When you have a message of value to many people, the temptation is to share it with everyone at once. Yet experience tells us that the great majority of people who receive your message may ignore it, refute it or just miss it altogether.
In sales, you don’t have time to spend sharing your message with those who simply aren’t ready for it – you need to find those who are ready to hear the message, absorb it and act upon it as well.
The same is true with faith. The message of Jesus is relevant to every single human soul, yet even when Jesus performed his ministry on earth, he conserved his time, his energy and even his message.
His goal was not to reach everyone all at once. Rather, it was to reach the right people at the right time, and in so doing, ensure the protection and dissemination of that message for all posterity. Some would even say that the greatest accomplishment of Christianity is in how the message of the faith was so carefully and widely spread over the course of history.
If Jesus took time to carefully and convincingly share his message, you should to. Here’s how:
1. Focus on Small Communities
Jesus was, of course, born in a very tight-knit community, as a baptized member of the Jewish faith while living under the rule of Rome. God chose to reveal himself to the world through one of the smallest (even today) ethnic and faith communities on earth, in part because sharing a critical message with a small group of people is an essential strategy in human relations. God made us as communal beings, and by Jesus living his life in a small community he was able to have the greatest initial impact.
In the world of business, we would call this target market strategy, and in addition to choosing your target markets it also means becoming involved in them as intimately as possible.
2. Develop New Leaders
Many people believe that the key to political success lies in lobbying or influencing current leaders, whether they be elected officials, titans of industry or stars of film or stage. Jesus taught by his example that, in fact, this is a vain and often meaningless exercise. Those who are already in power are just that – already entrenched in their ideas, alliances and commitments. Their ears are perhaps the ones least ready to hear a new message.
On the other hand, new leaders can be shaped, formed and led (i.e. discipled) on the path of a new way of thinking, whether that way of thinking is about our faith in God or our commitment to business innovation. Future leaders are not where you’d expect to find them, either. Jesus found them in the humblest of circumstances and surroundings, and shaped them into leaders, both individually and as a group.
In the world of business, this may involve developing ‘lighthouse accounts’ (early-adopter customers who are eager to share their experience with others) as well as new partners in the marketplace who are perhaps less entrenched than more powerful players, but who are committed to the vision and message of what you offer.
3. Emphasize Service to Practical, Immediate Needs
Whether we like it or not, one aspect of human nature is our tendency to think in very short terms and timeframes. Humans struggle to think of the world in a way that is larger than they are, particularly when faced with immediate needs. Jesus could have focused exclusively on the theoretical aspects of his message and turned every homily into an exposition on the details of the theology.
However, while not ignoring these points, he chose to make his true focus far more practical and concrete. He used immediate human needs (food and water; healing disease; responding to death; overcoming stigma) as the central theme in his ministry. This was not only to serve the practical needs of the person in front of him, but also to demonstrate the real-life value of faith in action to those around him. By doing this, he made it far more compelling for people to spread the Good News.
As a business leader, you can train your sales people to focus on true-to-life customer needs, and communicate that you solve real-life problems in your sales literature. By focusing in this manner, you ensure that your sales training and communications resonate clearly with your customers and prospects.
By applying these principles in your work as a sales professional, you’ll gain more traction; find better prospects, and experience more satisfying sales relationships as well.