After much deliberation on whether I wanted to go out or tend to a cold that I had picked up from a weekend of partying, I decided to head out to a New Years Eve house party in the Sunset with some good friends.
In a future post I’ll describe the different types of venues and appropriate approaches for each but to be succinct here, the party was a typical house party where I personally knew only the two people I arrived with and no one else. In fact the person who asked me to accompany him to the party only knew the person throwing the party and it seemed like most of the people at the party were in the same boat. In other words it was the perfect prospecting environment since we didn’t have to deal with cliques or contend with ‘historic impressions’ of who we were.
Arriving at the party we found the ratio to be roughly 60 – 40 men to women which is far from great, but still workable. To establish social proof and to ease myself into a conversational mood, I opened and became engaged with a mixed set with no direct targets. One thing you’ll notice is that once you are engaged in casual conversation with a group, you’ll instantly become more approachable and actually will be opened by sets who notice that you are enjoying yourself. It’s important to remember that when you’re in the field you shouldn’t be actively scanning for prospects while doing nothing, you should always appear to be as social, or at least approachable as possible. This is especially important in venues like house parties where you’ll have plenty of opportunities to open, soft close, and re open target rich sets. Many beginning ‘pick-up artists’ are so focused on psyching themselves up to open their top target that they actually LOSE value by being unengaged and distant while they psyche themselves up.
I’m going to take a minute now to explain a bit of theory that will help you to understand the technique we used for the majority of the night
***Game Theory – Pipelining***
Whether it’s implicit or not, my wings and I have developed a system that I like to call pipelining to help increase our conversion ratios at closed social events like house parties. When executed properly it offers you and your wings both social proof and supply of targets to both open and evaluate for compatibility
Unless you’re using a wagering opener (will be discussed in a future post) it is *very* awkward and ineffective to approach a set of any size with more than one person. Pipelining, in it’s simplest form is the sequential introduction of members of your clique to a set (e.g., hey this is my friend ___, he’s from New York and says that Californian’s are idiots). In a more masked form they serve as a soft introduction/opener. Here’s an example from New Years Eve:
Wing: Yeah, I came here with my friends from high school
Target: Oh, where are they?
Wing (motioning to me, already engaged in conversation with a mixed set): He’s over there, but it looks like he’s being social, haha, I can introduce you two later
Target: Ok cool, blah blah blah
As you can see from that short bit of dialogue, pipelining gives me social value (by virtue of being temporarily unavailable), my wing social value (by having social *read: interesting* friends), and his target a sense of anticipation and reason to continue her conversation with my wing (introduction to a new, perhaps interesting, and clearly social person).
Don’t underestimate that last bit. Women are just like men in that at some level of their personality they are insecure about meeting new people, especially of the opposite sex. Giving her an in to meet someone new is a good demonstration of value.
Throughout the night, both myself and my wings setup and pipelined several targets to one another when we felt the conversation was lagging, or not the right type of interest or chemistry was bubbling between ourselves and our targets.
Pipelining also has the positive effect of increasing the likelihood of a target introducing you to her friend spread across the party, which is exactly how I was introduced to what turned out to be the night’s prime close.
***Field Report Continued***
After some brief banter and an introduction from her friend (who I just met, through pipelining), I was prospecting C. Knowing I already had the upper hand from the social proof her friend had given me (how generous), I shifted to a much more laid back approach. Since it was NYE contextual conversation topics like high’s and low’s of 2007 quicked moved into her dictating her life story to me… The occasional light touch on the arm, or helped build a level of confort between us.
Me: Oh so why are you studying bio
C: oh cause blah blah blah
M: Really (light touch on arm), because you seem like the person that really throws herself into things. I know I tried bio and it really didn’t work out for me
C: yah blah blah blah (leaning in looking for more comfort touches).
In our conversation she opened up pretty acutely dropped some pretty heavy stuff on me that I really wasn’t expecting, but I rolled with the punches and continued with the comfort touches until:
C: I’m going to ask a really bold question here
M: Oh yeah what’s that
C: Are you seeing anyone right now?
M: haha… that was pretty bold, but haha no
C: Ok, im going to ask another bold question
M: Shoot
C: Would it be ok if I gave you my number
M: haha… sure blah blah
C: Promise to call me ok
It’s not the first time this has happened, but I’ve noticed the circumstances that it occurs in are similar, nearly always at a closed house party… Anyway based on my experience it’s always best to continue the conversation after this type of number close. We chat for a bit and I excuse myself from the conversation to ‘find my friend.’
After finding him she comes back and RE-OPEN’s me… As we banter more, I comfort more, and here she leans closer and closer towards me until:
C: It’s kinda loud in here
M: Yeah, you wanna talk outside
C: Sure…
Nine times out of ten, moving a conversation to a quieter place means m/o session. Personally, unless there’s a route for escalation m/o sessions after a long conversation don’t really add much to the overall game. You already have built up your value and buying temp. A m/o will only serve as a valve to release some of that temp if you don’t F-close that night. In this case however, I thought an F-close wasn’t out of reach so I acquiesced. Unfortunately literally 90 seconds after we were outside, my wing (and ride home) announced we were leaving. So I ended up with an abbreviated K-close.
-Profit
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