Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (12 page)

The three of them listened to every single word from that moment on. I focused intently on the parts of the deal in which I had expertise. Like Benoit or the golf pro, I was working hard to establish local star power.

When I had finished, and before Bil could speak, I quickly began to pul away. “Whoa, look at the time,” I said a little comical y, glancing at my watch, “I’ve got to run. Listen, guys, thanks for your time today. If this works for you, let me know.”

As I reached for my folio and began to slide out of the chair, Bil waved his arm in the air and said, “Wait, wait. Wait a minute, Oren.” And then he started hysterical y laughing. This relieved the tension for Martin and Jacob. They smiled and laughed nervously with their boss, and I sat as straight-faced as I could while Bil got the huge laugh out of his system.

“I can definitely see why Dan said I should meet with you. Listen, tel me again who else you have in this deal.”

The hookpoint was made. For the next 20 minutes, I answered questions and exchanged information with Martin and Jacob, who were tasked with the due diligence, and I continued pul ing away, looking at my watch, worried about arriving late to my next meeting.

Final y, I stood up to leave. As I was shaking Bil ’s hand, he said, “If Marty and Jake tel me the numbers check out, I’m in.”

What this example demonstrates is that a wel -chosen, wel -timed friendly but disruptive act wil dethrone the king in a single stroke. In that brief, shocking moment when no one is quite sure what you’ve just done, that is when your frame takes over and when high status transfers to you.

To keep my frame strong, after the apple thing, I just ignored anything that didn’t advance the pitch. This is an important lesson. In general, just ignore conversation threads that don’t support your deal, and magnify ones that do. I kept talking about the deal—you’l see specifical y some of the things I talked about in Chapter 4.

Here is a quick review of what happened in Bil ’s office that day:

1. I found myself in Bil ’s office with no frame control and in the beta position.

2. I perpetrated a mildly shocking but not unfriendly act that caused a new frame col ision.

3. As the shock of my action wore off, the attention of the targets did not waver—believe me, it never does when you do something like this—

and I continued accumulating status like a video gamer col ecting power stars as each of the targets advances to new levels. The faster you grab status, the more is available for you to take.

4. As I captured attention, I then shifted my focus to acquiring local star power and the alpha status.

5. I got local star power by using information dominance to quickly shrink the frame around my area of specialization, making me unassailable.

Because I was the expert, no one could undermine my deal points.

6. Using my newly acquired local star power, I quickly moved the discussion to a level where I could not be chal enged by using the primary core values of hard work, domain expertise, and moral authority—which we wil discuss in a moment.

7. The moment I was done with my pitch, I began to pul away and kept pul ing away until I final y left the office—but not before I had set the hookpoint and received a decision.

These rules are applicable to any situation where you are pitching on someone else’s territory.

Here are some other important things to remember:

If you think you’l start a meeting from the beta position, always be on time for the appointment. When you are late, you are giving away power.

It’s difficult to establish strong frames when you can’t play the game of business by its most basic rules.

Momentum is key. Create high status immediately. Do not hesitate. Choose a frame, and force a col ision at the most opportune moment—

and do it early. The longer you wait, the more you reinforce the status of your target.

Avoid social rituals that reinforce the status of others. Idle social banter diminishes your status.

Have fun. Be popular. Enjoy your work. There is nothing as attractive as someone who is enjoying what he or she does. It attracts the group to you and al ows you to build stronger frames and hold them longer.

As we have been saying, when you are the high-status person in a social interaction, you get al the good stuff. When you’re the alpha, life is easy. The statements you make are trusted. The emotions you show wil set the overal mood in the room. And most important, when you speak or gesture or even look like you
might
speak or gesture, people turn their attention toward you.

Just remember, this process is geared to build and seize situational status, which is temporary. Once you leave the social encounter, it’s wiped out. Gone. And if you come back later, you’l have to start over and build it again. Even if that’s only five minutes later.

And you won’t be able to seize global status, which is the honor or prestige attached to a person’s position in society. It’s the sum of the person’s wealth, popularity, and power. For example, you’re not going to sit down with a bil ionaire and have him believe that you’re somehow a triple bil ionaire. Global status is fixed. It’s only situational status that you can grab and control.

Fortunately, you do not need to be rich, famous, or powerful to enjoy status in your business encounters and social situations. If you do not have high status, you can create it temporarily.

Seizing Situational Status

Here are the steps involved in elevating your status in any situation. You wil recognize some of these actions from framing, and for good reason.

Frame control and status are closely related, as are the pitch techniques you wil learn in Chapter 4.

1. Politely ignore power rituals and avoid beta traps.

2. Be unaffected by your customer’s global status (meaning the customer’s status inside and outside the business environment).

3. Look for opportunities to perpetrate smal denials and defiances that strengthen your frame and elevate your status.

4. As soon as you take power, quickly move the discussion into an area where you are the domain expert, where your knowledge and information are unassailable by your audience.

5. Apply a prize frame by positioning yourself as the reward for making the decision to do business with you.

6. Confirm your alpha status by making your customer, who now temporarily occupies a beta position, make a statement that qualifies your higher status.

The last step in this sequence is of vital importance, and it’s not as scary as it sounds. As I pointed out earlier in this book, I do not abuse the power I am holding by committing overt acts of dominance. Instead, I am playful, with lots of give and take that makes doing business fun.

One of the best ways to get a customer to confirm your alpha status is to make him defend himself in a light-hearted way. Not only does this let you know that you are stil in control, but more important, it also reminds the customer that he holds a subordinate position. The customer then wil defer to you, even in front of his underlings.

