The Problem with Religion

I’ve been working in sales for about 4 months now. While this is my first official sales job, it has come fairly easily to me and I’ve been doing alright since I started. It’s been a pretty seamless transition, I feel like the biggest part of the learning curve was just learning about the product I’m selling. But all the soft selling and social skills you need to be successful came fairly easily to me, with lots of help and guidance from my manager and others of course.

I’ve been trying to figure out why this has felt so natural to me. It’s because I’ve done this before. I’ve actually been doing it my whole life. I was taught from the time I was very young to take every opportunity possible to tell people about Jesus. Quite honestly, this sometimes meant that in some conversations I really wasn’t truly engaging with people in conversation, I was just waiting for the next opportunity to inject my sales pitch about Jesus into the conversation. I was only interested in you for the commitment to Christianity that you could give me. This was always pretty tough for me because I genuinely liked people. I wanted to just have conversations and enjoy people and recognized that in some situations Christianity might not be the best fit. But that ran counter to what I was taught. Christianity is the only solution, it’s a fit for everybody, there is no other choice. Pray this prayer or you’re going to suffer forever. The type of sale I’m doing now is a lot less stressful because there’s less at stake.

Because of this training I had, I naturally came into this job thinking that everyone would be a fit for our product. It didn’t matter who you were, or what you were selling, if you had any kind of marketing needs, our software was the answer. One of the first lessons I had to learn the hard way was that sales consists mostly of people saying no and not everyone is a fit for our product. Some people have different goals, or shifting priorities and there are other solutions out there that more closely align with their needs than what we offer. I didn’t get this at first, I couldn’t figure out why not everyone I talked to was jumping on this product and getting as excited as I was. Through conversations with my manager and others, I began to learn that a successful salesman recognizes a good fit when he sees one, is okay with moving on when there is clearly not a fit, and does not waste time trying to create something that is not there.

The problem with religion as a business (specifically Christianity as I can’t speak of other religions from experience) is that there is a lack of recognition that one solution may not be the perfect fit for all humanity. We try to make everyone fit one specific mold, our answer is the only one and you need to get on board before it’s too late. That’s just poor sales. In my current job, I’m just as concerned with getting someone to purchase as I am with the experience they have once they come on board because my reputation as a salesman is at stake. I genuinely want them to have a good experience using our product because I want them to spread the word and I want them to remain a customer for a long time. When I was selling salvation, I didn’t really think about their experience after getting on board with Christianity, my only concern was getting them to make that commitment. My experience with the church hinted to me that once you committed to Christianity, that was it. We’ve got you now because if you don’t do what we say you’ll go right back to the terrible life you had before on the path to hell.

I can’t say that I ever really had a super positive experience with the product of Christianity. I think Jesus is a great guy with a great story and we have a lot to learn from it but the product of Christianity that I used for so long was more based on fear of what would happen if I left than a genuinely positive experience with the product itself.

I wonder what would happen if religion looked a little more like business, or if we were just more honest about our motives. We’re all competing for the business of the same audience and we’re going to do everything we can to make our business the best. But at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to make a buck.