Is straight down the toilet.

I’ve done it.

I’ve seen it.

I’ll even show you the two routes conversations usually take to get there. 

It starts when a dancer spots a potential customer across the room. She walks over and opens with the same line he’s already heard ten times tonight:

“Hi I’m Carmen….how are you?”

“I’m ok.”

“well, where are you from?”

“Atlanta.”

Now the dancer tries to build rapport the only way she knows how- by hanging on to anything she knows about that city: 

“I had a friend that lived in Atlanta!/ I went to school in Atlanta! I went to Atlanta once!”

“really?”

“Yeah…..well.”

There’s really nothing there to follow up on, so now the conversation switches gears. So far, not much has been accomplished. This dancer doesn’t stand out, hasn’t learned anything particularly useful about the customer, and has no idea what product to pitch. But she keeps going:

 “What are you guys doing out tonight?”

“…just…finished up a meeting downtown. Went to eat. Now we’re here.”

“Oh. That’s nice.”

“well….”

We’ve reached the fork in the road. This is when dancers will either throw out a generic pitch, or start a long meandering conversation that goes nowhere slow. 

Option 1: The dancer decides that she’s done enough small talk, and goes straight for the kill. By the way, when pitches happen this fast it’s usually not for a VIP or a high price option, because this dancer doesn’t have any confidence that this customer is ready to buy at a high price.  

Most dancers are afraid to upsell these “no connection” customers, and if the customer does choose to get a VIP right away it’s because they were already sold on it- not because the dancer sold them on the idea- which means the vast majority of customers who are not sold right away won’t ever heard a convincing sales pitch.

Now, an extra confident dancer, or one that is used to steamrolling through sales may go for a lukewarm VIP pitch:

“well, since you’re done with work it’s time to play. Are you ready to have some fun in the back? We should all go. It’s so FUN!!”

“well, what happens in the back?”

And even though she’s heard this question a million times, she’ll still struggle with giving a clear answer- because she’s practicing on live customers. So, she’ll go back to the old standard responses in the playbook:

“well, it’s more …. Intimate. 

“Well…..it’s more fun, baby!”

“Well.. we can do more in the back…”

What she’s really thinking: it’s different because I can make more money there. 

And because she hasn’t figured out what her customer gets out of VIP, she still relies on the same tired responses, races her way through the sale, and get a much higher rate of “no” that has her running around the club like a chicken with her head cut off. No wonder customers turn this approach down so often!

Here’s the thing: at least dancers who push the sale early on are pushing something. There are entertainers making $300,000 a year by bludgeoning through conversations like this- and while it may not work for everyone, at least they’re hard at work.

That said, this type of approach is like doing surgery with a hammer. If you’re setting in a new hip, it just might work. For the vast majority of customers, it’s a sign to run for the rafters, because they’ve just met a half-naked used car salesman and they’re afraid of getting sold a lemon. This pushy approach is unconvincing, it will feel like a bad deal (even if it’s a good one), and you’ll be climbing uphill just to accomplish what you could have done with much less work way earlier into the sale.

You will not have the rapport, the connection, or the trust to ask your customers for more: more hours, more income, more tips, or more of a two-way experience instead of a one-way, one-time purchase. And if you don’t like how this sounds, well, it certainly beats….

No purchase, or too little too late:

The second, and the most likely way that sales break down in the club is when a dancer just goes go on and on…and on an on in a long, meandering conversation that doesn’t get them any closer to a sale, but does waste 10, 15, 30 minutes of their time at a time until they feel like they’ve spent enough energy on this customer that he “owes” them a purchase.

If he buys, they gladly take credit for a job well done (even if it could have been done in ten minutes instead of an hour of babysitting him at the bar), and if he doesn’t buy …. well. Lord help us all.  

Because if after all that time if he doesn’t buy, then it’s fireworks.  

“I SAT WITH HIM FOR AN HOUR AND ALL HE GOT WAS A DANCE.”

“HE SAID HE NEVER GETS DANCES. THAT’S SO STUPID, WHY ARE YOU AT A STRIP CLUB IF YOU DON’T GET DANCES? BROKE *SS IDIOT.”

“HE SAID HE DIDN’T DO VIPS BUT AS SOON AS I GOT UP HE WENT TO THE BACK WITH SOMEONE ELSE…”

And on and on and on. 

You may never say these out loud, or you may run into the locker room and scream these to the four winds. You may pitch a fit, or you may sit at the bar for another hour while you get yourself emotionally together enough to try again- after all, you feel like he took advantage of your time and kindness! Poor you!

If you’re not confident in your sales skills, I can guarantee some version of this conversation is happening in your head every time you undersell or you walk away with nothing. Because a part of you knows that somewhere along the line you lost the sale. Your complaints and anger aren’t really about your customer. They’re your own frustrations with yourself. You’re not sure how to control the outcome.

You don’t know how to take someone from “how are you?” to “we should stay for the fourth hour.”

And you know it’s costing you. Here’s when you get to make a choice:

You can either keep relying on the same tools that work sometimes, fail often, and just keep taking up more and more of your time- or you can commit to learning how to communicate with your customers. That’s what rapport is all about.

Communication is the most underused tool at the strip club, and it is the easiest, fastest way to close a customer on buying faster, buying at a higher price, and buying again. I didn’t say conversation.  I said communication. A conversation is informal, disorganized, and can go either way. When you’re with a customer, start thinking about communication.  What are you trying to get across? What do you need him to know so that he will buy from you?   How can you say everything that needs to be said, without having to talk for a half hour just to close a dance?  

It's easier than you might think.