After the pain of a four year cross country relationship ended for me, I found myself sitting alone in Atlanta thinking, “I need to start dating.” And therein was the problemo.
I had no clue how to meet women. I was married for 18 years and then in a relationship for four years after that. So being out of practice in the dating scene was an understatement.
So I did what every red-blooded American male who is looking for female companionship would do – I started going out to bars. I would sit there with a glass of wine, maybe try to strike up a conversation with someone of the opposite sex – which was difficult due to the noise level –and then go home – alone.
Clearly this was not working so I decided to try online dating. I signed up, sent out a few emails to women I found interesting and waited. Can you hear the crickets? I got no response.
Granted, I’m no Brad Pitt but this was getting ridiculous. Then it hit me:
Isn’t dating very much like selling? I’m not good at a whole lot of things but I am truly a master at sales and marketing. So I decided to change my whole approach and turn dating into a game of direct response marketing and sales.
First, I knew I had to get better at “prospecting” and from my abject failure in the bar scene, I knew that “cold calling” was not my forte.
I thought I better come up with a lead generation campaign and that’s exactly what I did. I changed my online dating profile to a lead generation ad. No, really. I came up with a killer headline and then wrote the “ad” so it described who I was looking for, who I wasn’t looking for and described the “offer”(me!) all while using take away selling. I also incorporated a lot of my Psychic Sales subliminal techniques. Of course there was a call to action at the end of this “ad’” – email me.
Next, I created a lead generation email to send to women who I was interested in. This email focused on my “prospect” instead of just on me. It once again used take-away selling, had an offer and a call to action.
By the way, I tested many subject lines until I found a clear winner. As you know, testing is one of the keys to direct response-marketing success.
Guess what? The “leads” started pouring in. Quite frankly, I was stunned by the response. It’s important to note that I did not change my pictures or anything like that. I changed my prospecting/lead generation approach. My offer, (me) remained the same.
Equally as important was I was no longer pursuing the “prospect.” I was magnetically attracting her. This totally changed my positioning and my position of power.
Ask any woman and she will tell you that a guy who is a needy, pursuer is a turn off. It’s not different with a high quality prospect.
Generating leads was the first piece to the puzzle. Next, I had to convert those “leads” into “appointments” (dates). This required a two-step qualification procedure.
Laugh if you must but why would I want to waste my time or a woman’s time if she wasn’t right for me? Why would you want to waste you time on prospects that aren’t right for you?
First was an email template I sent out to women who contacted me. It tested their sense of humor because that is important to me. It positioned me as being busy. (That is obviously truthful and also important, regardless of what you’re selling.) And it had a very strong call to action: Email your phone number and let’s talk on the phone to see if we have a connection.
This is a different approach than most other guys (salesman) take. They fawn all over a beautiful woman and desperately try to get a date with them. This repels high quality women as it does high quality prospects.
When I got their phone number, I would immediately do an alternate of choice close for the time we were going to talk. “I can talk on Wednesday at 6pm or 8pm, what works best for you?”
Once on the phone, the qualification procedure continued. Remember, I wasn’t trying to sell myself. I was getting them to sell themselves to me.
This was a real qualification procedure, with a script – albeit a loose one. I truly wanted to find out if I had a connection with the woman I was talking to.
If there were no connection, I would very politely and gently end the phone call wishing the woman well.
If there was a connection, I used the assumptive close and set up our first date. I didn’t ask for the date (the sale) I assumed it was going to happen with confidence and it always did.
This system worked for dating, just like it works in selling.
Hey, you might need more dates but my guess is you need more highly qualified prospects that you can close. Use the system I just described and it will work for you.
You want to learn how to seduce your best prospects? Check this out. (You can ignore the video. Just read the letter.)
Kick butt, make mucho DEEnero!
Dave “PUA Selling Machine” Dee