posed to sell one out of one!

Ninety days later at my first quarterly sales review, I had to project my results on a screen in front of my peers. To their astonishment, I was able to report that I had done twenty-two demonstrations and closed twenty-two sales, which was three and a half times a goal no one had ever hit! The difference? I had found the way to successfully incorporate biblical principles and strategies into the selling process. Years later, I began teaching things like the Moses questioning strategy to uncover opportunity, creating a climate of trust

When we first enter the world of commerce, we’re told how to conform and we’re expected to do so. I began my sales career having no clue there were two systems based on two very different worldviews with two entirely different outcomes. I was told my mission was to work in the marketplace so I could fund the work of the kingdom. If possible, I was to very discreetly share the gospel with co-workers and lead them to Christ. It was understood that we were to submit to the tyranny of the system without succumbing to its values. I entered the world of sales like many of you did, through what Dennis Peacocke calls “Pharaoh’s School.” It was there they taught me the ways of Egypt, the ways of the flesh or carnal nature. I wanted to learn God’s “way” but instead I was taught by reputable companies the subtle ways to appeal to a person’s pride, or greed, or love of whatever the world has to offer. In short, I was taught how to appeal to the very side of human nature we are called to disdain.

In the years that followed, I struggled to find the Father’s way for succeeding in sales. I knew I was called to the business arena and I could see the fundamental flaws of the established system of selling. I had learned twenty ways to close a sale but what I really needed was one good way to open a relationship. I’d been taught how to create artificial need, when all I really needed to know was how to uncover the genuine need that already existed and meet it.

Then one day it all changed for me. I took a job selling copiers in a city I had just moved to. On my first day, the vice president of sales told me they expected six sales in my first ninety days and from then on, to sell one out of four demonstrations. When I came home from work, my wife could see I was upset and asked what was bothering me. I told her they had asked me to accept a seventy-five percent failure rate, and I wasn’t happy about that. I reasoned, “What farmer plants four rows of corn and then prays to God that just one of them will come up?” I picked up my Bible and told her I was going to study His word to find principles and strategies that I could apply to sales. If the Father really had a better way, I was going to find it and adapt it to the selling process. Instead of selling one out of four copiers, I purposed to sell one out of one!

Ninety days later at my first quarterly sales review, I had to project my results on a screen in front of my peers. To their astonishment, I was able to report that I had done twenty-two demonstrations and closed twenty-two sales, which was three and a half times a goal no one had ever hit! The difference? I had found the way to successfully incorporate biblical principles and strategies into the selling process. Years later, I began teaching things like the Moses questioning strategy to uncover opportunity, creating a climate of trust b

id, through what Dennis Peacocke calls “Pharaoh’s School.” It was there they taught me the ways of Egypt, the ways of the flesh or carnal nature. I wanted to learn God’s “way” but instead I was taught by reputable companies the subtle ways to appeal to a person’s pride, or greed, or love of whatever the world has to offer. In short, I was taught how to appeal to the very side of human nature we are called to disdain.

In the years that followed, I struggled to find the Father’s way for succeeding in sales. I knew I was called to the business arena and I could see the fundamental flaws of the established system of selling. I had learned twenty ways to close a sale but what I really needed was one good way to open a relationship. I’d been taught how to create artificial need, when all I really needed to know was how to uncover the genuine need that already existed and meet it.

Then one day it all changed for me. I took a job selling copiers in a city I had just moved to. On my first day, the vice president of sales told me they expected six sales in my first ninety days and from then on, to sell one out of four demonstrations. When I came home from work, my wife could see I was upset and asked what was bothering me. I told her they had asked me to accept a seventy-five percent failure rate, and I wasn’t happy about that. I reasoned, “What farmer plants four rows of corn and then prays to God that just one of them will come up?” I picked up my Bible and told her I was going to study His word to find principles and strategies that I could apply to sales. If the Father really had a better way, I was going to find it and adapt it to the selling process. Instead of selling one out of four copiers, I purposed to sell one out of one!

Ninety days later at my first quarterly sales review, I had to project my results on a screen in front of my peers. To their astonishment, I was able to report that I had done twenty-two demonstrations and closed twenty-two sales, which was three and a half times a goal no one had ever hit! The difference? I had found the way to successfully incorporate biblical principles and strategies into the selling process. Years later, I began teaching things like the Moses questioning strategy to uncover opportunity, creating a climate of trust

fundamental flaws of the established system of selling. I had learned twenty ways to close a sale but what I really needed was one good way to open a relationship. I’d been taught how to create artificial need, when all I really needed to know was how to uncover the genuine need that already existed and meet it.

