“What is art? Prostitution.”
– Charles Baudelaire
The average man will always claim that he could win any fight and seduce any girl. Despite these boasts, I rarely see run-of-the-mill dudes winning heavyweight championships or dating supermodels.
By the same token, I know plenty of guys who can knock someone out or sleep with any girl they want, yet are incapable of doing basic things like making money or starting a business. Since I’m not writing Cargo Short Aficionado I’ll assume that most of my readership are cool guys who might be interested in making a little extra cash. As such, they’re in luck: If you can get women to sleep with you, you’re already a great salesman.
No really, picking up girls is basically salesmanship 101 with boobs.
- You need a hook
How many times a day do you think the average girl gets hit on? According to my math it’s probably a lot. Fortunately, most guys pull out such classic moves as asking “can I buy you a drink,” or posting some nonsense to the girl’s social media profile.
Assuming you aren’t stricken with a chronic case of Aspergers, you can probably come up with something slightly more creative and less awkward than the two examples provided.
Likewise, a lot of salesmen suck. Without using specific examples, I’m sure everyone has experienced lousy infomercials, annoying radio ads, scam websites, and tons of other drivel that weakly attempts to gain your attention.
- You will get rejected… A lot
Neither sales nor pick up have a perfect one-to-one conversion rate. Sometimes even the sure things can fall through with both. While you should learn from your mistakes, there’s no reason to take every defeat personally either. I recently heard a story about two guys who opened a porn site and didn’t turn a profit in their first month of operating it. They deduced that the market was over saturated and closed their business down. This happened in 1995, had they not taken rejection so personally they’d most likely be millionaires now.
- Always Be Closing
Yes this is a lame buzzphrase that every hack who ever watched Glengarry Glen Ross likes to throw around, but it’s true. No guy who’s good with women underestimated himself. He’s never going to see a girl and think to himself “I’m going to friendzone that.” Instead he’ll try and get her home in as little steps as possible. Likewise a good salesman is always going for the purchase, and he wants to turn the product over in as little time as possible.
- Practice is key
No matter how many blog posts, books, and forums you read; you’ll never get good at selling until you actually go out and try it. The same goes for getting good with women. Unless you actually put in an actual effort, you won’t see any progress.
If you’re interested in selling products online, I have a suggestion for you. When you get done reading this post, create a free WordPress blog and sign up for an affiliate marketing program. Spend an hour per day making new posts, promoting your site, and researching how to improve on your business. Keep at this for one month.
While you probably won’t earn any money, the process will be a good learning experience. If you discover that you like selling goods over the Internet good for you, keep at it. If not, you’ve still learned something and gained some good experience with online marketing.
might not be a Tim Ferriss worthy brag, but it’s a start.