“Why is the Bible so repetitive?” I asked my father when I was about 9 years old.

“What do you mean?” he asked. 

“Aren’t Mark, Matthew, Luke and John all telling the same story?” 

I had just left Sunday School at the church that I grew up in. My dad played piano there (an amazing musician!) for over 60 years.  He laughed and answered, 

“In order to understand something, people sometimes need to hear the same thing…differently.” 

It is no different in sales. The product you are selling is The Message, and people do “hear” things differently. The same product (The Message) must be sold in various ways to get different people to buy. 

Some want to touch it, hold it and interact with it – kinesthetic. 

Some want vivid descriptions and brochures and videos to experience the product – visual. 

Some want to hear how the features will solve their problems through the benefits – auditory. 

Along with the way they need to hear The Message (your product), there is also a need to connect to who is saying it… 

The Messenger. 

A great Message (product) may go unheeded unless there is the right Messenger. People who have natural affinities for each other can bypass many elements of the Relating (building rapport) process, because they already have things in common. 

For example, if you are introduced to someone from your Fraternity (even at a competing university), it will facilitate a relationship. At some level, we all want to do business with people who are like us – it validates and tears down artificial walls of insecurity and vulnerability. 

That is what sets the stage for most sales to occur. 

The concept of The Messenger draws across many lines but also transcends them. Gender, race, age, socio-economic and political similarities can create receptivity, but if other powerful connections are present, it can transcend the differences in all of them! 

That means a 56-year-old Black man (that’s me!) can sell a product to a 77-year-old Cuban and become great friends. Language and cultural differences were not the connection, but they were also not a barrier. What connected and transcended were our similar life experiences. 

While race, culture, gender and other “overt” similarities can become a starting point, there are so many other things that connect us. The most natural and effortless relationships are born from what I call verbal resonance – when two people “speak the same language”. 

You have likely experienced that, even when there appeared to be stark contrasts between you as The Messenger, and your prospective client.  

That is the essence of sales – the power of connection. 

That will be our subject for the next few daily crumbs. The power of…

The Message and The Messenger.