Jesus The Salesman

So I work in sales for HubSpot and volunteer as a Pastor with Christ City Church. I have commented before here and here about how fun and interesting I find the intersection of these two worlds. In the introduction to my talk last Sunday to the Church, as part of the Jesus The Revolutionary series, I outlined how in some senses you could say Jesus was the greatest ever salesman. Read on before you make any judgements. You can listen to the talk – it is based on Mark 2:1-12 where Jesus forgives and heals a paralytic man.

Many of you will know that I work full time in business for a company called HubSpot as a salesman. HubSpot is a software company that helps other companies perform inbound marketing and grow their businesses online… I won’t bore you with the details right now, but here is my business card if you’re interested (haha!). For those of you who didn’t know that, you’re now not sure whether to trust me and listen to this talk… as you have always been told never to trust a ‘slimey’ salesman!

Well I want to start this sermon by giving away the secret of a good sales person, and it’s very simple. A good sales person is able to get under the surface of what is going on the mind and heart of a potential customer and discern their deepest pain and their deepest desire. If you’re able to discern the motivation/heart – then you’re able to help that person solve their pain and realise that desire.

So when you’re being trained in sales at HubSpot they talk about level 1-2-3 pain and desire:

Level 1 – is surface level pain and desire. Someone wants to speak to me because they’re interested in our software to grow their business. They want to become better at online marketing and we might be able to help them. It’s general and surface.

Level 2 – is specific pain and desire, maybe you find out that they have to grow their business by 25%; that they’re losing market-share; that they have pressure from the boss to make a change; and that the website has to become more effective at attracting new customers. So we have gone a bit deeper and now things are more urgent and pressing.

Level 3 – is when we get right to what we call personal pain and desire. For example if that person doesn’t see changes and turn the business around they’ll lose their job; but if they do they’ll get a promotion and a salary increase – both scenarios will affect their families!! Now we’re getting deep… and now that I have discerned their motivation, the consequences and the urgency, it’s much easier to help them and ensure they get the right solution (which is always HubSpot software!!!)

So do you see – the best sales people move from a general surface level issue, to a specific and clear pain or desire, to a personal motivation. But here is the thing – very often the person who is interested in HubSpot has not seen clearly for themselves just how big the problem is or how far-reaching the consequences are. So a good sales person has to ask the right questions to ensure that they see it clearly. As you all know, we’re often blind to our own biggest problem, but other people can see it much more clearly.

So the best sales people ask lots of good and probing questions, making the person feel uncomfortable at times, but in the end the potential customer is always grateful. In fact, a good sales person will not actually try to sell you anything, they’ll just try to help you see for yourself what your biggest pain and desire are, and lead you to work out the right solution!

Well I know this is very cheesy and potentially irreverent… but this passage shows that Jesus is the greatest salesman that has ever lived; not that he was trying to spin anyone or sell something false (though I guess that is how people who don’t believe in Jesus might see it… including my manager at HubSpot!), but in that he always wanted to take people deeper. Jesus was able to discern the heart better than anyone else who has walked this planet. He is able to see right into our greatest pain and desire, and he can see the stuff we can’t see or are too proud to see, and he wants to take us deeper – he wants to take our surface level problems that we bring to him, and go much deeper.

He’ll often make us uncomfortable, he might even offend us and turn us off following him. But if we’ll open up to his gentle probing, he’ll bring a freedom and joy, a peace and contentment we had never thought was possible.

That is what today’s passage is about – it’s the first of five consecutive conflicts that Jesus has with the religious leaders in Mark’s Gospel. And in this story Jesus is going to take the paralysed man much deeper than he had bargained for, but he’s also going to take the religious leaders much deeper than they had bargained for. So let’s look how the story begins…

Do read the passage and listen to the whole talk, but if you want to know how I concluded the talk*, here it is:

You see, at that moment Jesus had the power to heal the man’s body, just as he has the power to give you that career success, that relationship, that recognition, that job, that home you’ve been longing for. He actually has the power and authority to give each of us what we’ve been asking for on the spot, no questions asked. But Jesus knows that’s not nearly deep enough. He knows that whether we’re a paralysed man lying on a mat or one of us sat here tonight in Dublin who is desperately trying to make ourselves feel more valuable, we don’t need him to just grant our deepest wishes; we need someone who can go deeper than that. We need someone who can remove the sin that enslaves us and distorts even our beautiful longings. In short we need to be forgiven, we need to know Jesus as our priest, our sacrifice and our temple. That’s the only way for our discontentment to be healed. It will take more than a miracle worker or a divine genie – it will take a saviour.

And now, a shameless plug, for those who are interested in discussing more about all this kind of stuff – come to The Intro Course, starting Wednesday 28th September, 7.30pm at Third Space at the Y on Aungier Street. No question is too simple, and no question is too feisty.

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* Heavily drawn from the end of chapter 3 of Tim Keller’s book Jesus the King.