Salesman

The successful sales guy recognizes a marketing opportunity others have forsaken.

There’s an old sales axiom that goes something like: “Facts tell and stories sell.” I doubt the saying was around back in Jesus’s time but he certainly operated like he knew it. I think he knew his audience, his target market, was maybe going to be a tough sell but what an enormous, untapped market it was. It went against the grain (Luke 15: 1-2)

Jesus “sold” to the people that the rest of the sales guys, the Pharisees and teachers of the law, had long ago written off as potential customers. He went into the places they wouldn’t go and made his pitch to those who had never been buyers before. The other salesmen thought he was nuts and definitely below their paygrade. I can hear them mutter, “It’ll never work. What’s he doing with them?” The thing is, Jesus was selling something they weren’t; belief and not just in anything but in the customers’ worthiness as consumers.

Jesus told the castoffs, the unclean, the unworthy that they were valued and not just valued but prized. These ones who had been told countless times they were no good, unwanted and total screw-ups were being told something radically different by this sales guy. Jesus told them and told them with authority that they were desired. Oh, the “good” ones were fine and all but Jesus’s company was willing to walk away from that existing customer base just to win their business. Jesus’s company was an innovator, a trailblazer. This just never happens in the marketplace, except when it does and it’s the biggest most life changing, world changing revelation to ever happen.

Consider the automobile and you’ll see a Pharisee sitting on a horse saying “Folly! Never work!’ Consider the airplane and hear the Pharisee saying “If man were meant to fly….” The internet: “Just a fad, it’ll pass.” (Overheard at the morning coffee group) The list goes on and on and on. They said it then and they say it today: “Not a chance. Gonna fail. Doesn’t have a prayer.”

Thank God it does. Thank God it did back then. And thank God he sent his Son into the underserved, unworthy market that was and still is all of us. I’m sold on this thing and I hope you are or are headed toward buying too.

Jesus said of his buyers, “…I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:10) That makes me feel like a valued customer right there. Please share this with anyone you know that needs to hear their business is being sought after even today.

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