Welcome back to the Theology of Business podcast. I'm your host, Darren Shear, author of The Marketplace Christian and Marketing Like Jesus. And this is a show that helps marketplace Christians to partner with God in business to transform the marketplace and make an impact in eternity. Today we're going to be talking about salesmanship as a Christian and how to sell without selling your soul. And we're joined by Non Tenant. He's the author of Copywriting for Christians: How to Sell Without Selling Your Soul. So you can see where we got the title of this episode. And he's also the creator of Learn Copywriting Backwards, which is a training program for solopreneurs. He lives in New Zealand. So we got a New Zealander, the land of uh Lord of the Rings, on the show today, uh, where he's active in apologetics ministry when he isn't teaching business people how to turn more visitors into customers. So I've gotten to know Nan just a little bit and have come to discover that he is, I was just telling him, probably one of the most eclectic people uh I've I've interviewed. I mean, he's he's been into everything from ancient medieval German uh martial arts to apologetics and uh marketing and web development, apparently, but is just a fascinating guest uh that we've got on the show today. And and this is a very important topic, this this idea of salesmanship as a Christian. And we're gonna be talking about marketing ethics and sales ethics today, and it's important because given that the bottom line that we have as Christians in the marketplace is eternal, it's not just financial, we've got to stay out of the traps of shady marketing and even not so shady marketing that misrepresents the God uh uh that we serve. And I mean, we've we've all encountered the sleazy salesman, and non's gonna kind of talk a little bit about that. Um, but and and nonprofits aren't exempt from this. Uh, businesses, I mean, this when you hear the promise, and maybe you felt the temptation to make some claims of your own about your business that really just aren't backed up uh by the by the results. And and so we're gonna be talking about how to stay out of some of these traps and how to market in a Christ-centered, spirit-led way. So, Nan, welcome to the Theology of Business Podcast. It's very good to be here. Thank you. Well, tell us a bit more about your background and what inspired you to dive into this topic.
SPEAKER_02Um, well, I guess I'll start reasonably close in history because otherwise it could go on for a while. But my background is um I I worked in IT for a very long time on a help desk, and eventually that more or less destroyed my ability to have relationships with people at all. And so I needed to get out of that, and I started to work in web design uh because that was something that was a hobby of mine at the time. And I started a business doing web design, and it very rapidly moved into copywriting as well because I realized that people would come to me and they would say, We'd like this website. And I'd like, I'd say, sure, that that's great. I'll I can put that together for you. Um, what do you want the website to say? Do you have some content to put on it? And they said, uh, no, we hadn't really thought of that. And so I started to investigate, you know, because I was already writing at the time as a hobby as well. So design and writing have both been hobbies of mine for a very long time. Um, I started to look into, you know, what kinds of things does one tend to say on websites and um, is there in fact uh are there books about this kind of thing? And I discovered that in fact there is a whole field called copywriting, which is what I now do. And for quite a long time, I I focused largely on copywriting. Web design was um an aspect of what I did as well, but I never really thought about how it related to my faith, because it it seemed like just everyone who did copywriting was just purely secular in their approach, and I didn't have any any Christian role models who were doing it. Um no one ever talked about religion because you know you tend to keep religion and politics out of business as much as possible. And unless you're on the theology of business podcast. Exactly. And so I I was just kind of muddling along, and uh often there would be um I would learn about principles and and I'd come across especially particular copywriters who I would um I would read, like Gene Schwartz, for example.
