Lesson Five — The Prom Date

What are you selling? As we discussed earlier, everybody is selling something.High schools have been having proms every spring for one hundred years or more.Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of young adults attend the prom every spring, and only a small percentage of those had rock solid, long-standing dates.Everyone else had to get up the courage to ask someone to be his or her date.They had to come to grips with the real possibility that their first choice, and/or second or third choice would say no.That is pretty tough.

What kind of training did you get before you had to face that experience?  Was there a course at school?  Did your health teacher give you a manual?  Of course not.  Did you read our chapters on negotiating and selling?  Did you really read them, or did you just look at the words with your eyes glazed over?  Well, if you didn’t really read them and try to apply the techniques, you should go back again, because I’m going to try to put it to the test right now.

There is a guy (remember, you’re a girl) that seems like he would be a good date.His name is Bud.Seems like a nice enough guy.A little immature.Not too ugly.Doesn’t smell too badly.Has most of his teeth.Probably doesn’t have a date either, and best of all, will probably say, yes.That is important because there are other guys that you would probably rather go with, but they would probably say, no, for a variety of reasons.Most of all, they probably already have a date.In fact, since the prom is only three weeks away, most everyone probably has a date by now.

So what did we learn from the sales and negotiating chapters that would apply to getting a date for the prom?Quite a lot, actually.But first, we need to add two more weapons to our arsenal.Qualifying the prospect, and upsetting their homeostasis.