A Book Review – God is a Salesman

Shweta Khare

17 years ago

“God never sells a product or service. God holds out an ideal, a standard to achieve, and most important, something to aspire to. Great salespeople learn from this and emulate it.”
– Mark Stevens in his latest book, “God Is A Salesman: Learn from the Master”

The book and the ideas it shares across is all about how the basic factors like love, trust, respect, and loyalty integral to God’s preaching can be masterfully implemented in sales and marketing by one and all. Stevens explains why great salesmen are expert story-tellers; why most sales presentations fail; and why trying to win sales by underbidding the competition is a loser’s game.

Though at some stages of the book, the “God” factor weakens and the mortal selling techniques are more dominant. But Stevens does a good job at sharing some short personal stories on how simple events in life have taught him strong lessons in selling, and these simple but moral lessons in life teach us that a salesperson does not need flashy devices or concepts to make a good sales. The simple and ethical teachings through God can be applied in all areas of successful selling and marketing.

The book is short and simply written. An interesting aspect of the book was a short piece on “preaching” or “gathering your flock”. To get the message out and to influence a large community God has relied to preaching in the past – how can a successful salesperson implement these ideas in today’s world? According to Stevens, consider these steps:

Create a blog that communicates your viewpoints with passion and provocation.
Host Seminars. Seminars assemble hundreds or thousands of people to hear your message.
Engage in media relations. Give compelling ideas to the print, broadcast or internet press.

The bottom line is “Big thinkers spread the gospel to the biggest possible groups, who spread the message virally and reinforce the thinking and the message among themselves.”
Perhaps one other suggestion that is relevant in this order is the use of social and professional networking online sites – if God were to present a sales offer in this era then I am sure He could be using the online media more to reach to the billions of users of all ages.
As in all good books there is something to new to learn or just as the way the ideas are presented that it seems simpler to implement – God is a Salesman is a lucidly written book influencing the readers to rise above the standards of traditional selling to create an experience that benefits both the seller and the buyer. In whatever business you are, the pre-eminent quality you have to learn is to how to be good at marketing and how to best develop your skills as a polished salesperson. And what better way to learn than from the master himself (or herself).

This book is also available as a Hachette Audio and an eBook.
Read more about the book at markstevensworld.com

Some discussions that can go on from here:

Considering God as a masterful salesperson what do you think He/She would do in the present technological era to promote His/Her preaching or to “sell” His/Her ideas?
And another question – why is God mostly referred to as “He”?