Ready to give up? Try this unique approach for online dating

Online dating is a way to find (and introduce yourself to) potential connections over the Internet, usually with the goal of developing personal, romantic, or sexual relationships. It expands the pool of options beyond your social and professional circle.

There are many online dating apps available like Bumble, Tinder, Aisle, Ok Cupid. I tried Bumble for 5 days and quit. Why? I was overwhelmed with the options. But with some rigorous filtering, I was able to arrange a couple of dates.

My friends have had bad first dates and lost hope in finding someone online. Podcaster and entrepreneur Christina Wallace shares how she used her MBA skills to invent a “zero date” approach and get off online dating. She used the following strategy to find success...

Choose an app that provides a writing sample for each profile – and no swipe-based gamification.

Set up a “sales funnel” to filter potential dates using this formula: Awareness/ Interest/ Decision/ Action. While passing through the funnel, the number of options will decrease.

Awareness: Be aware of your type.

Interest: Based on your interests, define the criteria that qualifies a lead and create an inbound message. Use complete sentences with good grammar. Reference something personal in your profile, and avoid any sexual talk.

Decision: Meet the qualified ones in real life as quickly as possible. Because the things you care about cannot be seen online. Have an “0th” or “zero date”, a quick meeting to see if there’s any chemistry, before a more formal first date. Pre-plan a reason to spend only an hour.

Action: The zero date: 1 hour, 1 drink, 1 question. Ask yourself one question: ‘’Can you spend the next hour with this person?” Do not think about your whole life, only the next hour. If not, move on. If yes, take action to set up a full date.

Christina’s dating sales funnel looked like this:

She went on the 0th date with two, out of which one turned out bad. The other one turned from a 0th date to a first date. Christina found her person using these MBA tricks and says:

‘’Online dating doesn’t have to suck. Don’t treat it like a game or a resumé review... use it to source and qualify leads and then get offline as quickly as possible with the 0th date. Because the point of this isn’t swiping, it is finding your person.’’

Final note: Although online dating is generally safe, you can encounter unsafe people. Take care and be sure of your purpose. You can find someone if you adopt proven methods from sales and business to filter decisions. Dating is too important to approach in a flaky way.