Transcript 

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn the principles, strategies, and tactics to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line. I want you to discover the secret to applying Biblical truth to business growth for the greatest kingdom impact, so in the end you hear from your Heavenly Father, well done. Welcome to the 100-Fold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn how to grow their businesses top line, bottom line, and finish line.

I'm your host, Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today I'll be talking about Essentials 7 of 12, all about how you can grow your Hundredfold Business, a business that's multiplying its eternal bottom line. During these 12 Essentials, we'll be going to God's Word to discover the original design of good business and then applying those teachings for the best results. If you need any help along the way, you can always go to 4thSoilVentures.com and reach out to me there.

Today, we're going to be focusing on one of the Essentials that will likely test your heart more than any other, and that's going to be sales. So, if you want to grow your sales without selling your soul, this is going to be episode for you. LinkedIn recently came out with a report of 15,000 buyers and sellers from 11 different countries, and in that report, they were trying to figure out the secret to selling.

What they found was that trustworthiness was actually the number one factor to making a sale. So, teaching, or better yet, discipling your sales team to be more like Jesus, the one who is faithful and true, who's always trustworthy, is actually good business. You're going to find that if you're selling God's way, it's going to give you tangible results because we're living in God's world.

Okay, now let's go to the Bible and find out what it has to say about selling. And for today, we'll be going through Acts chapter 2, one of the greatest sales pitches of all time. And if you stay till the end of today's lesson, I'll be talking about one of my clients who used this exact same method to generate $3 million of new sales in only one week.

Now, this excerpt takes place right after the coming of the Holy Spirit, when the disciples are speaking other languages, and the Jews are there listening. They're there for the Festival of Weeks, which takes place about 50 days after Passover. So, as Christians, we would know this as the day of Pentecost.

Now, let me go find and read Acts chapter 2, verses 36 to 41. "'Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.' Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "'Brothers, what shall we do?' And Peter said to them, "'Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far off, every one whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.' And with many other words he bore witness, and continued to exhort them, saying, ''Save yourselves from this crooked generation.' So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3,000 souls." I love this passage of scripture.

3,000 men, all having the eyes of their hearts opened a single day, and committing their life to Christ. And of course, we could talk for hours about the implications of this, and the meaning of this, but for today's lesson, we're going to be focusing specifically on Peter and how he's selling to the Jews in this passage. There's three points that I want to draw out that I think are going to help you as you go about and grow your sales.

Now, the three principles we'll be talking about today are, number one, Peter was a helpful leader. Number two, he had a compelling offer. And number three, he had steadfast follow-through.

Now, let's start with the first principle of being a helpful leader. Let me read this first part of the passage again. "'Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom he crucified.'" So what we have here is the definitive concluding statement from Peter, after spending 22 verses before this, explaining to the Jews what's going on here.

What is this speaking in tongues, and how does it relate to the prophecies in Joel, and how does it relate to the prophecies that David said, and how does this relate to Jesus and him being crucified and resurrected? Now, let's get to the first point that I want to draw out of this passage, all under being a helpful leader, and that is that Peter was very motivated. He had high motivation, and his motivation was love. It was love for his neighbor, and it was the promise of eternal heavenly rewards.

The Bible says in 1 John 3 16, this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. And in Proverbs 12 26, one who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.

Peter could have kept his mouth shut the day of Pentecost when he was accused of being drunk along with other disciples in the morning, but instead his motivation urged him on. Even though they hated him, they hated Jesus, he chose instead to speak because of his motivation, and that was risky. It cost Steve and his life later on in the book of Acts.

So this is the first starting point that you need to think about is for you and your sales team is making sure that you all have a very strong motivation, one that will help you press through even in difficult circumstances. The second point I want to bring up is that Peter was well trained. If you read the 22 verses prior to the one I just read, you'll see that Peter, he knows his Old Testament really well, and he knows Jesus really well.

So he is trained, he's equipped, he is ready to help people because he actually has the training to help them. The next point I want to bring up is that Peter was confident. He was a confident leader, and even though he was amongst a crowd that was mostly against him, he was willing to be bold and confident because he had a message he knew that would change their lives, right? So he was very confident in the gospel, and he had self-confidence as well in his ability to deliver that message.

And the last point that I want to bring up, and it's implicit but essential, is that Peter was trustworthy. When he spoke about Jesus' resurrection, people actually believed him, and they believed him because they had seen him publicly with Jesus for three years, and they'd watched him, they'd watched his character. So when he was delivering a message about Jesus' resurrection, they believed him because they trusted him.

So now a quick recap on being a helpful leader. Number one, you need to have strong motivation. Number two, you need to be well trained.

Number three, you need to be confident. Number four, you need to be trustworthy. And if you have all these things working together, you're going to be able to effectively help your prospects, help your leads make good buying decisions.

