The Top Salesman
What is God? Not the kind of question that one usually finds himself addressing in the office, and certainly not with coworkers, but with Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa all in the air at this time of year, thoughts about God are perhaps natural.
Is God an actual entity, or more of an abstraction of varying degrees of hypothetical reality? Is God, as John Lennon once put it, a concept by which we measure our pain? Is God dead, as Friedrich Nietzsche put it? (Nietzsche, of course, is dead. As is Lennon. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.)
According to the title of a forthcoming book by marketing CEO Mark Stevens, God is a Salesman (Center Street). By this, Stevens doesn’t mean God’s shuffling door to door with a samples case, or wearing a Santa Claus hat at the local Try-n-Save attempting to cajole you into buying a new refrigerator.
Of course, Nietzsche wasn’t being literal either, as an attentive reader of his The Gay Science will quickly attest. (And that book’s title has nothing to do with the bedroom proclivities of astronomers, so stop that sniggling in the back.) And while Stevens’ book is in no uncertain terms the work of a man of faith, his thoughts can be profitably expanded to apply to the workplace.
In his introduction (naturally, if a bit unfortunately, entitled “Genesis”), Stevens explains that his epiphany came when he was facing open-heart surgery. By “salesman,” he writes, “I mean an influencer, an educator, and a force that enables us to bridge the gap between what we see and what may well be the greater truth.” He then goes on to draw parallels between one’s relationship with a higher power and with one’s customers, almost always revolving around faith, building trust and assurance, and controlling the agenda.
Many of these are fundamental truths about salesmanship, told in a genial manner. God (known here as “The Master”) is usually not far from center stage, but not in a Jonathan “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Edwards manner. Fans of Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great probably won’t be able to see past the God talk, but those of the faith – and those who perhaps haven’t definitively made up their minds – will find much of value here.
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You got it totally wrong.
Got is creator first and then a salesman.
Human are salesman of gods product which religion.
thanks for the lovely freview of my book, God Is A Salesman....I would like to meet you folks.
thanks for the lovely freview of my book, God Is A Salesman....I would like to meet you folks.