Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (17 page)

In our pitch, we are
not
looking to engage with the cold neo-cortex. We are
not
going to push the target into paradigmatic mode. And we don’t need a quantitative analysis of our numbers done by the target right now. Sure, our numbers wil stand up to scrutiny and we’re not afraid of a stress test—but there wil be a time for cold analysis later once the relationship is firmly set in place.

Creating Hot Cognition

To avoid cold, reasoned analysis, unemotional judgment of ourselves and our idea,
we are going to create hot cognition by stacking frames.
I came to learn about stacking frames by accident.

How to Stack Frames

Part of my work involves buying “defaulted debt” with a partner—specifical y high-risk debt. It’s a hard-knocks game where it seems that you either do very wel or you get
crushed
. My partner did about $250 mil ion in transactions from 2008 through 2010. In this field, however, $250 mil ion is smal time among the multibil ion-dol ar hedge funds and the giants of Wal Street with whom we work—Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan. Our success is based on keeping alert and making quick, smal trades of $20 mil ion to $50 mil ion. We are like gazel es running among elephants. In this game, if you sense a giant foot coming down, you take off running because if JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, or Goldman Sachs steps on you, they wouldn’t even notice. But you would.

In June 2008, the market was in the early stages of a screaming freefal that bottomed out in March 2009. And we knew it was bad, but we didn’t know how bad it was going to get: At one point, the housing market in Phoenix dropped 9 percent in a single month. Movements of the Dow Jones Industrial Index of 100 points a day was the norm. Any Wal Street trader knows that you want to be careful trading in this kind of volatility because a single mistake can cause you to blow up.

Buying distressed assets sounds like it should be easy. After al , the market was crumbling and everyone needed to sel their toxic assets.

At the time, I was doing a deal with a trading desk at one of the largest money-center banks. I needed another point of view on the deal, so I cal ed a col eague, Mike. He had a lot of experience in this kind of deal—and a second opinion is always good. I thought that the price was high, and I wasn’t sure about the deal.

Now, as I stayed late at work on a Wednesday night, the phone rang. It was a trader at this large money-center Wal Street bank, and this was his fifth cal to me. In the back of my croc brain, threat alerts started going off. Why was this $300 bil ion bank courting me so hard? There had to be better buyers than me in the market? But once I started talking to the trader, I realized that he wasn’t sel ing me in the traditional ways.

“Oren, once we get through this deal, and we know you can close deals, I’m going to introduce you to our senior trader, John Kincaid,” the sel er told me. “He’s a wildman, just like you. It’s going to be a total love connection, and he’l get you into the big deals that don’t come to my desk.”

This was
hot cognition 1—
intrigue. I wanted to meet the senior trader and get introduced to these bigger deals.

The bank trader continued: “You know the market is on fire right now, and I have the French, English, and South Africans begging me for this package, but if you work hard and don’t play any funny retrade games, you can earn your way in.” It was true, the market was hot, and those were al players.

This was
hot cognition 2
—prizing. Although I was the buyer, he was asking me to prove myself. I wanted to impress him so that I could earn my way into the deal.

He continued: “I’d love to give you until next week, but this market is not letting me, and you have to make up your mind by Friday.” He said, “I’m total y okay with a ‘No’; there’s no pressure. But Friday is D-day.”

This was
hot cognition 3—
time frame. He gave me just enough time that I felt I had free wil . This wasn’t time pressure, just a reasonable time constraint. In the end, the decision was mine to make.

He continued: “And I don’t need to tel you, we’ve done $150 bil ion in trades this year without a single SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] sanction; right now we’re very particular about our reputation and counterparties. We do things right over here, so no games, no missing wire numbers, just clean paper. We give you a fair price, and that’s the deal. Can you play by the rules?”

This was
hot cognition 4—
moral authority. I assured him that even though my company was smal , just a $250 mil ion blip on the outskirts of San Diego, I knew the rules and could do things right.

