Sales and marketing have a very strong parallel to game and attracting women as you get down to the specifics, for those of us who have been in the game long enough. “Generating leads” and “converting” them to where they want to buy has a lot of parallel to getting a girl to be interested in you and then getting her to spend the night (or many more if you prefer). The argument goes that in sales or marketing, you are reaching out to people who have never heard of you and your product and convincing them to buy it. Now back in the day, you did the whole Glengarry Glen Ross tactic of Always Be Closing but people who work in the field these days tell me things have changed.
Overtime, companies started to block out numbers, became tougher to reach by phone, did their research ahead of time on what you offer, and even individual buyers could read about you. As someone who knows a lot of people that work in B2B sales, some even in B2C, the saying goes that the power shifted in the buyer’s favor instead of the seller.
Back in the day, a used car salesman or the seller could easily lie to you. You didn’t have the internet and the facts at your disposal anymore like you do now. Stereotypes about salespeople became terrible as a result and salespeople were now seen as pests. You could aggressively cold call and push people into meetings, potentially even pressure sell them, because they knew very little about you. You had the phone to sell and buyers were more open to being approached since they could not research online or be reached by other channels.
At some point, this all changed with the rise of social media and the internet. Buyers not only did research but could easily find out about you and your reputation, as well as that of your company, beforehand. Things like blocking numbers and even emails became a thing for big companies. The good ole “smile and dial” sales leaders ended up seeing their way out of the door because pressure selling people into meeting just led to angry prospects who either ghosted you or told you to get lost.
A company having a terrible brand or even no brand at all became more of a death sentence, clients started to dig into their human nature. Why are people not doing business with them? Why is it so tough to find anything on them? Where are the testimonials? What are they hiding?
Something similar also happened with attracting women.
Back in the day, people used to go to clubs to meet other people and women were not so used to getting “cold approached”. At some point, cold approaching became a phenomenon and pickup artists took off, becoming more mainstream. More socially clueless guys ended up approaching women in public to get their attention and women were somewhat receptive.
Then smartphones started having dating apps, social media took off, and women started to see who you were before making any decisions. Now, most couples actually meet through online dating. Exchanging numbers even became exchanging Instagrams or Snapchats because women wanted to know who you were. If they were interested, they rather size up your brand, your image, and the kind of life you live instead of being left wondering.
Overtime, women started to get annoyed when they were in their phones and had some stranger approach them, imagine how you feel when this happens to you as a guy in public. I even walk around now in NYC, a great city for daygame, and witness how so many women that are good looking have their AirPods in and are in their phones. Sure, you can tap them on the shoulder and approach but you better have a damn good reason and be smooth.
Just like you could no longer smile and dial your way to greatness, you can no longer exclusively cold approach your way to greatness.
I have friends who are actually good at daygame to where years back they got results from it with decent enough looking women. Some of my friends are so good that they are bold enough to generate interest on the streets and get a number. Still, the odds are pretty low even for them before things went downhill in general. A trend I notice with my friends who exclusively relied on daygame is that they are now struggling like crazy during lockdowns, they had no strategy for online dating and saw it as a loser’s way to success.
For my friends who are doing well in hyper-competitive fields like sales, I noticed that they were able to get with the times and adjust fast. The sales reps who were exclusively smiling and dialing fell behind, a lot even got let go. As for the sales reps who innovated themselves and used a diverse approach to generate and convert their opportunities? They are thriving even in these times.
I notice the same thing with the guys who are doing well with dating and meeting women, even in these times we are in. What these guys have done is used the same approach that the most successful businesses and the businesses growing rapidly use, they are diverse in how they go about getting opportunities. While the Pickup fanatics were stuck in the old days of spam approaching, and at times even got their reputation ruined in certain places for it, these guys got with the times.
Yet the parallel just speaks to how alike sales and dating are.
Sales transformed from a spam cold call happy profession where you needed grit and getting over rejection to a profession where you have to be creative in order to thrive. You can no longer spam call clients until someone buys, especially not in B2B (Business To Business) sales, because eventually people will block you and your company will become that annoying spam machine. Instead, the best sales reps these days are creative and find unique ways to get in front of top accounts to where the person just has to take the meeting.
Dating is no different, the days of spam approaching until a girl says yes and getting by on just being bold will yield minimal results. Women have far too many options in today’s society to where your competition is not just a guy on the block, they have access to men far outside of their square mile radius. The guy who read game material and thinks that by doing X number of approaches, he can succeed, is in for a rude awakening if he has not had one already.
Which leads to beg the question, is cold approaching dead?
Stay tuned for my next post.