Then one day it all changed for me. I took a job selling copiers in a city I had just moved to. On my first day, the vice president of sales told me they expected six sales in my first ninety days and from then on, to sell one out of four demonstrations. When I came home from work, my wife could see I was upset and asked what was bothering me. I told her they had asked me to accept a seventy-five percent failure rate, and I wasn’t happy about that. I reasoned, “What farmer plants four rows of corn and then prays to God that just one of them will come up?” I picked up my Bible and told her I was going to study His word to find principles and strategies that I could apply to sales. If the Father really had a better way, I was going to find it and adapt it to the selling process. Instead of selling one out of four copiers, I purposed to sell one out of one!

Ninety days later at my first quarterly sales review, I had to project my results on a screen in front of my peers. To their astonishment, I was able to report that I had done twenty-two demonstrations and closed twenty-two sales, which was three and a half times a goal no one had ever hit! The difference? I had found the way to successfully incorporate biblical principles and strategies into the selling process. Years later, I began teaching things like the Moses questioning strategy to uncover opportunity, creating a climate of trust

n I came home from work, my wife could see I was upset and asked what was bothering me. I told her they had asked me to accept a seventy-five percent failure rate, and I wasn’t happy about that. I reasoned, “What farmer plants four rows of corn and then prays to God that just one of them will come up?” I picked up my Bible and told her I was going to study His word to find principles and strategies that I could apply to sales. If the Father really had a better way, I was going to find it and adapt it to the selling process. Instead of selling one out of four copiers, I purposed to sell one out of one!

Ninety days later at my first quarterly sales review, I had to project my results on a screen in front of my peers. To their astonishment, I was able to report that I had done twenty-two demonstrations and closed twenty-two sales, which was three and a half times a goal no one had ever hit! The difference? I had found the way to successfully incorporate biblical principles and strategies into the selling process. Years later, I began teaching things like the Moses questioning strategy to uncover opportunity, creating a climate of trust

posed to sell one out of one!

Ninety days later at my first quarterly sales review, I had to project my results on a screen in front of my peers. To their astonishment, I was able to report that I had done twenty-two demonstrations and closed twenty-two sales, which was three and a half times a goal no one had ever hit! The difference? I had found the way to successfully incorporate biblical principles and strategies into the selling process. Years later, I began teaching things like the Moses questioning strategy to uncover opportunity, creating a climate of trust based on the life of Christ, and true win/win negotiating based on the writings of Paul, and my clients experienced remarkable results. One company in Ohio had been experiencing sluggish sales for the previous couple of years and were stuck at around the $22 million mark. At the halfway point of the year, I was brought in to teach the principles and strategies I had gleaned from the Bible. Sales increased the last six months of the year by 44 percent over the same period for the year before and they finished the year at about $30 million.

One reason folks don’t do well in sales is because they see the selling profession as an unclean thing, not recognizing that it’s neither moral nor immoral. For them, selling is a dirty word. They shun it, they dislike it, and they refuse to come to terms with it or to grow in their understanding of it. For their lack of knowledge, they slowly grind away in their mediocrity, living well below their God-given potential as life slips by them, one unfulfilled dream after another. In a word, they begin to perish.

What happened? They were sold! Somewhere in life, they bought into the lie that selling is something you do to someone for your profit, rather than with them for mutual profit. Being decent people, they didn’t want to play that game. They’d seen the wolves thriving in the business arena virtually unchallenged and agonized internally over their prosperity, finally accepting the platitude that “nice guys finish last.” After all, they would rather be a nice guy and finish last, than a wolf and finish first, as if finishing first and being a nice guy were somehow mutually exclusive.

In the grand game of commerce, wolves and sheep compete for the same slice of the economic pie. In preparation for the contest, wolves don sheep’s apparel to ply their cunning ways under cover of implied innocence while hiding the devious essence of their soul. Many a sheep on the other hand, has traded the innocence of his soul for the crafty ways of the wolf, in a sorry attempt to level the playing field and win his “fair share” of the business. At the end of the day, he has become a sheep in wolves’ clothing and that anguished, lonely howling he hears in the night is his own.

But there’s another breed arising! They’ve learned to walk