SPEAKER_00And I would just And by the way, copywriting is can you just define that for some people might be thinking, is that is that intellectual property?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that all about I get that a lot actually. So copy copywriting is simply writing copy, and copy is any kind of um online, at least the way that I think of it, copy is any kind of content which is designed to get someone to take an action of some kind. So usually it's it's about turning more visitors into subscribers, more visitors into sales. So that's what the point of copywriting is. Got it. And um uh a lot of copywriting, because it is about salesmanship, it's about persuading people. Um a lot of it tends to be, you know, ethically dubious. There's a lot of walking on the gray areas, and there there are some people in particular who teach copywriting, who are very famous copywriters, even, um, who really rub me the wrong way. And I know they rub a lot of Christians the wrong way, and they they feel very sleazy and hypey, and what they do works, but it it doesn't feel right to do it. And so I was speaking to a friend of mine, Donnie Bryant, who is also a copywriter. Um he lives in the United States, and he's been kind of gradually nudging at me to start talking about copywriting in a more Christian way, because I have a theology blog that he knows about, and uh he knows that I'm I'm good at teaching theology as well as teaching copy, and he wanted me to put the two together. And he felt that there was some need for that. So I started reaching out to other Christian copywriters and said, you know, do you think people would be interested in this? And they all said, Yeah, they probably would actually. There's uh what I've discovered now is that there is actually a quite a significant undercurrent of Christians who are either copywriters themselves or just in business and need to be able to write copy for themselves to sell whatever they sell. Um, and and they're quite they're quite quiet about the fact that they're Christians until you start talking about this stuff, and then they put their hands up and say, Hey, I'm a Christian, this is interesting. Can you can you tell me more? And so that that's what the book is for. Um, just teaching Christians how to sell without selling a soul. And there seems to be a sizable market there that um I think wasn't being served really at all.
SPEAKER_00And you know, it it's it's interesting because there is certainly some tension as a Christian because you hear from all of the gurus on the podcasts and the blogs and so forth about you know just really getting yourself out there and kind of becoming larger than life on social media and communicating this presence and being everywhere. And you know, and and it's kind of like a Wizard of Oz effect where there's this big sort of uh facade, and then you look behind the curtain, and what is the substance? And so, you know, what you're talking about is making sure that you have the substance, and it but it's not it's not backing down from communicating the value of what you offer, but at the same time, we can deal with a lot of the uh the guilt of well, do I really offer this kind of value? Am I really able to deliver on these promises? Because you know, sometimes we we don't meet customers' expectations, and yet we're supposed to in our copy communicate that like we're not we're not saying that, oh, um PS, sometimes we don't meet our customers' expectations. Like, where where is that gonna be in uh in a letter?
SPEAKER_02Well, a lot of this comes down to I think that the internet in particular has brought out this kind of um this problem that anyone who's in a position of any kind of authority or leadership has, where they start to be very easily swayed into a kind of cult of personality. And you see this in Christianity as well as in the world. Uh, it's not something that Christians are immune from. If you start to develop a following, um, you have a tendency to get surrounded by yes men, and you have a tendency to start thinking bigger of yourself than you necessarily should. And a lot of your selling takes on this kind of very grandiose, um, like what you were talking about, that this larger-than-life wizard of oz idea. And that's something that we have to be very careful of because ultimately that's not really selling in an accurate and um God-honouring way. It's not it's not really representing yourself accurately. It's kind of actually really taking a lot of the glory that's due to God and trying to put it on you and relying on that glory to sell rather than what you can actually do for people. So one of the very important things that prompted me to get this book together, um, one of the things that really started my thinking in this area, was when I was teaching copywriting, I try to reduce everything down to very simple principles. So I essentially say, what can we do to reduce copywriting down to the smallest number of principles that you can actually build everything up from? Because once you understand those principles and master those principles, then anything, no matter what it is, even if you haven't done it before, you can put the pieces together. And so I had three principles, which were clarity, contrast, and connectivity. So I had the three C's. So you have to connect with your reader and have the you know these ideas that work with what he is interested in. You have to be very clear about the way that you present yourself and you have to also contrast with what other people are saying so that your reader will pay attention. And obviously these work out in more complicated ways than I'm explaining now. But when I started to talk to a lot of my students, who the ones who were most particularly saying things like, I keep reading your emails rather than the guru's emails, because your emails are the only ones that seem, you know, on the up and up, they're only the only ones that seem like a real person, all the gurus seem really sleazy or hypey, and I I can't take them seriously, they don't seem authentic, all that kind of thing. And I started talking to some of them and saying, you know, how I I feel like there's this th another principle here. There's a fourth principle that I've been missing. I've been doing it, but I haven't I haven't really articulated it. And so I came up with a fourth C, which is candor. And essentially my idea is uh the whole point of being a leader of of selling is that when you sell, you have to be frank with whoever you're selling to. And if you're frank and you're honest, and that means that you're sober-minded about yourself and you're sober-minded about their needs, and you talk about how you can get from A to B, but you're not trying to sugarcoat it, then all of that kind of cult of personality, wizard of oz, it all falls away because that's not candid. It's like the opposite of candid.
