Working a Group: Find the Payer, Neutralize the Joker

Every group at a table has one person paying, one person performing, and a crowd that will do whatever those two do. Find the payer in the first minute, give the performer a job so he stops needing your attention, and then close the whole table at once by making a dance the thing the group is doing rather than something one man has to decide alone. Groups are where new dancers get mooed at and where vets do five dances in fifteen minutes. The difference is whether you work the table as a unit or try to sell six men one at a time while five of them heckle.

Safety first: which groups to skip

A dancer who writes about the worst of the floor is specific that trouble comes from big groups with one or two loud men performing for the others. The louder the performance, the less the table is about you and the more it is about his audience. Before you approach, read the volume. A group that is laughing with each other and glancing at the stage is a sale. A group that is shouting at the stage, grabbing at dancers walking past, or so drunk that two of them are asleep is not, and no amount of money on the table makes it one. Dancer-safety guidance says plainly not to dance for the very intoxicated or the aggressive; they are unsafe and they frequently do not pay. Tell the floor staff if a table is grabbing, and let them handle it. Your job is the next table.

Who is paying at a group table?

He is usually not the loud one. Look for:

• The man the others look at before they answer anything.
• The one who paid cover or opened the tab; the bartender or door staff will often tell you.
• The one who is sitting back while the others lean in.
• The one being celebrated: the bachelor, the birthday, the guy who just made partner. He may not pay, but the group pays for him.
• The oldest, in a work group. Dancers report the boss buys the round and the dances.

Ask the group, not a person: "Okay, who's in charge here?" They will point. If they all point at the same man, you have the payer. If they point at each other and laugh, the payer is the one who does not laugh.

Neutralizing the joker

The joker needs attention and will take it from you if you do not assign it. Do not fight him; give him a role. "You're the hype man. Your job is to make sure everyone gets a dance tonight, starting with him." Now he is on your side and performing for you instead of at you. If he keeps going, one firm line in front of the table does more than ten quiet ones: "I like you, but I'm talking to him right now. You're next if you're good." The group will police him after that, because you made him the obstacle between them and the fun.

If the joker's material is about your body and the table is laughing with him rather than at him, the table is a skip. Smile, stand, go. There is no version of that table that ends in a room.

How do I get a group to buy instead of just laughing?

Sell to the group, not the individual. A sales curriculum for dancers has a close named for groups, and the mechanism is peer pressure: nobody wants to be the one who said no in front of his friends, and nobody wants to be the only one who did not get a dance. So make the first dance public and the rest automatic.

"Right, here's how this works. He's getting the first one because it's his night. Then I'm going down the line, and anyone who skips has to explain himself to the group."

Take the celebrant first, in view of the table if your club does table dances, or come back from the dance area to the table to collect the next one with a loud "who's next?" The question is addressed to the table, so the table answers for the man. Three or four dances come out of that in a row, which is faster than any three individual customers in the room.

The alternative close is the collection: "Dances are forty. You're the best man, you're collecting. I'll be back in one song and you'll have two hundred in your hand." Said as a joke, with a wink, it often works literally.

Working the table without losing the table

Groups are jealous. If you sit with one man too long the others decide you are his and stop being customers. Keep moving your attention around the table in the first minutes, touch base with everyone, and let the payer feel chosen without the others feeling dismissed. Never approach a man at the table another dancer is already sitting with; groups often have two or three dancers working them at once, and the etiquette is the same as anywhere on the floor (/advice/floor-etiquette).

When the room is the goal, the pitch is to the group's story, not to a man's wallet. "The three of you should take him to the back. It's three hundred for a half hour, it's a story for the rest of his life, and you'll be the ones who made it happen." Group rooms are common on bachelor nights, and the men who chip in for one rarely argue about the price because the price is split.

Bachelor parties in particular

They are the group in its purest form: a payer (the best man, usually holding the money), a celebrant who may be shy or may be drunk, and a crowd that has been told to make it memorable. The best man is your customer. Find him, tell him the plan, and let him sell it to the table. "You're running this. Here's what happens: dances for the groom now, the room later. I'll handle him, you handle them." Collect from him, not from the groom, and get paid before any room starts; the rule in /advice/paid-up-front-every-time applies twice as hard to a group, because a group's memory of who owes what is unreliable by midnight.

When the group is a loss

Some tables will laugh, tip the stage in ones, and never buy. If you have found the payer, made the public pitch, and nothing moved, the table has told you what it is. Leave warm; groups talk to each other, and a man from that table will sometimes find you alone at one in the morning once he has stopped performing for his friends. That lone follow-up is often the best customer the group produces.

Do this tonight

• Read the volume before you approach; skip tables that are shouting at the stage or grabbing.
• Ask "who's in charge here?" and let the table point to the payer.
• Give the joker a job in your first minute and stop him costing you the table.
• Take the celebrant first and come back to the table with a loud "who's next?"
• Collect from the payer before any room, and never from the groom.