Some time ago one of our readers mentioned that he was attending classes in “scientific seduction”. It was the first time I had heard of it, so I looked up what on earth scientific seduction was and came across various YouTube videos and the origin of this type of seduction, at least in Spain: Mario Luna.
Mario has spent a large part of his life “deciphering women” and teaching men to win them over using a method. You could say he has become a kind of “Dr Love”, and he built his business around this passion of his, with several books and the creation of SeducciónCientífica.com, an academy of seduction.
Our colleague Victoria B, as a woman, thinks all this is a bit sexist, since some of the videos on show consist of managing to “pick up” a girl or steal a kiss from her in under 5 or 10 minutes. And, it has to be said, they pull it off.
The good news for men is that using seduction techniques works. The bad news for women is that they are no different from a customer visiting a salesperson.
Women (and men) may believe that they are the ones who choose which man they are going to kiss, in the same way that a customer thinks he chooses what he is going to buy. The truth is that a woman can be led and guided by a seducer, if the seducer knows what he is doing, in the same way that a customer ultimately buys on emotion and not on reasoning, with the seller deciding which emotions the customer should feel. Of course, it is all much more complex than that.
The art of seduction is based on the art of negotiation, and vice versa.
After watching some of the courses these seduction instructors teach, we can conclude that any of them could teach sales techniques, just as any expert salesperson, by changing the message, could give seduction classes, because before being a salesperson, a salesperson is a seducer. Without seduction, there is no sale.
1. … But not everything can be sold.
In seduction, all the techniques in the world won’t help you if you are ugly enough to make people sick. Mind you, as we have said on several occasions, any ugly person can become attractive if they work at it (exercise, a well-cared-for body and skin, and flattering, appropriate clothes).
In the commercial world it is exactly the same. We have to present the product in its best light. Trying to sell a dirty, run-down home is not the same as cleaning it and fixing it up a little before showing it to a client. Although in extreme cases, if the home has side views of a wall and front views of a cemetery, however skilled you are at selling, you won’t be able to sell its excellent views.
2. More visits, more sales.
In seduction, not every woman is going to say yes, but your chances of “scoring” increase as you increase the number of women you approach. What is clear is that if you don’t go out and try, you won’t pull.
In sales we work with a visits-to-closed-sales ratio, also known as the salesperson’s P/E ratio. In the same way, if you don’t go out and sell, you don’t sell. The more customers you visit, the more sales you make. It is mathematics, and mathematics is one of the most exact sciences there is.
3. Confidence and self-assurance are everything.
People perceive what we project. You won’t pull if you are insecure. You won’t sell if you come across as hesitant. In both cases confidence is earned through practice and by learning both from the sales or pick-ups that went well and from those in which we got a no. And that brings us to the next point.
4. Every person is a new person.
It doesn’t matter how many rejections we got five hours or two weeks ago. In seduction, your new target is not to blame for previous rejections. The new customer you visit doesn’t know you are having a dog’s day, so you have to treat them as if they were the first customer you have visited. Because they really are the first, since every one is unique. And this is what is called resistance to failure and resilience.
(Read: Resilience: how to succeed when things get ugly)
5. Saying just enough works better than the famous “gift of the gab”.
It is true that any seducer takes the verbal initiative and talks and asks questions non-stop to prepare the ground. So why do most of these seducers teach you to kiss a girl within 5 minutes? There is a very simple explanation: once we have caught her attention and she feels attracted to us, it is the ideal moment to close the deal, because dragging the situation out means giving ourselves the chance to say too much and break the magic that won us her attention. Why wait?
And in sales it is exactly the same. More sales are won by listening than by talking. Once the customer feels attracted to what you are selling, close the sale, because if you keep talking and giving unnecessary explanations, you may lose that commercial magic.
6. Any hour is good for selling, but not any moment.
Most seducers “work” during the day, because that is when a woman’s creep defences are down, whereas at weekends they tend to go out with their anti-men shields up. That is the surprise effect.
Of course, in both seduction and sales, although we can choose any time of day for our purpose (a pick-up or a sale), not every moment is right for succeeding, and we have to try to recognise those moments. In other words, if a woman is rushing to the hospital because she has just been told her father has had a heart attack, not even the best seducer in the world will be able to seduce her.
In sales, salespeople sometimes fail to recognise when a customer is genuinely in a hurry, and they push on with their pitch even though the customer isn’t paying attention, missing the chance to present their product another day when they would have the customer’s full attention.
7. A smile is everything.
Seducers use two ingredients: a sense of humour (as a way of breaking the ice) and a smile. While in sales we should show a friendly character, a sense of humour may sometimes be out of place, but a smile is essential. Remember that we are building a relationship that benefits both sides, not attending a funeral. Try to make the meeting a pleasant experience. That is commercial seduction.
8. Naturalness.
Whether we are talking about seduction or sales, part of the secret is to hide all the techniques under a layer of naturalness. Remember that nobody likes salespeople, so your mission is to make sure that, at first sight, the other person doesn’t see a salesperson, in the same way that a seducer’s mission is to hide his main motivation of getting his “target” into bed. These are processes that should happen on their own and must never feel forced.
9. Never part on bad terms with someone who says no.
What distinguishes a good seducer from a “Saturday-night creep”? The seducer is an elegant man at all times, and he knows that being turned down today is no reason to be rude and ill-mannered. It is nothing personal. The technique simply failed you, or it wasn’t the right moment, so we always say goodbye respectfully and without losing the chance of getting a yes later on.
I have seen salespeople who, faced with a no, have torn up the contract in front of the customer with an aggressive gesture, closing the door on any future collaboration. Never do that, because you never know when and where you will run into that person again.
10. The biggest difference between sales and seduction.
The secret of selling is to make customers, not sales. A sale may be something we close today on the back of a whole series of deceptions. Making a customer means making many more sales to that customer, plus all the referrals they send us.
A good seducer works, to some extent, on deception, because he says what the other person wants to hear and claims to be someone he generally isn’t. In other words, he is seducing on the basis of a lie, with a short-term relationship in mind. That is why good seducers make many sales but few customers, and so, in the long run, they don’t collect dividends from building assets.
Even so, as I said at the beginning, seduction techniques and sales techniques are surprisingly identical in almost every respect. Learn to seduce and you will learn to sell. Learn to sell and you will be a great seducer.
Further reading
- 15 habits of great salespeople
- 14 truths and secrets about selling
- 4 truths about the art of negotiation
Featured image: FaceMePLS from The Hague, The Netherlands, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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