\nneed to be shapeshifters that meld themselves into whatever people need. We\nneed to be all things to all people, and that’s really hard, but, man, it’s\nrewarding to meet people’s needs. I know this is just a sales class, but\nthere’s something about a transaction-free sale of self for the sake of another\nthat brings redemptive beauty and shares love in such a powerful way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over the past spring break, I was hanging out with a bunch of the 20-somethings from my church at a local restaurant. It had been a couple months since I had been around because of school, so there were several people that I don’t know. I was just sitting at a table with a couple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6687,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6685\/revisions\/6687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}