Unless you made a date for a casual get-together right when you first met, you’ll have to contact your new friend to set everything up – and that means you’ll have to get on the phone and call her. This first call can be a big landmine
sometimes because women like to bait guys along in lengthy gab sessions for the express purpose of getting him to slip-up and reveal something about himself that you would rather she didn’t know. So you have to be careful about what you say during this first chat and be cognizant that you must be the one to direct the conversation where you’d like it to go. Don’t surrender this responsibility and let her do it or you may not enjoy the results. I hear from a lot of guys who complain to me they can get phone numbers like crazy, but when they make the call for some reason the girl’s demeanor has changed and they get rushed off the phone. When they try calling back again the chick will either blow them off entirely or even refuse to take the call.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. This is an exchange I had with one of my readers who expressed a common frustration:
Mike,
I am reading your book Without Embarrassment for the second time now, and I have a question for you. How do you handle the flakey bitch? Ya know... you work to get the phone number, you talk and she seems to dig you, she wants to meet next week... her schedule is clear. Everything seems good. Then you call next week and get some shitty unenthusiastic response, and she never calls you back.
I find that many women seem willing to pull this kind of shit without a care -- is this just happening to me... or what the fuck?
Barry My response:
Hey Barry,
When you make that first call, spend some time "re-selling" yourself. This is important because the first impression you made when you got her number, no matter how good it may’ve been at the time, has probably begun to fade a little. Getting a first date is really a duel operation that requires two good first impressions – and the second one happens when you make that initial phone call. Get her excited a bit – tease, use some innuendo, be somewhat mysterious and hard to figure out, get her laughing... remind her of why she should be excited to want to see you again!
The best time to ask for the date is at the peak of these good feelings! A woman will make her decision whether or not to hook up with you based on these combined impressions. If the second one falls flat, there’s a good chance she's basically going to reject you. But women, being the cowards they usually are, rarely blow you off directly face-to-face. They just starve you of further contact by
playing the “screening calls – deleting e-mail” game in the hope that you'll just give up and go away.
Anytime that you get torpedoed in this fashion you know you failed to re-sell yourself adequately on that first call. In the early stages of courtship, everything is all about creating the anticipation of future passion.
The behavior of women can often seem maddening to men, but the guys’ actions can also play a factor as well. What we need is to take a careful look at the dynamics involved with each partner. For instance, much of the tendency women have to act capriciously derives from the way in which the man comes into possession of her phone number in the first place. Some guys take a
scattergun approach to meeting women that involves getting numbers anywhere and everywhere that they can. No qualifiers, no real sense of connection. Just “give me your number” and I’ll go away for now. There are two motivating ideas here, fear control and dumb luck. Guys attempt to bulldoze their fear of rejection by developing a frenzied pattern of action which they train themselves to repeat almost robotically whenever they come into range of any cute girl.
Essentially they say little more than “Hi, I think you look really awesome, could I get your number and take you out next week?” No attempt at any sort of connection, no modifying of their approach based upon the girl’s character or mood or the situation. Just give me the number so I can run back to my room and beat off. They do this because they know that if they stray too far away from this direct, hammerhead approach they might get caught up in an actual
conversation that threatens to reveal just how shallow and socially awkward they really are. What they plan on doing with this contact information is not something I believe they let themselves dwell on too much – they’re just happy to get The Number. They won... they’ve scored! Collecting numbers for guys like this represents action... they’re doing something, taking steps to change their life.
There’s also this idea of “playing the numbers” where if you can just manage to put yourself in front of a large enough number of women some of them will eventually pan out for you. There is some truth to this approach of course – meeting a person that you can really click with involves some luck. But there’s a right and a wrong way to go about this without killing yourself
emotionally (and financially!). If you’ve been running pull tabs as a lifestyle
routine like I described in the previous section, you’re at least screening for some kind of initial interest and connection first, and I think this gives you a better
chance in the long run. You might have to go through 5, 10 or maybe at most 20 girls to really find a gem that you hit it off with, whereas using a “non-connecting” type of hit-and-run approach could put that number somewhere up in the 100's! Plus, you need to have an occasional success in order to stay motivated. We all have different tolerance levels for pain, but none of us can face too much
rejection before we finally throw in the towel and figure that a soulmate just isn’t in the cards for us. That’s why I’ve tried to develop a system that will produce some encouraging moments along the way to keep you on the playing field.
