Technique #29 The Exclusive Smile

If you flash everybody the same smile, like a Confederate dollar, it loses value. When meeting groups of

people, grace each with a distinct smile. Let your smiles

grow out of the beauty big players find in each new

face.

If one person in a group is more important to you

than the others, reserve an especially big, flooding smile

just for him or her.In Defense of the Quickie

There are times, I discovered, when the quick put-on smile works.

For example, when you want to engineer the acquaintance of

someone to whom you have not had the opportunity to be introduced. (In the vernacular, that's "pick them up.")

The smile's pickup power was proven for posterity by solemn

researchers at the University of Missouri. They conducted a highly

controlled study titled "Giving Men the Come-On: Effect of Eye

Contact and Smiling in a Bar Environment."15 (I kid you not.) To

prove their hypothesis, female researchers made eye contact with

unsuspecting male subjects enjoying a little libation in a local

drinking establishment. Sometimes, the female researchers followed their glance with a smile. In other cases, no smile.

How to Make Them Feel You "Don't Smile at Just Anybody" 117

Technique #29

The Exclusive Smile

If you flash everybody the same smile, like a Confederate dollar, it loses value. When meeting groups of

people, grace each with a distinct smile. Let your smiles

grow out of the beauty big players find in each new

face.

If one person in a group is more important to you

than the others, reserve an especially big, flooding smile

just for him or her.

03 (093-142B) part three 8/14/03 9:17 AM Page 117

The results? I quote the study: "The highest approach behavior, 60 percent, was observed in the condition in which there was

smiling." That translates into layman's English: "The guy came

over 60 percent of the time when the lady smiled." Without the

smile, he "made the approach only 20 percent of the time." So,

yes, a smile works for those who wish to pick somebody up.

However, in situations where the stakes are higher, try The

Flooding Smile from the first section and now The Exclusive

Smi