I’ve had for quite some time a copy of the book “God is a Salesman: Learn from the Master” by Mark Stevens, but I never had the interest to read it. Maybe it’s my strict Catholic upbringing that I don’t want God to be portrayed as a salesman, or maybe it’s because of the cheesy intro “Through the deep thought, spirituality, and philosophy that form the basic tenets of my life.” Okaaay!
But after the initial trepidation, I found that it is actually a useful book. Cheesy, but nonetheless, insightful and useful. You just have to make sure that you don’t consider religious significance and focus on the business implications. This is, afterall, not a book trying to prove the existence of God.
As the author writes:
According to the book, here are some of the things we can learn from God:
- God treats us all as family: “We must view selling as a way of building and maintaining faith in one another …. When practiced by The Master’s standards, sales is the connection that fuses an enterprise to people, helps to shape the company’s offerings to meet customers’ evolving needs, and nurtures its growth over time.”
- God shares His vision: “God never sells a product or a service. God holds out an ideal, a standard to achieve, and most important, something to achieve. Great salespeople learn from this and emulate it.”
- God makes guarantees: “When you sell something to someone, you can be unequivocal about what that product or service will deliver. And this has exceptional power.”
It seems hard to think that we can be anywhere like God even in selling. But the tips the author gives are sound and practical. There’s actually no new selling tips that other books on sales haven’t mentioned before, except, for associating the sales tips to God.
