I’ve spent the last nine years in wholesale mortgage sales, the first half as a sales rep and the last half as a sales manager. I’ve been blessed and enjoyed success, so I am frequently asked the secret to success in sales.
I always tell people who ask that success in sales is simple, but not easy. There are really just a few things a person needs to know, and they are not difficult.
The hard part comes in the application. It’s not because you have to learn the right things to say — the “tricks” — to get people to buy. In fact, I’m absolutely convinced that such tactics will actually hurt a salesperson much more than they will help. People generally know when they’re being tricked, and selling people things they don’t need is a sure way to ruin one’s reputation and derail one’s career.
The bottom line is that a salesperson needs to find clients who have a legitimate need for his product or service. The salesperson needs to convey effectively how his product or service meets those needs. Finally, he needs to follow through and stay in touch with the client. It’s really about that simple.
The hard part is doing it. Let’s face it, most people are lazy. Most salespeople have good intentions but poor follow-through. They mean to call on new prospects, but instead they let themselves get tied down in paperwork. They mean to get a proposal to a client when they said they would, but something comes up and they are late. They mean to call to check on something, but forget. They mean to call a client back, but they don’t until two days later.
It’s not complex, but a lot of it is roll-up-your-sleeves work. In my business, there’s not a lot of daily oversight by a manager; it’s up to the sales rep. He is given a goal, or quota, and then he is accountable at the end of the period for achieving it. If he achieves his goal, or quota, he generally earns good money and receives well-deserved recognition. Then he has the opportunity to do it again the next month. If he doesn’t meet his goal, he doesn’t make much money, and is probably admonished and put on probation. If he misses his goal several months in a row, he loses his job.
Living the life of a Christadelphian is a lot like this. Having believed and obeyed the gospel in baptism, we are given a goal or a quota. God clearly lays out a goal in His Word, the Bible. He says, “Love your neighbor as yourself”… ‘forgive’… ‘help others’… ‘treat others fairly’, etc. Those are fixed goals. In the corporate world we’d call them objectives. Make the objective, get the reward. Miss it, lose your job.
In the business world we usually work in three timeframes — months, quarters, and years. We receive — or if we’re managers, we give — certain goals or objectives for these three time-periods. As Christadelphians we are given time-periods too. The big one, our “year”, is our life. When we stand before Christ at the judgment, he’s going to look at our life and evaluate it to determine if we receive the gift of eternal life. I’m not saying we earn that reward by works, as we might in the corporate world. But we do receive the gift, in a sense, because of our intentions and, to some extent, how those intentions are revealed in our lives.
But there are other time periods too — phases in our lives: marriage, parenting, friendship, careers, etc. All these together add up to our lives, in the same way months and quarters add up to years in the business world.
As believers in Christ, we have the same objectives an aspiring salesperson does. The salesperson knows he or she needs to make the calls, find the need, fill the need, follow up, and communicate. As believers, we know what we should be doing. We know we need to call that brother or sister in need and help however we can. We know we need to read our Bibles. We know we need to pray. We know we need to share fellowship, etc.
But like a sales rep working for me in Dallas or Salt Lake City, we don’t have constant oversight. We have good intentions, but we don’t have Christ giving us constant feedback, unless we’re doing our readings and meditating on them in prayer. We don’t have Christ saying directly to us, “I know you meant to call your brother in need, but you didn’t.” So it’s easy to let things slip. It’s easy to say we’ll do them later when we have time and aren’t so tired. The problem is, deadlines sneak up on us more quickly than we think — the “month-end”, the “quarter-end”… the “year-end”!
“Be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matt. 24:44).
As a sales manager there are signposts. For that sales rep in Dallas, I can see signposts that tell me whether he’s going to be successful:
- Call reports: is he averaging 20 or more meetings per week?
- Account set-ups: is he getting three to five new clients approved to do business with us per month?
- Account drops: is he terminating our relationship with unprofitable customers?
- Communication: is he calling for help or to ask me questions?
- File submissions: are new applications coming in?
- Pull-through ratio: is he following up and closing the applications he brings in?
- Expenses: how many minutes is he using his cell phone per month? How many miles is he driving?
These are all signposts that strongly suggest success or the lack thereof. I tell my new employees about these signposts. I tell them I have found that the sales reps who do these things tend to be successful, and the ones who don’t, usually aren’t.
Isn’t it true that the success of our lives as Christadelphians also leaves markers or signposts? Isn’t it true that God’s Word tells us the signposts of success for a Christadelphian? Think of almost any verse in Proverbs — there’s a signpost!
Jesus said, “A tree is recognized by its fruit” (Matt. 12:33-37). There are outward signs that reveal our hearts and our convictions. This passage concerns our speech. It’s not only how we speak to each other, but the things that we talk about. What we say suggests what is in our hearts and on our minds.
James said, “Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” (James 2:17). He is not saying we are saved by works. But he is saying that faith and deeds cannot exist independent of each other. He is making a call for faith in action. If you really have faith, you’ll want to do things that show that faith.
John makes a similar call for “love in action” (1 John 3:17). Loving your brethren, and helping them in a time of need, cannot exist apart from one another.
Just like I can see the signposts of success in my sales reps, the Father and His Son, and even our brethren, can see the signposts of faith in our lives. We have to let God and Christ speak to us, through the Word, and we have to talk to each other to offer feedback and encouragement.
The call of a Christadelphian is simple; Jesus summarizes it in Matthew 22:37 39:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
But doing this can be difficult. Just as Jesus harshly condemns the teachers of the law, the Pharisees, and the hypocrites for focusing on the less important things (Matt. 23:23,24), so he reminds us to focus on the basics of our walk as a believer — justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
As we approach the breaking of bread, we have an opportunity for a fresh start. Let us examine ourselves, confess our sins, ask for forgiveness, and recommit ourselves to the basics.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One