Greek Rushing IS Sales

It was an average late august evening when I realized that I needed coffee creamer. So, I was walking to my car when I saw a bunch of people all gathered up. I walked over there and realized that it was a fraternity event, I talked to other freshmen, and to fraternity members and ended up leaving very interested in Greek Life. While I did not realize it in the moment, I was technically getting ‘rushed’ at an event, which is a form of sales. Basically, fraternities put on ‘rush’ events in order to find new people and to advertise the fraternity to them. Over this past school year, I went to several different rush events for different fraternities, and something that they all had in common was that at some point one member of the fraternity sat down (or we remained standing) with me and hyped up the fraternity. Although people do not typically associate rushing with anything complex, it is. Rushing is a full-blown ‘sales scheme’ with the ultimate goal of turning non-members into new members. Members, whether they realize it or not, have to use all core sales concepts and rules in this as rushing, which boiled down is advertising, can take place in many different forms. It could range from a chill sit down, to a full-blown function, to a game of football, and the entire time they have to remain professional but not too professional. There is a balance of professionality. This is because people often join a Greek group in order to hang out with a bunch of people in a relaxed, laid-back way, and being too professional can ‘hurt the vibe.’ On the other hand, they still need to have an amount of professionality so that they can ‘sell properly.’ All in all, while people often do not think about Greek rushing as complex, it is really a truly complicated full-blown sales operation, which I think is worth noting.