May I Help You? – Confessions Of An Ancient Car Salesman

In order to be rescued you have to want to be rescued and the level of distress appears to be critical to the amount of want. It was once explained to me that if your arm is chopped off and you are in the emergency room to get stitched up, you don’t ask the doctor: “How much is this going to cost?” Seems like a simple enough principle but, how deep do you want to go into this rabbit hole, Alice?

The original reason this principal was being taught to me, many years ago, was to help me to see the need to build desire for a car in order to increase the profit margin, and I’m guessing they teach something similar in all sales applications, however there is a spiritual side to this and a practical side that is life saving, both physically and eternally.

If you listen to the sound byte above you may note there are a couple attempted rescue scenes, the first one; a mass of people have been sold that they need a rescue as you can hear them shouting, “Hallelujah”, from the movie, Rango, it’s actually a con in order to control them. In the second scene from the movie, Family Man, there the young man sees no need for a rescue from a person who appears lost himself. “What do you need, Jack?”

“I got everything I need,” Almost chilling isn’t it, to hear the stark hypocrisy, but a hypocrisy that Jack himself has no idea of. Watch the movie and its clear.

How about me? Do I have everything I need? Honestly, no! I need a rescue almost minute by minute, maybe second by second. God was so kind to give me my word for the day last Sunday, “Absolute Victory”. The first place you find that word victory in the KJV is 2 Samuel 19:2 2 And the victory that day was turned into mourning unto all the people: for the people heard say that day how the king was grieved for his son.

The Hebrew word for ‘victory” here is ‘teshuwah’ – meaning salvation deliverance a rescue. As I pondered this, my word Thursday was, “surrender” which in Hebrew means to lay prostrate. It occurs to me that if I am truly to be rescued, I will have to have absolute, unconditional surrender; lay down my time, my will, my money, my control, my motive, my relationships and my plans. I told you this is a deep rabbit hole.

When we allow someone to help us we surrender a little bit, but in order to be rescued, saved it takes a further degree of surrender.

The first thing I was taught in selling cars was –The Road To The Sale, ten ordered steps to take a customer through to “help” them buy a car. The first of which was the –Meet and Greet. Here I was taught the first thing you do is offer your hand and introduce yourself, “Hi, I’m Robby Dilmore, welcome to ABC Motors”. WE were taught; DO Not and , absolutely, do not say “Can I Help you?” .

Here comes the true confession; I never did that, yes I taught it, to maybe hundreds of car sales people, but I, myself, never did it. It felt awkward and I don’t like telling people who I am and I never have, you may have noticed I never introduce myself on the radio, if I can help it. Truth is I have never surrendered. Who I am seems irrelevant to the circumstances and God clearly asked me to help people years ago as sort of my mission statement, so in order to actually help someone they have to surrender something and trust must be of the highest priority. I personally don’t lean toward trusting someone who makes much of themselves, I feel this is more about them than me.

What I would actually say when I met a customer is: “can I show you something?” I kinda figured that’s what they came for, was to see something and if they let me show them something, the surrender process had started. Not that I thought through all that, it just felt natural. Then I focused on trying to discern what they wanted and more importantly what they needed and did my best to find it and share the features that met the needs and wants and hopefully they would see that I was out to help them. That was really all there was to it. I was and am, quite shy, believe it or not, my selling gifts I believe were my motives not my charisma.

God shared these Victory/Rescue and Surrender concepts just this week and I believe it really is aimed at further surrender, because further surrender to, Jesus, means further victory. I love how my whole life in the car business, now over 40 years, God has been teaching me practically what this all looks like in this process, so that now, for my victory, I can surrender further, lay down my time, my will, my money, my control, my motive, my relationships and my plans. MY desire for rescue needs to be increased in order for me to lose all concern for the value of what is being surrendered. Just like my friend told me years ago, I am bleeding to death, my arms chopped off, do I need to ask how much? Answer is: Oh Yes, Jesus paid way, way way more then I could possibly understand, He did know what was at stake in His surrender! Thank you, Jesus.