Now the next section we're going to be reading is all about how to make a compelling offer. It's also in Acts 2, let me read it now. Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit for the promises for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

Now we know that if we keep reading on, 3,000 of these men end up converting from Judaism to Christianity all in one day. These men who previously, 50 days earlier, had put Jesus to death by crucifixion, now are within one day totally transforming their life, their belief system, everything about them and their families are changing all in one day. So that's how we know that Peter for sure and the Holy Spirit gave a compelling offer.

Now I'll spend some time and go through the elements to what makes a compelling offer. And of course there's more than what I'm going to be listing right now, but this is a good start and this is all stuff we can find in the passage. The first one being that Peter knew his audience.

He knew exactly how to speak to them. He knew exactly what their pain points were. He knew exactly what their solution was.

He knew them intimately. The next point to compelling offer is that you need to have an effective solution. And so Peter went through and explained their problem, which is an important step.

So they saw, hey, we killed the Savior of the world. That's a big problem. We killed God's Son.

And so now we need a big solution. The only solution is going to also come from God. And so they saw, wow, we can become children of God with this solution, being baptized and repenting.

And so that's what they did. They saw the problem. They saw the solution.

There was a match. And that's essential for a compelling offer. The next point to a compelling offer is that you must be persuasive.

So in Peter's case, he got to the emotional level. It says that his speech cut to their heart. And he did that by invoking two very strong emotions, awe and fear.

And he did that first by laying on the fear for what they have done. And they knew that the wrath of God remained in them for what they had done. That was no good.

That was producing a lot of fear and dread in them. And so they were emotionally engaged. And then he had the awe, the awe of what it would be like to be forgiven, to be saved, to be united with Christ, to be born again, to be a child of God.

So there's a lot of dueling emotions there, this amazement that they just saw, the coming of the Holy Spirit, these people speaking in their languages, and they saw these miraculous signs and wonders. They were awestruck by the power of God, and then they had the fear. And so those two emotions working as magnets made it very persuasive what he was talking about.

The next point is that he gave them a very clear call to action. So they asked him, what shall we do? And he said, repent and be baptized. So they had a very clear action of what to do.

And on top of that, the next point is that there was social proof. There was proof that this was going to work. They could see the miraculous signs and wonders, and they also had the proof of others making the same choice.

And so they're making this choice in mass. And so that social proof was also essential to a compelling offer. Peter's compelling offer at Pentecost is pure good selling at its best.

There's no lying. There's no deceit. There's no flattery.

There's no exaggeration. He's telling them exactly what they need to hear. He's telling them exactly what they need to do, and he's leading them to make a decision.

And he's not aloof or passive or ambivalent. He cares, and he cares because he loves and he wants what's best for his prospects, in this case, the Jews. He wants what's best for them, and he's willing to push for it.

He's to be persuasive, and he's willing to give them a compelling offer. Now for the last section, let me read it to you. And with many other words, he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation.

So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about 3,000 souls. And now for this last section, what we're going to focus in on is that Peter used many words that he bore witness and that he continued to exhort them. So what we can see is that Peter had steadfast follow-through.

He wasn't just throwing the sales pitch out there. He was going to follow it through. He was going to put some pressure on.

He was going to focus on the intensity and help people make a decision. So how did he do it? Well, it says that he used many words. Now, we don't have all the words that Peter spoke, but since we know that the coming of the Holy Spirit was in the morning, he could have been there all day long until the evening, maybe late in the evening.

And so he was explaining them why Jesus was the Christ. He didn't just have a few sentences, but he had a lot to tell them, and he wasn't going to leave until he told them all the things he wanted to tell them to make a decision. Next, we can see that he bore witness.

So he had proof. He had stories. He had examples.

He had case studies. He had testimonials. He had a lot of proof that would bear witness to the fact that Jesus really was the Christ, and there was miraculous signs and wonders.

And so he took all of that to bear, to prove, to bear witness, so they could make a choice. And the last point is exhortation. And you can see, again, that Peter didn't just say it and walk away.

He used the many words. He used the examples and proofs, but he also exhorted them. He warned them.

He said, save yourself from this crooked generation. So that urgency and that encouragement and that warning was helpful for them to make a good decision. The best sales organizations and salespeople and sales processes are always set up with a steadfast follow-through, a continuous follow-through, because they know that unless the prospect says, no, I never want this, then the answer is just not yet, or maybe later.

And so it's the salesperson's responsibility and job to make sure that they do the appropriate follow-ups. Here's what the Bible says in Proverbs. With patience, a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone.

Now, I'm not saying that you should drive your prospects crazy with spam and unlimited follow-up, but there is a way to do this with honor, with love, and with respect. And I was working with a sales organization that has a great way of doing this, and I want to share it with you now. I had a client years ago that had about 150 salespeople.

