Tactics Tuesdays: Have Her Tell You Her Logistics in 5 Minutes

I recently counseled one of our senior members from the discussion board on how to rapidly find out a woman’s logistics in the first few minutes of conversation.

In this member’s case, he meets women as he goes about his day in the city, making street stops or chatting up girls in coffee shops whenever one catches his eye.

His problem is he lives outside the city, and often faces resistance from women having them agree to come out where he lives. In fact, he’s usually only able to do this with women who are already sold on him – which means he ends up leaving lays on the table... lays with women he could get, if he had better (in-city) logistics.

My recommendation was for him to begin to screen women for logistics immediately on approach them; that way he can explore which women to set dates up with (or even go for the pull then and there) in ways that let him take her back to her place... instead of trying to have her commute to his.

To help him do this, I shared with him how I screen for logistics early on – and in this article, I’ll share that with you too.

‘Your Place’ is the Little Leagues

When it comes to logistics, taking girls back to your place is the little leagues.

It’s safe, predictable, and doesn’t require too much planning in advance:

• Just board in a place in a logistically-convenient part of town,
• Set your pad up so it looks good and is appealing, and
• Straighten it up a bit before you go out to meet girls
  

Having no roommates, or having cool roommates, helps, of course.

But other than that, there’s not much more involved: you need some plausible deniability to invite her home with you (e.g., drinks, a movie, your travel photos or souvenirs... heck, even Netflix and chill), and you need to steel yourself and ask.

You’ve got to be able to handle the transition as well, of course.

Beyond that... eh. It’s little leagues. It’s basic. You can still sleep with plenty of girls if all you’re doing is taking them back to yours, but if you really want to take the cap off your success rates, you need to be more flexible.

A step up from ‘your place’ is her place.

If you can consistently go with girls to their places, and sleep with them there, you’re not in the little leagues of logistics anymore. Now you’re in the minor leagues... you’re doing well. You’re getting more creative. (the major leagues of logistics, by the way, are ‘sex anywhere’... basically, if she wants it, you can find somewhere to make it happen, period)

I’ve lain out the details on going back to a girl’s place and how to pull that off here:

• How to Go to Her Place Smoothly, Even If You Just Met
  

... and Alek Rolstad’s weighed in with his own take here:

• Going to Her Place: Tools to Get You More “Yes”es
  

So check those out if you want more detail on how to get to women’s places.

What this post is about is not the pull itself; this post is about finding out her logistics for the pull.

Who Needs to Know Her Logistics?

The men who’ll find it most useful to screen women for logistics are those without a convenient place to take said women:

• Men living with their families
• Men who share a room and lack privacy
• Men who are on travel and may not have a room booked yet
  
• Men who live far away, or in undesirable locations (like our forum member)
  

If you find yourself in one of these categories, the idea of sussing out a girl’s logistics quickly and developing the skill set of going back to her place, where convenient, should need little selling. You can probably already see the value (and imagine the legs this will unlock for you).

However, even if you have your own place, it’s awesome, and it’s centrally located in town, there are still some vital reasons you will benefit from teasing out her logistics early into conversation:

• You may discover her place is closer, and it’s perfect to pull to
• You may find out she’s only in town a short time (and you’ll need to hurry up)
• You may learn details about her living situation you can weave into your chats
  

For instance, if you find out she has the worst roommate ever and she doesn’t want to be stuck in her apartment with this girl, you can use that as part of your argument for why she should come continue to spend time with you. Hey, it’s better than hanging out with that girl, right? I took a new girlfriend this way some time back.

Or if you discover her place is extremely far out of town, and she doesn’t come into town much, you may realize it’s necessary for you to do an instant date right then – and perhaps try to pull her immediately after. Otherwise, if it’s going to be another month before she next comes into town, you may be straight out of luck.

There’s really nothing but gains in assessing a woman’s logistics early into conversation... assuming you can weave it in naturally, of course.

How to Find Out Her Logistics Early On

You want to find out her logistics, but you don’t want it to look like you’re finding out her logistics... at least not too obviously. If it’s too obvious, it’ll just come across as if you think it’s already in the bag with her and you’re just checking the details, which isn’t good any time during a courtship, and especially isn’t good in the first two to five minutes. Also, be too obvious and, obviously, you risk killing intrigue.

Thus, the way you’ll do this will be to intertwine logistics-checking with your normal conversation, and make it a fun, snappy part of your dialogue with her.

Here’s an example of how you’d do it in a city with cramped, expensive housing:

You: How long have you lived in London for?

Her: About two years now.

You: Do they have you in one of those cramped £1000-a-month broom closets?

Her: [laughs] Nooo... I have a two-bedroom in Camden.

You: Good roommate?

Her: I live alone.

You: Oh, lucky you! You know, this coat you have on is really attractive. The fur around the collar... You have great taste.

Her: Thank you!

You: So, let me guess: pantsuit, yet fashionable attire... work at a magazine?

Just like that, early on into conversation, you’ve discovered she has her own place, it’s in Camden, and she lives alone.

Logistics, handled. (you’ll also note you alternated into making a statement after asking a few questions and not having her hook / start asking you questions back, as demonstrated in “Conversation Example”)

You ask about room size to set up the transition into asking about her roommate. Really the only thing you care about there is whether she has a roommate or not, but you can’t say, “How long have you lived in London? Oh? Have a roommate, do you?” so you have to transition into it. In this case, she volunteered her neighborhood as well, which is the cherry on top.