SPEAKER_00And so it reminds me of what the apostle Paul said, you know, that we shouldn't think of ourselves more highly than we ought to.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. That's exactly what it's about.
SPEAKER_00It's a great lesson for anybody that's marketing anything. And uh you know, it at the same time, you said in your article and and also in the book that copywriting is a natural advantage for Christians. And I and I'm sure that somebody is listening to this thinking, well, I feel like Christians are at a disadvantage because we don't have because we have the moral compass to make sure that we're at least gonna feel guilty and shameful if we start making ourselves out to be something that we're not, or for example, telling people that uh that that this is that that we can never make this product again, or that this sale. I mean, I used to live in New York City, non, and I rem I can tell you about stores that I would walk by, and every time I would walk by the store for years, there were there were signs all over the front of the of the all over the front windows that said going out of business sale. Everything must go. This was for years. That's right, going out of business every day. Because they were trying to so if you're if you're a Christian, I mean, are we are we not at a disadvantage? I mean, you say that we have a natural advantage, we have a natural advantage as Christians. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_02Right. So your example of the going out of store sale, uh going out of business sale is actually quite a good one for narrowing down what I mean, first of all, because the whole idea of a going out of business sale is that everyone knows it's gonna be really cheap. And so if you're selling commodity items or if you're competing on price, that's that's probably gonna work for a lot of people, even though it's quite unethical. Um, but I'm not I'm not focusing on people who are competing on price. I think that if you're competing on price, things are gonna go quite hard for you, especially in the modern world where people can buy online. You can pretty much always find something cheaper. You have to compete on something other than just price. But I'm really focusing on people who are selling their own services or they're selling something which is um like I've got a customer who sells jewelry, for example. So she she makes handmade jewelry, so it's almost a service. I mean, she's selling a product, but she's making it herself. It's it's her own time that goes into it. Um, so I'm talking to people like that, people who are able to actually first of all, they are when their customers come to them, their customers are buying an outcome, but at the same time, their customers are also buying them. So, you know, you go into the supermarket, you're looking for some yogurt, and you're not you're not buying anyone, you're just buying the yogurt. But if you go into an architect and you're looking for a house, you're also looking for an architect who's gonna understand your needs. He's not going to, you know, laugh at you for not knowing how houses are built, he's gonna walk you through the process, he's not gonna be too expensive, but he's also going to be honest and give you good advice, all those kinds of things. You know, there's a there's a lot that goes into choosing someone who offers a service because you don't just want the service, you want the service with the person. And so uh essentially my thesis was uh when you're doing this, uh what your customer is really looking for is someone who can lead them to a vision of the future that they have. So you go into an architect and you have a vision of the future where you have this particular house, and you want someone who you can rely on to get you there. And you want someone you can rely on to get you there in a particular way, um, someone who isn't gonna make that that road difficult or more bumpy than it needs to be, someone who's who's really going to actually lead you, like be a good leader to you. And it's not that you're giving them authority in the sense that the Bible speaks of leadership. So, you know, they they can't actually tell you what to do. Um, they don't have that kind of authority, but there's an analogy there. There's they're a leader by analogy. And so because they're a leader by analogy, all of the things the Bible says about leadership start to become very relevant to the whole process of selling, the whole process of how you present yourself, how you talk about the ways that you can achieve the vision that your customer wants. And I think I might have been particularly sensitive to this because I'm in the process of being moved into eldership in my church, but it's been a slow process because I'm quite young and all the rest of our elders are quite old, I think is one of the main reasons. And so I've had to really think carefully about what is it that makes um a good leader in the church? Um, what kind of qualities do I need to be cultivating? What kind of things do I need to be doing to show people that I'm actually able to take on this role? Because we have people in the church who aren't sure, and we have other people in the church who really want it. So there's this kind of this tension here, and I need to, I'm in the middle of this, I