From the beginning, I never felt like he was sel ing me. My normal deal-making processes were disrupted by this four-frame stack. The Wal Street trader ran this stack on me
perfectly
: I was intrigued, I was trying to impress him so I could have a chance to buy the deal, he boxed me into a very tight time frame and yet I felt no pressure, and I was trying hard to prove that I had a good moral values. I was a puppet. My cold analytical decision processes weren’t just disrupted; they were shut down and turned off. My neocortex was short-circuited, and my croc brain was rol ing around in cognitive mud, happy and calm. I was going to do the deal. And the next day I cal ed the Wal Street trader back and said, “Send me the docs. I’m doing it!”

There’s no question that the pitch worked on me. Fortunately, it also worked on Mike.

Mike Hanson soon cal ed me, bragging that he had taken down the deal—
stolen it right out of my eager hands.
Thank God for that. Two years later, he was stil down 15 percent in that trade and losing money daily. He was miserable with the deal. For me, though, it had worked out fine.

I had learned the
four-frame hot cognition stack
.

Now, a few years later, I’ve found that this stack works in many kinds of pitches. And it’s a lot of fun for both me and the targets. It’s hot, emotional, and fast-paced. When the target starts getting analytical and cold, it’s time for the four-frame hot cognition stack to enter the pitch.

To make it work, you just implement the frames you are already familiar with from Chapter 2. Al you have to do is learn how to stack them up one after the other to generate a
hot cognition
—in other words, to create what cognitive scientists cal a
wanting.

Specifical y, we’re
not
trying to get the target to “like” us because learning to “like” something is the slow and intel ectual business of the neocortex. This is not the business we’re in. We want high-temperature frames that create hot cognitions. And we’re using frame stacks to make sure that the target’s croc brain wants us and moves toward us—even ends up chasing us to get the deal. Let’s do it now.

Here are the four frames we’re going to stack in quick succession. (Doing this correctly wil move you quickly into the last part of the pitch—the
hookpoint
.)

Hot cognition 1:
the intrigue frame.

Hot cognition 2:
the prize frame.

Hot cognition 3:
the time frame.

Hot cognition 4:
the moral authority frame.

Hot Cognition 1: The Intrigue Frame

In Chapter 2, we talked about the theory of
frame-based pitching
, and I introduced the
intrigue frame. Now we’re going to use it.
The purpose is to get a large dopamine dump into the croc brain of the target—and build desire. I do this by introducing something the target is sure to want—but cannot get right now.

Here’s the intrigue frame I used recently in a situation where I had given the pitch, offered up the deal, but, before I could blink, was getting hammered with technical questions:

“Guys, before we spend our last few minutes on financial details, let’s decide first if you love me and you love the basic deal. And look, if you decide that you do love the deal, you’re obviously going to meet my partner Joshua,” I tel them. “He’s a very interesting guy, a great guy, but a little eccentric.”

I see if I have their attention, which I usual y do. People like to hear stories about interesting and slightly eccentric characters.

“Last year, when the markets were volatile, I had this little deal, about $10 mil ion,” I tel them. “It seemed easy because it was such a smal deal, and I was the only one working it. Things were going like clockwork until the bank cal ed and at the eleventh hour and backed out. No explanation; they just pul ed out. That left a $3 mil ion hole in the plan—the deal was fal ing apart fast. This had come out of the blue, and I was sure that the board of directors of my company would fire me when they found out about the screw-up. I knew I had to go to Joshua with this.”

My audience leans in. They want to find out how the problem was solved. And who is this Joshua? They are intrigued.

“Joshua asked me, ‘Oren, is this a good deal?’ I said, ‘Yes, it’s good. Let me tel you al about it.” But he didn’t stick around to listen. Instead, he went to lunch, without even giving me time to grovel. What could I do? I had to save the investors—and myself too. I wanted to pitch Joshua, to do anything to convince him to save the deal. He, it seemed, just wanted to eat lunch. I was preparing for my funeral when I got the cal from the board.