Now... what if you do this little bit with her, but she doesn’t offer up what part of town she’s staying in?

Typically what you will see is that women who are very comfortable with you will offer you what neighborhood they’re in without prompting. However, many women won’t tell you their neighborhood sans any prompting, typically either because:

• You’re a stranger and they don’t know if they want to tell you that yet, or
• They feel embarrassed about what part of town they live in
  

That latter may be because they’re in a crummy part of town, or they’re in a very particular part of town that some people think is awesome, while others detest (if you live in a good-sized city, I know you’ve got a few neighborhoods like this); or it may even be because they live in a nice, high-end, and expensive part of town, but they’re self-conscious about coming across too hoity-toity.

When this is the case (that she doesn’t volunteer her neighborhood during your initial logistics screen), you’ll have to ask about neighborhood later.

Asking About Her Neighborhood

You won’t want to ask about it immediately after room size and roommate, because then it’s just obvious you’re on a fact-finding mission.

Remember, we’re making this natural.

You want to weave it into the conversation. The more indirect way, which I do not recommend you use but you may feel tempted to, is to try to tie it into a conversation about her day:

Her: Actually I work at a bank.

You: Sufficiently ambiguous. Does that mean you’re a hedge fund manager, or more one of those window clerks that accepts personal checks from customers via pneumatic tube?

Her: [laughs] I manage brokerage accounts.

You: That means you’re headed to the City.

Her: I am.

You: And at the end of the day after leaving work, you head... well, home is where?

Her: It’s in Cotton’s Gardens.

Now, the reason I don’t like this one is because it’s easy for a woman to dodge if she doesn’t want you to know where she lives (for one of the two reasons mentioned earlier), or even if she’s just simply super precise and analytical. In any of those cases, when you ask her a question like, “Where do you go after work?” or, “Where did you commute in from this morning?” you may well get an answer like:

• “Oh, actually I will just go straight to the gym next door after work’s done.”
• “Well in fact I just came from that Starbucks over there. See?” [hoists cup]
  

Not only are replies like these unhelpful and bad for compliance precedent, but they close off that line of questioning without a response. You can’t really ask her for her neighborhood again any time soon without looking like you’re hung up on the topic.

So, the way I prefer to get to neighborhoods with a girl who isn’t offering that up herself is to be direct about it, like so:

Her: Actually I work at a bank.

You: Sufficiently ambiguous. Does that mean you’re a hedge fund manager, or more one of those window clerks that accepts personal checks from customers in a pneumatic tube?

Her: [laughs] I manage brokerage accounts.

You: That means you’re headed to the City.

Her: I am.

You: And home is where?

Her: It’s in Cotton’s Gardens.

Small change – we did slightly less creative weaving here. Instead of asking her where she’ll head after work, we just ask her directly where home is.

We can then tie it into the conversation after, by saying okay, so you have a pretty long commute or oh, so your commute’s not that far.

Now, normally you will wait until after she’s hooked to ask her neighborhood if she wasn’t forthcoming earlier; I gave you the ‘in a big hurry’ example of screening for it even when she hasn’t hooked so you can see what that looks like woven in as artfully as possible with a woman who’s resisting telling you.

Is it good form to ask her neighborhood before the hook point if she doesn’t offer it up herself earlier? Not usually. However, if you find yourself having to operate under a time constraint (for instance, you are leaving town soon, or she is), it’s often worth doing – even if it hurts your odds with an individual girl a bit, the added logistics information it provides if you’re doing it with each woman you approach makes you better able to put together a quick pull without missing your deadline. Asymmetric returns, after all.

Should You Always Test Women’s Logistics Early?

Personally, I’ll usually leave the neighborhood bit out completely if a woman doesn’t offer it, unless I’m really in a hurry (or I think she is). However, I very much like to feel her logistics out early – early as in in the first couple of minutes.

There are several reasons for this:

1. Checking her logistics serves as a compliance test. If she tells me these details, and especially if she’s open about them and clearly comfortable telling me about them, I can be pretty confident she likes me. If she seems awkward or uncomfortable when I ask, that either means she doesn’t like me, or she’s just reserved in general and is going to take longer for me to open up.

2. Checking her logistics is a way for me to show interest in her. As noted earlier, you want to weave logistics-checking into the conversation. It gives her plausible deniability (”Is he or isn’t he? I don’t know”), and it displays your social savvy. Yet, at the same time, women aren’t dense; most girls know that if you’re checking their logistics, it’s because you’re interested. No matter how perfectly woven into the conversation it is. Thus, this serves as a little indirect signal to her that here’s a guy who is thinking about possibly maybe getting together with her.

3. Yet checking her logistics also means I am evaluating her. It’s a test, basically. She knows she will be judged on her answer. She may not know exactly how or what I am judging (i.e., when women ask a man what neighborhood he’s in, they’re typically testing for provider value – which often means there’s some nuance to how you handle this question on the receiving end as well), but she knows she is being evaluated. Which means I have standards. Which means she’s found herself a man who is, potentially, a ‘catch’.
   

Therefore... this is fun, and you should use it.

It says good things about you, while providing you usable information you can leverage to move the courtship forward.

Logistics are cool. Checking logistics with women you like is cool. And when you do this, it adds just one more feather in your (screening/logistics) cap.

Chase Amante