need to sort this out. And so I started to be very aware of um the the the kinds of qualities a leader needs to have. And as I was thinking about these things, uh I I was uh sort of almost subconsciously putting them into my sales, into my copywriting, and I started to think, you know, I'm I'm doing the same stuff here in copywriting and salesmanship, and this is what I've been doing for a long time, that I I'm supposed to be doing in the church itself. And if that's the case, then maybe that's something that other people want to know. Maybe that's a good way of looking at it, maybe that's something that other people would benefit from learning to to put it into that paradigm and to think of salesmanship as something where you serve your customer, where you you don't sugarcoat things. Um I mean, often uh leadership does involve tough love, but at the same time, you're not trying to be all grandiose, um, you're not trying to hoodwink your customer, you're really doing everything for his best interests.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so you're the case that you're making from what I hear you saying is that the reason why Christians have a natural advantage is because we're called to be shepherds, and and we have the good shepherd to to follow as our example.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean we have a specific role model, right?
SPEAKER_00And so whether you're writing a sales letter or you're doing a sales presentation, or you're just you're just doing life with your customers, uh, the the process of leading them toward that next commitment, whatever that next commitment is, is not like driving cattle, it's like leading sheep. You know, people say, and you might feel like sometimes your customers are like sheep, like why won't they just do what I tell them to do? And and and people, I've heard it, I've heard pastors say, you know, sheep are some of the dumbest animals. Well, that's not that's not the case at all, from what I've understood from from actual shepherds, is that is that they're very smart. It's just that you can't drive them like cattle, you have to lead the sheep. And and so I think that's that's what I hear you saying, and that's that's kind of the takeaway for me, is that as a Christian, I need to look at the good shepherd and how how the Lord leads me, and then apply that toward me. I mean, as long as what you're offering, and maybe you could talk a little bit about this, about that conviction of the value that you're offering, because I think that's where a lot of Christians kind of miss it, or they think that their Christian faith is sort of a liability uh to their um to their ability to make sales because they can't over they can't exaggerate things and without feeling convicted about it. But um, but what would you say that would m really motivate somebody if they have something that they know people need, um sometimes they just need permission from somebody like you, Nan, to just go out there and and sell.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I think that one of the reasons that they feel like they need to have permission is because the world presents this idea of salesmanship, and especially, you know, if you're if you're a thought leader, an authority, um, it presents it in a way that you're almost like uh it's like a a food chain, and the leaders are at the top of the food chain and they're kind of devouring everyone. And that's really antithetical to what you want to be doing in leadership. Um you're not devouring people, you're serving people. And um when you start to think of sales in terms of this idea of serving, um, being a servant leader, it changes the the way that you need to think about um how you how you go about um let me start again. Sorry, my son just tried to walk in. Totally distracting me. Um so when you're doing sales in this way, it it removes a lot of those impediments that you have, especially in terms of thinking, you know, I don't have the chops to do this. I don't have um a lot of people think of it in terms of proof. You know, what if my customer asks me for proof that I can do this and he's like my third customer ever, and the the last two jobs are totally different, and I can't give him anything. You know, those are valid concerns. But when you're thinking of salesmanship in terms of leadership, they tend to fall by the wayside because not only are you going to be Um presenting yourself in a way that over time builds up a lot of trust without requiring any of those kinds of um so uh I'll just give you an example. I usually recommend to my customers that they use email marketing because email marketing means multiple contacts over time and you can tell a gradual story and you can build up trust with your customers. But not only can you do that, but you can also look at it in a very different way. So your customer, instead of thinking, well, my customer's going to want proof that I can give him this vision, instead of thinking about it in terms of what your customer wants, you think about in terms of can I actually do this for my customer? Do I know how to lead him? Because you know, everyone starts off when they start leading, they start off somewhere and they haven't been a leader before. And it doesn't matter whether you've got proof or not. What matters