a person's skill in pickup can be determined by their results. specifically there are 3 levels of pick up: beginner, intermediate, advanced. I will only be focusing on cold approach in this post

beginner

a beginner does not get laid at all despite cold approaching women. these are the guys that started seeing pick up videos online and decided to give cold approach a try. a beginner can also be a guy whose been approaching women for years but has not gotten a single lay from any of it. beginners typically get a lot of flakey phone numbers, unsuccessful dates and some make outs here and there. the way a beginner advances to intermediate is by focusing on each of his sets. instead of focusing on volume/spam approaching he focuses on each set and how he could do things differently. he observes his wings that are pulling and see what they do. he observes content on the internet and gains more perspective on how pulling and closing should be done. he gets more references by going on more dates and becoming desensitized to these interactions. ultimately a beginner needs to continue to experiment with different approaches and utilize new perspective that he receives until he arrives at a method that is able to get him laid off a cold approach. probably the biggest learning curve is going from beginner to intermediate

intermediate

this is the guy that is getting laid somewhat. he doesn't necessarily approach a ton, but when he does he has a level of success when it comes to turning his cold approaches into lays. perhaps he's getting laid once ever 6 months, or 3 months, or 1 month. I would consider this an intermediate, the frequency of lays definitely determines how early or late intermediate the person is. an intermediate understands and trusts what he is doing. he isn't looking at every step of his pick up like a beginner needs to do because he knows that fundamentally what he is doing is correct. he knows that his process and technique can get him laid, it's just that he's not getting laid as often as he wants. in order for an intermediate to reach advanced he needs to work on consistency and volume. the main difference between an advanced guy from an intermediate is that the advanced guy goes out A LOT. if an intermediate wants to get laid more and move to advanced, he needs to work on taking consistent action instead of phases/waves of action. this means going out much more frequently, approaching more girls, and ultimately obtaining more leads

advanced

an advanced guy is getting laid regularly. perhaps he has a fuckbuddy or two that he can hit up semi-regularly for sex. even without a fuckbuddy an advanced guy is able to do well for himself. advanced guys typically go out every day/night. they are constantly meeting new girls every day and collecting leads. going on several dates and fucking new women each week/month. because of this sheer volume, an advanced guy spends most of his day doing pick up. an advanced guy has trained himself to avoid burnout (for the most part) or goes out in a fashion that is consistent but not too over-bearing. most advanced guys do pick up for a living such as instructors. they don't have 9-5 jobs holding them back so they can spend their time consistently meeting more girls. an advanced guy has more time to invest in getting laid compared to an intermediate guy, and because of this he is getting laid more