They had mysteriously gotten the $3 mil ion. Joshua had wired it in, from his BlackBerry, while having sushi. He didn’t ask me to sign any guarantees. He didn’t even ask to see the file. If he hadn’t made that wire, my investors would have lost a lot of money, and my reputation would have taken a hit. The thing about it is that he does this kind of stuff al the time. Wait until you meet him!”

This is the kind of narrative that targets truly enjoy. Who is this mystery man, Joshua, and how do we meet him? This works because it is not about
what
happened. That’s actual y a boring story. What’s important is
who it happened to and how the characters reacted to their situation.

Nobody cares about narratives where you witnessed something. They want to see someone forced into action and positively overcoming obstacles. This new notion of building an intrigue frame makes a lot of sense when you think about
why
the target is sitting there listening to
your
pitch.

The targets have given you their time because they want to visit a new world to learn about new things and interesting ideas and become
involved in the lives of unique, interesting, and talented people.

No one is seriously going to go into business with you until they know something about how you conduct yourself in tough situations. And it’s no use tel ing anyone, “I’m a good person.” That’s a useless analytical fact that has no narrative to support it.

People want to know how you have faced obstacles and overcome them. They want to see you in situations that reveal your character.

They want to know that you are someone who rises to whatever level necessary to overcome obstacles and someone who travels in the company of interesting people who are players in whatever game you are playing.

This kind of story, according to Dr. Bruner, puts the target into narrative thinking mode. In narrative mode, we seek to understand reality from events in terms of “human actors striving to do physical things over time.” And from this simple statement, we draw an important insight: Your big idea is probably an abstract notion. If you are honest with yourself, what is it
really
? A pile of financials, a bunch of timelines, some customer orders, a marketing plan, an Internet site, and some smart new ideas. You probably have projections, information technology, competitive analysis, and market timing. This kind of info is much too abstract.

The target’s brain does not love abstract concepts—every abstract concept has to be kicked up to the neocortex to be worked on, slowly
and painstakingly.

This is why you need analog human narratives to do your explaining. They don’t have to be sent to the neocortex for processing. For example, the Joshua story is anchored in the real world with human characters: The target can relate to the human elements in it.

Why is the intrigue frame best performed as a narrative? Here’s how the target’s brain interprets narratives at the crocodile level: In narrative mode, the croc brain sees human characters confronting real-world obstacles in time scales that make sense. The croc brain can sort of verify events in time because they are easy to relate to our previous experiences and understanding of how the world works. If the unfolding of events, as told by you, feels accurate to the target, then a truth is assigned to it.
A narrative that feels correct in time will convey a strong sense of
truth and accuracy.

In stark contrast, facts and figures have no built-in internal mechanism for feeling the truth. If we present just facts and figures, then we trigger a paradigmatic mode that encourages the target to use logical rigor over imagination, intel ect over feeling, and theories over stories. Clearly, you don’t want your target in this paradigmatic thinking.
Short and strong narratives that introduce characters who are overcoming real-world
obstacles can ignite hot cognitions—which, in turn, push the target out of paradigmatic and analytical thinking mode.

There’s a basic formula for developing this kind of intrigue frame.

Narrative Pattern for Building an Intrigue Frame.
Intrigue frames, like al narratives, whether fiction or nonfiction, need structure. Without structure, a story wanders around without purpose and becomes boring. Here’s a pattern that wil give any of your stories a dramatic arc that ends with intrigue:

Put a man in the jungle.

Have beasts attack him.

Wil he get to safety?

Clearly, being stuck in the jungle is a metaphor for being in a difficult situation. The attacking beasts are the conflict and tension. These are the problems being faced by the man and the motivation for him to start moving toward safety. Once he is out of the jungle, the tension is resolved and the narrative arc is complete, so hold the man just short of safety as long as you want to use the intrigue frame.