Here’s what happens between getting a girl’s number and that first phone call: they think. They have fears – they wonder if they did the right thing, wonder if they haven’t lost their mind by giving out their number to a guy they just met on the street or in a bar. They have regrets. All of this stuff builds up like a brick wall growing out of the ground. So here’s the deal, and it’s a “good-news / bad- news” sort of thing. The good news is that you overcame your fear, made a connection, got a number and possibly a commitment to get together with some hot chick in the near future. Now the bad news...
Due to this steady “rot of regret” going on in her head since then, you haven’t accomplished a goddamn thing... yet.
So during this first phone call you must convince her all over again that she’s fortunate to have a great guy like you taking an interest in her. You must
re-sell yourself. Anything else doesn’t get it done. You must project good strength and confidence in both your voice and the flow of your conversation. For an example of how not to do it, here’s how an unplanned, unstructured, unguided conversation might go:
“Hello?” cute girl says. “Hi, how’s it goin’?” “Who is this?” “It’s me, Mike?” “Mike?”
“Yeah you know, we met Tuesday over at the pumpkin festival. By the chicken cages. Remember how bad they smelled?”
“Oh yeah, right.” “So... how’s it goin’?”
“Not bad. How’s yourself?” “Okay”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, so like I was wonderin’ if you wanted to do something.” “Like what?”
“I dunno. What would you like to do?” “I don’t know.”
“Well, I was thinkin’ we could go over to Ebenezer Park and hang out by the waterfall. It’s pretty cool. And there’s a place right over there where we can get tacos or a hamburger...”
You get the idea, pointless and ill-prepared. It gets her thinking “...was I nuts to give this joker my phone number? How am I going to get rid of him?”. Once that thought crosses her mind, you’re pretty much floating belly up. You need to begin the re-sales job right out of the gate and never let up – that’s the best way to keep the odds in your favor.
I’m not a big fan of using texting or e-mail to make this critical first follow- up contact incidentally, although I realize these technologies have hopelessly swept up the world and there’s no stopping them now. Call me old-fashioned but I think it’s just far too difficult to get the proper sort of connecting-emotion to project through typed words, unless you’re a very good writer. And even then if you get too poetic on her she’ll probably just think you copied it from a book! Talking to her “voice-to-voice” is always the preferred way. Of course, if you were only able to get an e-mail or Myspace username in the first place then that’s what you’ll have to work with, but remember that it’s a poor substitute and that’s why you should always try for a phone number.
Whether using the phone or messaging, be careful not to get into a big “self-reveal”, as you’ll end up shooting yourself in the foot by letting her in on something too personal that you didn’t want her to know about yet. Some women will try and bait you along with a smoke screen of chatter to see if you’ll slip up and expose something negative about yourself – that you’re short tempered, jealous, already married, yada-yada. Something to use as an excuse to get rid of you right away without having to go through the drudgery of a formal date.
So try to talk about only the best stuff about yourself and your exciting life. Remember, it’s a re-sales job that you’re still doing at this point, even in text-chat. You only want to tell the prospective customer all the good stuff about what he’s about to buy, right? You want to hide the fact there’s been collision work on the rear left fender, know what I mean? This is not disingenuous (unless you’re a
maniac serial killer trolling for a victim) – you’re just presenting an attractive side of yourself. This is perfectly normal... we all want a prospective mate to see us in the best light possible. Women drop tons of cash on hair, make-up and clothes to accomplish the same thing that a man can do with his words. Seduction is a
mirage don’t forget – a dream for both of you to get lost within.
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Here’s the three big concepts to keep in mind when making this critical first phone call:
1 ) Re-sell Yourself to be that guy she wants to see again...
2 ) Get Her Laughing and thinking Fun Thoughts about you, then... 3 ) Strike when the Iron is Hot! And ask for a specific date!
Let’s expand on these ideas now.