Many years ago, the National Retail Dry Goods Association conducted a survey of sales representatives to determine how many sales calls a representative needed to make on a prospective client before convincing the client to place an order. Here were the results:

• 48 percent of the salespeople stopped calling if the customer did not buy as a result of the first sales call.
• 25 percent of the salespeople moved on after the second unproductive visit.
• 15 percent made three sales calls before throwing in the towel.
• Only 12 percent indicated they would continue to call on a prospect indefinitely until they finally made a sale.

Now here’s the fact that’s most intriguing about this survey. The 12 percent of sales reps who were persistent in their sales calls — the ones who kept visiting potential customers time and time again — accounted for 80 percent of total sales. That’s right — 12 percent of the salespeople brought in the overwhelming majority of the business. The 88 percent who surrendered after one, or two, or even three unsuccessful encounters with a prospect only netted a combined 20 percent of the sales.

The reason is pretty simple, when you think about it. The 12 percent succeed because they never give up. They’re determined to sell every potential customer something, and they know that customer will never buy if the salesperson stops asking for an order. With dogged persistence, the 12 percent eventually wear down a client’s resistance until he or she buys what the salesperson is selling. And once the customer has purchased something from the salesperson once, it’s much more likely that the sales rep will gain their repeat business.

Jesus taught a valuable lesson about prayer using a parable about a persistent widow, who complained repeatedly to a judge until he granted her the outcome she sought (Luke 18:1-5). The point of Jesus’ story was that if a judge who “did not fear God nor regard man” could be swayed to action by importunity, all the more will a loving God be persuaded by a child of His who pleads insistently for relief.

But the lesson has another application as well. Sometimes in reaching out to people with the gospel, we give up too quickly. We might approach a person once with the Scriptures, and if he or she shows little interest, we abandon hope of ever persuading them. So we stop trying. We see Peter’s success on Pentecost (Acts 2) and with Cornelius (Acts 10), or Philip’s with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), or Paul’s with Lydia and the Philippian jailer (Acts 16), and convince ourselves that the only viable candidates for conversion are those who hear, believe and obey the very first time they’re given the opportunity.

But that’s an unrealistic view. Those examples are recorded to show us the power of the gospel, but not to limit it. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t respond to the first gospel invitation I heard. I know very few people who did — in fact, I’m not certain I personally know any. Every Christian of my acquaintance had to be presented with the truth repeatedly before it moved him or her to repentant obedience.

The bottom line? Those people who declined your invitation to our last gospel meeting — invite them all again. Several times each. Who knows? It might be the next call you make that “closes the sale.” It’s worth a try!