is whether you actually can do what you say you're gonna do. And if you're combining this process of gradually building up trust with this process of not worrying about, okay, here's you know, six different case studies uh that you can look at to see that I know what I'm doing, but rather concentrating on here's how I understand your problem, here's what I can do to solve your problem, and here's the process that we go through to do it. You're you're giving your customers ample proof that you can actually do what you say you can do just by showing them that you understand the situation and that you've got the vision to take them where they want to go. And so that kind of eliminates a lot of that, especially for people who are um, as you say, kind of looking for permission to sell. They're maybe thinking about starting a business or they've got a business but it's not doing that well because they they feel like they can't go the whole hog. Um, those kinds of people can really benefit from thinking in this way and from taking this approach because it removes a lot of this impediment that people have at the stage.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah, and I mean I would also add to to encourage people to put testimonies in their in their sales letters. I mean, because that is a huge part of the proof. I mean, the people that you have already served, I mean, you don't have to manufacture, you don't you're not put in a position where you need to uh you know lie and or or say things that you've you feel like you're not able to do, but but that if if you've already done it in a even as a prototype, I mean, feature that. I mean, is that is that the kind of thing that you encourage your clients to do is to share those testimonies. Yeah, definitely.
SPEAKER_02And if you've even done like one job, and you know, it could be a job for a friend. I started off my business. My first client was a friend of mine who runs a data recovery agency, and he needed a new website, and I made him a new website. And I turned that into a case study on my website, and I got a testimonial from him. So it doesn't have to be some high-faluting client, it can just be a friend of yours, and that's where you start and as you go through the process of getting more clients over time, you obviously will build up um more relationships, you'll be able to ask for more testimonies, you can do more case studies if you want to. But I've actually found that um testimonies are good. Case studies, unless you really want to use that as part of your whole email sequence, because I always think in terms of email sequences, unless you're going to use it into it as part of your email sequence, and you certainly could, um, but I haven't really done that and I haven't really felt like I'm lacking it. Um I think that it's actually it's much easier to work uh testimony uh testimonials testimonials into emails and sales pages than case studies. Um and one way that I often do that is rather than uh putting them down the side, um, you've probably seen a lot of uh long sales pages that have uh testimonies all the way down the right hand side or the left hand side. Um often they're like video testimonies and stuff because obviously if it's on video it it's less easy to fake and so on. But what I often do in order to work with this idea of leadership um is when I write sales letters, sales sales pages, um I write in a very conversational style, a lot like the way that I write emails because I try to maintain consistency there. And what I often do is I'll actually include the testimonies kind of in line and I'll say, I'll be talking about one thing, and I'll say as one customer put it to me, and then I'll have a little testimonial in there to um not only describe what I did using someone else's words um as a kind of extra proof, but also to you to describe it using words that my customers themselves are using. I mean, if if someone's using those particular words, then you should definitely use them uh as well. So using testimonials in that way can be very effective because it makes it part of the story and it makes it much more believable because you're showing that you actually know who said this and you had this conversation with them, and it's like you're relating a conversation back rather than just kind of slapping a quote on there. Right.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, this has been fascinating and definitely encouraging uh at the same time as a Christian to not feel like your Christian faith and your ethics are a liability, but they're actually an asset uh in the sales process, in the marketing process, because you know, I'm I'm convinced so much so that I wrote a book about it, that we have the most incredible marketing genius as our Lord and Savior, and the way that he served people. I mean, and and and he who serves the best. I mean, in if your bottom line is eternal and not just sort of temporary, where you're just sort of going after that next sale or that next follower on social media or whatever, that um that your your bottom line is eternal, then that is going to motivate, it's gonna per it's gonna put meaning into what you're doing, it's gonna put passion into it. And people, you know, as non, you're you've experienced and as I've experienced, people will buy into that.