And when I was out there doing a workshop with the leaders, one of them spoke up and had this idea about selling to your cousin, and I'll just call it the cousin principle. But basically, in a nutshell, the way it works is that if you're a salesperson, you want to sell as if you're selling to your cousin. The reason being is that you love your cousin.

You want what's best for them. And because of that, you're going to pull out all the stops. You're going to be persuasive.

You're going to be compelling. You're going to be a helpful leader. You're going to have a steadfast follow-through.

You're going to do whatever it can, whatever you can do to help solve your cousin's problem, because you care about them. And if you have the right solution, you want them to buy that solution. You want them to get the help they need.

And so using this cousin's principle, you're going to be focused on their welfare, but you're not going to do too much. You're not going to oversell it. You're not going to exaggerate, and you're not going to alienate them from the family relationship because you love them.

But you're still going to pressure them to make a good choice, and you're going to be there later on to follow up to help them if they need help later on. I think this is a very helpful way to think about sales as you're exhorting, you're encouraging, you're trying to be compelling. But in the end, it's their money, it's their time, it's their decision.

And so you want to honor them through the whole process and allow them to make the choice. Ultimately, you want to always be honoring the prospects over their decisions. And I think that Stephen in Acts chapter 7 is a great example of this.

So as he's doing a similar sales pitch to what Peter just gave, the prospects, the Jews in this case, they said no. They chose to stone him instead of repenting and being baptized. And through that process, he still honored their decision.

He asked God to forgive them for the choice they made. So this is the ultimate loving, humble selling, is praying for your prospects, even if they don't make the decision that's best for them. So in summation to this essential seven of a hundredfold business, which is grow your sales, the first point is you need to be a helpful leader.

Number two, you need to have a compelling offer. And number three, you need steadfast follow through. And now I want to end this episode by sharing an example from a past client from years ago who was very successful at doing this, but growing his sales.

And this doctor, again, was a successful doctor. He grew his medical practice quite large, and he had a very unique methodology, a very unique practice management, and he was able to cure people of these chronic illnesses very successfully. A lot of proof about that.

And because of that, he wanted to package it up in a way he could help other doctors have the same kind of success. And so we launched that program. He was able to generate three million dollars of new sales in just a week.

So how did he do it? Well, he was a helpful leader. Now, only God knows his true, pure heart emotion, whether it was all out of love, but I do know that he cared a lot about his patients and he cared a lot about his doctor's community, and he wanted to help as many people as possible be cured from chronic illness, just like he was. So he had that going for him, highly motivated, and he was trustworthy.

His character matched up with his message, and he had been in the spotlight for many years. So people knew him, they trusted him. He was confident and he was well trained.

And so they could teach him. And so they believed him. So that was the first aspect is that he was a helpful leader.

Next, he had a compelling offer. First, he knew the audience well, because he was a doctor, and he also was a patient at one point in time. So he's seen both sides.

He's able to speak to the problem and therefore provide an effective solution. And then he was able to persuasively move people to the fact that, hey, if they couldn't solve this problem, they were going to have problems of not helping their patients. And they're going to have problems effectively marketing to get new patients as well, because he was giving them a business in a box, basically how to market and attract patients and how to serve them and how to run your practice better as well as practice management.

So it was everything, all the bells, all the whistles with case studies and proofs and examples, very persuasively put. And because of that compelling offer, he was able to, again, generate a lot of sales. And lastly, he had steadfast follow through.

He didn't just put out his sales pitch and then wait and see what happens. He had the webinars, he had the sales page, he had the order forms, he had the follow up emails, the text messages, the reminders, the phone calls, everything it would take to move people to a buying decision, to be highly persuasive, to exhort them, to let them know, hey, there's some urgency. We're going to start this program in a few days.

And there's also some urgency because there's a limited supply. There's only so many people who can actually be a part of this program and work directly with this celebrity doctor. And so he put all those things through in his steadfast follow through.

And so within seven days, again, he was able to help people make a decision. Now, if they didn't want to make a decision, no problem. They could read his books, his podcast and try again next year.

But for all those people who are on the fence, he gave them what was necessary to make a buying decision because of a steadfast follow through. Now, can everything I talked about today be done with the wrong heart, a heart set on selfish ambition and greed and pride and sloth? Of course it can. And that's one of the big challenges with sales is that it tests your heart in a way that I don't think administration or IT or finance or operation does.

As a salesperson, you're taking somebody in a vulnerable state, the prospect, who has a need or a problem or they're suffering in some way, and they want a solution, a solution that you have. And so during the sales process, if your number one goal is a commission, there are ways to lie and deceive and manipulate and hide and persuade somebody to make a decision that's going to help you, but not necessarily help them. And that's why it's so important that you have to always start the sales process by first loving God and then loving others, and then through the sales process, try to help and educate them and lead them to a buying decision, which might end up being buying your product if it's what's right and best for them, or it might be them not buying at all or buying something else.

