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Less Machinery, More Messiah: Why Selling is Your New Ministry

An evocative blend of Charlie Chaplin’s iconic silhouette with a shepherds staff and a cracked water pot, set against a modern business sunrise. Gemini

Less Machinery, More Messiah: Why Selling is Your New Ministry

Let’s be honest: for most of us, "Sales" feels like a dirty word—the kind you’d apologize for using in church. We’ve spent years hiring "Business Development" guns only to watch them misfire because they lacked the one thing that actually moves the needle: Humanity. Simple right?

As Charlie Chaplin famously whispered in The Great Dictator, "More than machinery, we need humanity."

If you’re a Christian in business, you’ve likely felt the tension between "The Pitch" and "The Pews." You’ve been told to "Always Be Closing," while your gut tells you to "Always Be Serving."

Guess what? Your gut is right. And so is Charlie.

The Problem: We’ve Built a Sales Machine (And It’s Broken)

Here is the problem in a nutshell. We’ve turned sales into a mechanical process of extraction. We are asked to treat prospects like data points and run conversations with scripts.

Here is the good news! The world’s leading business schools are finally catching up to what the Carpenter from Nazareth knew 2,000 years ago: Transparency and consent are the ultimate commercial drivers.

  • Harvard Business School (2024) research confirms that "Socially Responsible Selling"—where transparency is the priority—significantly reduces buyer friction.

  • INSEAD (2025) studies on "Ethical Influence" suggest that "Consent-Based Selling"—giving the other person the room to say 'No'—actually speeds up the sales cycle by roughly 22%.

When we treat sales as "machinery," we lose the people on both sides of the desk or Zoom. We become the "cracked pot" that tries to hide its leaks, forgetting that it’s those very cracks that water the flowers on our path.

The "Coach Jesus" Approach: Truth Over Transaction

If Jesus were your sales coach, the first thing he’d do is flip the tables on your "yuck" mentality. He didn’t manipulate; he invited. He didn’t "pitch"; he asked questions that exposed the heart of the need.

At Riskcom, we worked with a team of technical experts who viewed sales as a "dirty word". They were brilliant specialists, but they had a negative perception of selling that killed their confidence.

By shifting their focus from selling to serving and aligning their personal values with business goals; they didn't just feel better. They tripled their sales in a single quarter.

The Stats Don't Lie (Even if Salespeople Sometimes Do)

If you think "soulful selling" is just fluffy theology, look at the numbers. Recent 2025 academic data shows that firms adopting a "Relational Posture" saw a 40% higher referral rate than those focused on transaction-heavy tactics.

Our own results at Riskcom prove that "Humanity > Machinery":

  • The Stretch is Possible: By building a "Sales Success Blueprint," the team blasted through their ultimate stretch goals by 69%.

  • Performance vs. Purpose: When experts "flex their sales muscles" without the artifice, they can exceed initial targets by 202%.

     

  • The Attitude Shift: One team member who was strongly instructed to attend the sales training ended up exclaiming, "Who would have thought that selling was fun!".

     

Challenging the Status Quo

Are you hiding your "machinery" behind a suit, or are you bringing your humanity to the table? Charlie Chaplin knew that silence and presence could say more than a thousand loud advertisements. Jesus knew that serving one person deeply was more valuable than "closing" a thousand who didn't need the product.

It’s time to stop seeing sales as a necessary evil and start seeing it as a Sales Blueprint for Service. As Anthony Masciangioli, Director at Riskcom, noted, the change in the team's confidence was like "chalk and cheese".

Is your sales process a machine, or is it a ministry of help? If you’re ready to move from "yuck" to "yes," let’s talk about building your client and values aligned sales roadmap.

Sources:

Academic & Historical Sources


Tags: sales | sales for non sales people |