I may say something like, “Remind me again why in the world I want to do business with you?”

This usual y elicits a few guffaws—and a serious response amid the laughter: “Because we’re the largest bank in California, Oren.”

To which I say, “Yeah, that’s good, I’l keep that in mind.”

It needs to be playful and interesting, with just a little edge to it. Keep the customer qualifying back to you as long as you can. Do it as much as possible right up to the point where it becomes a little awkward—or is just taking too much time. Ask another qualifying question: “Have you ever done a deal this large before?” This is the best way I’ve found to get an audience to qualify my dominant frame.

Now that you have an understanding of frames and how to create and use status to support frame control, let’s move on to the heart and soul of my method—the pitch.

In 1953, molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick introduced the world to the double-helix DNA structure, the so-cal ed secret of life, widely considered the most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century. The presentation earned Watson and Crick the Nobel Prize. And what is most striking about this accomplishment is that the ful presentation takes just five minutes to read aloud. That’s the
complete
presentation
—introducing the secret of life, explaining it in detail, and showing how it works.

Pause and consider this for a moment:
The most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century can be pitched in five minutes.
Yet nearly every pitch that I’ve seen—and I see hundreds every year—takes at least 45 minutes and usual y an hour,
a ridiculous amount of time!
No company in America should let’s its executives pitch for an hour. In a moment, you’l see why.

Pitching the Big Idea

So far we have worked in the realm of frames and status, which are abstract notions. Now, however, lace up your shoes and tuck in your shirt—it’s time to get in front of someone and deliver a pitch.

And if you’re the front man, the guy who has to take a big idea on the road and pitch it, you need to know exactly how to give a complete presentation in a much shorter time frame than most. But as you’l see in a moment, short time frames are not a choice. You can’t afford to run longer. The audience’s brain won’t give you more time. And worse, when attention runs dry—after about 20 minutes—the brain starts forgetting things it has already learned. Talk about going in reverse.

As soon as the pitch or presentation begins, one critical thing must happen: The target must feel at ease. In the vast majority of cases, they don’t
because they don’t know how long they’re going to be stuck listening to you
, and you’re a stranger. Most people just don’t want to sit through an hour-long pitch. To put them at ease, I have a simple solution: It’s cal ed the
time-constraint pattern
. This is what you say, exactly, to let the target know he isn’t trapped in the typical hour-long-meeting: “Guys, let’s get started. I’ve only got about 20 minutes to give you the big idea, which wil leave us some time to talk it over before I have to get out of here.”

Doing it this way puts the target at ease. It shows that you know what you’re doing and that you’re a pro.
Anything
can be pitched in 20 minutes by a pro. It also shows that you’re busy because you have a strong idea and you can’t hang out too long in a single meeting.

What’s important here is not your mastery over the details but your mastery over attention and time. Instead of trying to achieve what is virtual y impossible—holding the target’s attention for longer than 20 minutes—we need to observe the limits of the human attention span.

You’re going to make the pitch in four sections or phases:

1. Introduce yourself and the big idea: 5 minutes.

2. Explain the budget and secret sauce: 10 minutes.

3. Offer the deal: 2 minutes.

4. Stack frames for a hot cognition: 3 minutes.

Phase 1: Introduce Yourself and the Big Idea

Fol owing this formula, the very first thing you need to do—even before you think about explaining your idea—is to give people your background.

But you have to do this in a specific way; your success depends on how wel (and how fast) you do it. After the introductory chitchat, where you establish status and use frame control, it’s natural for the target to ask, “What’s your background?” or “How’d you get started in this?” At this point, you can begin the pitch,
starting with your track record of successes. Not
a long rundown of al the places you worked.
Not
al the projects you were tangential y involved with.
Not
your whole life story. The key to success here is making it about your track record. Things you built. Projects that actual y worked out. Successes. Spend less than two minutes on it and definitely not more—and don’t worry. Before your pitch is over, the target is going to know a whole lot more about you.

When a friend, Joe, was getting funding from Boeing, here’s how he did it:

1. “My degree is from Berkeley. I did my MBA at UCLA.

2. After that I was at McKinsey for four years, but real y, my only homerun there was the sales program I did for Lexus. Saved them about $15

mil ion, and they stil use it today.

3. I left consulting six months ago to work on the ‘big idea.’”

Yes, Joe has done a lot more than that over the years, but so what. Only his big wins are worth talking about at this point. Is there a lot more to
your
background than this? Of course there is. But in the pitch, time and attention are not infinite. In fact, they’re
extremely scarce
. And you’re going to need al the time available to get (and keep) frame control. Plan to stroke your own ego later—when the deal is more likely to go through.

Many times I’ve seen people spend 15 minutes or longer on their background. Absurd. No one is that fantastic. Yet people often think that if some background biography is good, then more is better.
But people’s brains do not work that way.
Research has shown that your impression of someone is general y based on the average of the available information about them, not the sum. So tel ing people one great thing about yourself wil leave them with a better impression of you than tel ing than one great thing and one pretty good one. And it gets worse if you tel them one great thing, one pretty good thing, and two mediocre things.
Stop with one great thing.
Get your track record on the table, and do it fast, clean, and problem-free. This is not the place to get hung up with questions, deep conversations, and analysis—
there’s still a lot to do.

Is this different from what you’re used to? Is framing this way a completely new way of looking at pitching? Yes to both. But if you don’t feel like changing to frame-based pitching, you can always console yourself with the fact that you are not alone. Wasting time and focusing on the wrong things are problems that exist at the highest levels of business.