Salesman

We have been dealing with sales people at work. We are looking to upgrade our online payment processing system. In the process I realized how much mistrust I have in salespeople. It seems that they are always trying to highlight the best features and hide the bad features at least until the contract is signed.

In the process I discovered that instead of just paying $3,000 a month for their services, we will be paying an additional $12-15,000 a month in credit card fees and I seem to be the only one at work that seems to care that we are quadrupling our costs to use this new product that will give us minimal features that do not justify the expense.

During this whole process I have been thinking about the sales tactics the adversary uses on us. He is either a great salesman or a terrible salesman depending on how easily we bend to his will. So many of his tactics can be compared to a salesman. There is probably more I can say about this, and I am sure I can go deeper into analyzing this, but the bottom line is that I could never sell anything because I am a terrible lair and I would probably end up hating myself in the end.

Today in Sunday school it was pretty interesting because we had a lesson where the teacher asked if anyone was a salesman or was good at selling things. He got a volunteer to come up and try to sell misery to the class. He had us come up with a list of good things about misery that the saleswoman could focus on. The class shared things like, misery loves company, it is easy to obtain, doesn't require any work to receive, is often proceeded by pleasure, and it has an endless supply. Then the volunteer gave us her sales pitch. She did a great job and we all laughed at how ridiculous it was to think that anyone would buy into the sales pitch.

The reality is that people are doing it all the time. I am sure I could come up with a list of people who are not making great choices in their lives right now and they are completely miserable. They have no clue that they have bought into a bunch of lies and empty promises. It is so sad to me and such a tragedy. I wish I could do more to help them see the lies they have believed and yet sometimes they seem so far gone to ever bring back to reality. What on earth is there to do? This topic will probably stay with me for a while. Perhaps this post will come with a part 2. We'll see.