SPEAKER_02They do.
SPEAKER_00And and and you can sleep well at night.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, that's the thing, is that people will buy into it and you can sleep well because there are lots of things that people will buy into that you won't sleep well. But one of the great advantages of this as well is that you tend to attract better customers doing this. Because the kind of culture personality guru style way of selling does tend to attract, you know, fanboys and people who aren't really that serious, and you get a lot of refund requests, you get a lot of um chaff, you know, you're not actually selling as much as you'd think, considering the size of your audience. Whereas when you sell this way, um you attract serious people who who are really who who value um a genuine leadership style of selling.
SPEAKER_00Right. And it's also more sustainable because they're not gonna have that buyer's remorse once they once they come on board.
SPEAKER_02If anything, it's it tends to lead into a virtuous cycle where your customers become more and more loyal to you.
SPEAKER_00And then they tell other people about that. Exactly. It's definitely a a win-win. Well, tell us uh where people can find the book and then uh let us know you know, any other uh final parting uh piece of advice that you'd like to share with us. Sure.
SPEAKER_02Well, you can find the book at copywritingforchhristians.com, and the four is the letter for uh the number four, not the word for. So copywriting number fourchristians.com. Um that'll take you straight to a link to Amazon. And in terms of parting advice, um, I guess the one thing what I say in my book at the end of my book is I actually encourage people, if you're gonna take this approach to salesmanship, you're essentially being more intentional about joining your faith and your business. And if you're gonna do that, I would encourage you to take it a step further and be more intentional about being a Christian business rather than just a business, you know. Um it's very natural to because we live in such a kind of post-Christian world now, um, depending where you are, of course, but here certainly here in New Zealand, it's very natural to just market yourself in a very secular way, even if you are doing it based on biblical principles. Um, but I have been very encouraged by the responses that I've gotten from gradually moving my business in a more overtly Christian direction. And I think that if more people did that, more people would start to do that because it would become this kind of snowball effect. Because there's all these Christians out there who are running businesses, no one knows about them and they think they're alone, but they're not. And it would be really great to see Christian businesses making an influence on the culture just by you know standing out and saying, Hey, I'm a Christian.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, everyone can go on. I encourage you to go on to theology of business.com as well, and you can see an article and read an article that Nan has written about this concept of salesmanship as a Christian and copywriting as a Christian and how to sell without selling your soul. And you'll have the link there to copywritingforchhristians.com. Again, that's with the number four. Definitely go and check out that article and um be sure to leave a comment. I'll leave any questions that you have for Nan. He'll certainly be available to answer those and let's have a conversation uh about some of these, some of these issues that come up in the sales process as it relates to our Christian faith. Nan, thank you so much for taking the time to share your valuable insight and expertise with us. Keep doing great things for God in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Darren.
SPEAKER_00Hope you've enjoyed this episode, and I'd like to hear your feedback on this episode at theologyofbusiness.com, where you can get more information about marketplace ministry, spiritual gifts in the marketplace, marketing like Jesus, and Christ-centered leadership and entrepreneurship. The Theology of Business podcast is sponsored by High Bridge Books. If you're interested in publishing a book to make an impact for God's glory and the culture, head on over to highbridgebooks.com forward slash course to sign up for a free three video author training course. In this course, you'll learn how to write a great nonfiction book, how to market your book, and how to start a blog to build your platform as a thought leader. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.