As soon as you approach a woman or group of people you don’t know, they think two things:

1) What does he want?
2) How long is he going to stay here?

If you can satisfactorily answer both of these questions, you can avoid the sting of rejection.

If not, you will hear the words that are the anathema of the pickup artist: ìI have to go to the bathroom.î Or, even worse, “I have a boyfriend.” Most of the time, when you hear this latter line early in an interaction, it doesnít mean that she actually has a boyfriend. It means that you made her uncomfortable.

You can counter the first objection by actually telling her why you’ve started the conversation. The general rule for opening a woman or group when theyíre not initially attracted to you is to come in under the radar. Thus, any non-sexual, non-creepy, non-nerdy, non-psychopathic question in the world you are interested in knowing the answer to serves as an opener. Iíve used everything from getting opinions on my friendís relationship issues to trying to get people to name all five oceans. Sadly, only one person so far has known the names of all these bodies of water.

At some point during your opener, use a sentence that begins: “The reason I’m asking is because….” For a friend’s relationship issues, explain, “The reason I’m asking is because I was trying to give my friend advice, but he wants a woman’s opinion.” For the oceans, you can tell them, “The reason I’m asking is because I have a bet with my friend that no one in this room knows the answer.”

Now for the hard part: handling the second objection. The solution is what they call a time constraint. Tell them, midway during the story, that you can only stick around for a second, because you have to get back to your friends. If you back this up with body language that demonstrates youíre about to leave at any moment, they’ll relax and listen to what you have to say because they wonít have to worry any more about getting rid of you.

Your goal after that, of course, is to be so interesting and convey such a winning personality that they donít want you to leave. Ever.