But the key thing is to always start with the right heart. The Bible tells us in Proverbs, the heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips. And in Psalms, the Bible says, no one who practices deceit will dwell in my house.

No one who speaks falsely will stand in my presence. So therefore be careful and persuasive while selling while also being honest. So now let's get to the application for today's session on growing your sales.

And as always, prayer precedes progress. And before I get to all the application steps from today, just know that we did a quick high level overview of growing your sales and there's a lot more depth and a lot more training that you're going to need if you want to go further with this. And if you need help, you can always go to fourthsoilventures.com to get some help there.

Okay, so the first application step is that you want your sales people to be helpful leaders. And the first part of that is you want them to be highly motivated. God's word says, a worker's appetite works for him, his mouth urges him on.

So the question for you is, do your sales people have high motivation and are the incentives you've set up aligned with both their goals and the company's goals? The next area to focus in on is training. So the question for you is, do you train your sales people, not just in the beginning, but continuously? So are the experts in the product? Do they know the customer well? Do they understand how to handle objections? Do they have a clear sales presentation? Do they know how to sell to different types of people in different types of circumstances? Have you been continuously working on that? And if so, you're in good shape. If not, there's an opportunity there to improve your training.

Next comes confidence. So the question for you is, are your sales people confident in the products and services that your company delivers, that you're actually going to deliver on the promises? And we have another module coming up all about delivering your promise. But for sales people to be confident, for one, they need to actually believe that the products and services do what they're supposed to do.

That's going to give them confidence. And then they also need self-confidence, confidence in their ability to sell, which goes back to training and mentorship and coaching. And the last question is to ask yourself with regards to growing helpful leaders has to do with their character.

Are they trustworthy? And hopefully you're screening for this early on in the application process and the hiring process and the onboarding process. But then as you have your sales people looking at them right now, are they trustworthy? And if they're not, then they shouldn't be working there. And if they are, you still want to develop your culture.

You still want to focus on trust. You your sales. Now continuing on with application questions that have to do with growing your sales, let's talk about making a compelling offer.

The first question being, does your offer match the audience you're actually trying to target? Next question is, do you have an effective solution for the problem your ideal customer has? And do you have a presentation, a way to effectively explain both the problem, the solution, and how it works? The next question to ask yourself is during the sales process and the sales pitch and presentation, do you actually hit on the emotions of your prospect in a way that's going to persuade them to buy? So do you have the appropriate amount of fear if they, you know, if they don't buy or if they're stuck in their current circumstances, what will happen to them? And all, you know, what will be the great benefit if they do buy? And what will the emotions be like if they do buy your product or service? Then we move on to the clear call to action. So the question for you is during your sales pitch and the sales process and your sales page and your sales funnel, do you lead them through a process where it's very clear? This is the call to action. This is the next step.

You need to put your credit card here. You need to sign this form. You need to call and set up an appointment.

Whatever it might be, you need to make sure that you have a clear call to action. And if you don't, you can always make an update there. And the last question to ask yourself is, do you have the appropriate social proof to help your customers make a buying decision? This is going to be testimonials and case studies and video case studies and any of those things that are going to help the buyer make that final decision to move forward, to take that call to action.

And if you don't, again, you can make an update there. And the last application step is steadfast follow through. And the questions here are, do you actually have a process to follow up with your prospects over an extended period of time? And during that follow up period, are you using different proofs and testimonials and examples to again, help them make a decision? And then are you bringing an urgency? Are you exhorting them? That's the question is, do you push for urgency to help move them over the line? And if not, there's an opportunity for you to then improve your steadfast follow through.

With this step in particular, it's really important to have the right technologies in place and make sure you have the right systems in place, the right management in place to make sure that the steadfast follow through happens. Otherwise, it's very difficult to be confident that your sales team is doing the follow up necessary. Ultimately, if your business is truly helping people, and you're in front of prospects who have a problem that you can help, it's your duty, it's your obligation to help them to be a helpful leader to give them a compelling offer and have steadfast follow through.

So you can be just like Peter on the day of Pentecost. So therefore go and grow your sales. Because just like in the parable of the 10 minas, where the nobleman tells his servants to go and do business until he returns, we're called to go and do business until Jesus returns.

And when he returns, we want to hear, well done. Now stay tuned for the next episode, where I'll be unveiling essential eight of 12 about how to grow your hundredfold business. And this one's going to be all about how to care for your people.

So how to hire and manage and train and grow your team so that they can flourish and that so your company can flourish as well. This is one of the most dynamic, difficult and rewarding aspects of leading an organization. And God's Word has a lot to say about it.

And I can't wait to share it with you next time. Finally, if you like this episode, make sure to like and subscribe and share with a friend. I appreciate you brothers.

And until next time, grace be with you.