Lesson 1: Do not write headlines like this. Terrible headline, born of my utter mental exhaustion. Being “on” for that long is hard mental work, especially if you are an introvert.

Lesson 2: Sell something that people actually want. If you are stuck, like me, promoting a survey that nobody actually wants to take…accept that your job just became much, much harder.

Lesson 3: Never wait for someone to make eye contact. Nobody wants to make eye contact with someone selling them something  that they don’t want. Wait for a glimmer of interest in your sign, or just ask them a question. Once you start a conversation, then the eye contact comes.

Lesson 4: Target the lead person in a group for conversation. Then, usually the entire group will stop while you talk to their leader, generating a bit more interest around your table. This goes both physically (people get backed up) and socially (people tend to follow the leader).

Lesson 5: Try out a bunch of different pitches and reasons until you find the ones that stick. I spent most of day 1 trying out various iterations of my incentives, but by day 2 I had a basic template that worked with most people.

Lesson 5.5: The money incentive may not actually be an incentive. The survey I’m promoting enters respondents to win a $100 gift card. But often when I brought it up, people would decide that that amount wasn’t worth their time. Better incentives were things like “giving back” to a specific program they were a part of, or the opportunity for personal reflection.

Lesson 6: When you get the “aha,” stop. Disengage. No more reasons.

Lesson 7: “You should take the survey” is perhaps not the greatest sales pitch ever. I got more engagement with “Consider it” or “I highly recommend taking it,” especially for people who showed little interest.

Lesson 8: Even though people could log in on their phone and take the survey while waiting in line for a required event, nobody would.

Lesson 9: All of these lessons were from surface-level interactions only, and I won’t actually know if any of them paid off until after the next recruitment email is sent.

Lesson 10: Selling is hard.