Occasionally, as I go visiting elderly people or elderly homes, I notice an item on the kitchen wall. It’s round and gold, and has a button-like thing in the middle. It has no apparent purpose to the casual observer, but for me it evokes memories of stressful times past.
The item is a fire alarm, more specifically, a heat detector. They last nearly forever, and they’re spring loaded (no batteries). It just sits there quietly until the room gets so obviously warm that a fire has to be happening. Then that button thing (a fuse) pops and the alarm will ring for about fifteen minutes, and I do mean ring! Man! that thing is loud. Even if you might be dead already, the alarm will wake you. How do I know of this? I used to sell them door to door.
Yes. I was the guy who showed up with the “Sparky the Fire Dog” toy you hoped to win at the fair when you signed the card at the display. Along with me came a set of sparkling new fire alarms, which hopefully you would want to hear about that evening. They weren’t cheap. I know. I bought a set before I ever thought about selling them. I’ve still got them too. Unfortunately for me, I was just getting into the business when cheap smoke detectors were coming into vogue. They may not have been as durable or reliable, but they generally worked and for a lot less.
I was kind of like the Buggy Whip salesman who just opened shop when Henry Ford started his production line on the Model T. Nothing wrong with the product, just a little out of date. That was my first experience in running a nonprofit organization. It wasn’t supposed to be, but I was way ahead of the “Dot Com’s”.
Since then, I’ve changed product lines. The demand varies, but there is always a market. The product has been beating the competition for centuries and it never becomes obsolete. One of our most notable sales reps, John Wesley, told his new North American Branch Manager, Francis Asbury, “Offer them Christ.” He did, and that’s what I do. I know there is a lot of fancy advertising that goes into the product, but the most solid sales are still done “door to door”, in person, by friends who recommend the same product.
What I like best about this product is that you have to have accepted it yourself before you can offer it to anyone else. That keeps the truth in advertising issue covered. In fact, one cannot actually keep the product unless one offers it to someone else. Are you with me on this? I hope so. There are an awful lot of potential customers out there, and they don’t know what they’re missing. Say, you wouldn’t be one of them, would you?
Rev. Dennis P. Levin