The Sales Club Creed
Why Sales Club?
Our inspiration obviously came from the movie Fight Club. And just like Fight Club isn’t strictly about fighting, Sales Club isn’t strictly about sales.
Instead, we share the same core concept as Fight Club – that we should live a life that matters and be willing to do the hard stuff necessary to get there. It’s about not being another pathetic sheep following the flock and instead blazing the trail you truly want.
No one wants to spend their days in meaningless activity. So why aren’t we doing the things that really matter?
Because it’s hard. Because it means we have to focus on things that are harder to measure than sales quotas. We have to step outside the comfort zone of sales numbers and leads and obligating questions and into a new way of thinking.
In Fight Club, Tyler rails against mediocrity and materialism and status quo. In dissecting his rants, we found five principles that serve as the foundation of the Sales Club creed.
First Principle of Sales Club: “No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.”
Fear of failure, embarrassment, not meeting expectations – it all serves to distract us, to keep us from accomplishing something great. We allow ourselves to be distracted by the petty, the checklists, the quotas.
The trick here is figuring out the parts that truly matter. Instituting this principle means some radical editing of how we normally prioritize actions and scrapping the ones that don’t get us to our goals.
Second Principle of Sales Club: “I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let’s evolve, let the chips fall where they may.”
Perfection is the enemy of getting things done. And we often fall into the perfection trap because we’re afraid of failure, being laughed at, being average, seeming stupid.
But at the heart of sales is the trial and error method – making mistakes en route to figuring out the right set of words to open the door. Mistakes, failures, not-quites help us get where we want to be in life. Embrace them and see what happens.
Third Principle of Sales Club: “You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f***ing khakis.”
We live in a world that tries to define us by activities, by numbers, by status symbols. We choose to create a better measure for our life’s worth – one based on courage and impact and action.
Fourth Principle of Sales Club: “Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”
Being a sales person isn’t about what’s written on your business card. If you’re in business, you’re in sales, whether you want to admit it or not. Any kind of people relationship requires salesmanship, so don’t get confused by your title.
Fifth Principle of Sales Club: “This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
We only get one shot at this. One chance to make an impact, to do something remarkable, to live a life worth living. Stop waiting for “some day” to get here. Act now. You might not live to some day.
