Reading Notes for:
Pitch Anything
By Oren Klaff
An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal
Phase3: Pitching the deal. What they will get? What you deliver and how. Summarized facts that they need to know, when, and how. Rich in high level details. Leave no question about what they will get.
Phase 4: Frame stacking and hot cognition. They can like the deal without even really knowing or understanding it. By the time you “make a decision”, your brain had decided a while ago. Almost like decisions are made by the body instead of the brain. Brain justifies the decision with the brain.
2 modes of thought:
- Paradigmatic Mode: Detective mode. Logical proof and empirical proof. In this mode, the target is trying to find the formula that explains you. Will ONLY be trying to explain you. Cold, hard, facts.
- We don’t want to speak to this mode.
- Need to create hot cognition and stack frames!! Good to use when getting hammered and/or bogged down in details. The 4 Frame Hot Cognition Stack
Use Intrigue: If you do THIS, I will to THIS for you. Gets a large dopamine dump into the targets brain. Do this by introducing something that the target is sure to want.
Tell a story where they visit a new world, learn new things, and hear about new and interesting people. And that you will be able to overcome obstacles.
This moves people into narrative mode. Which is good because, really, your big idea is actually very abstract. The brain doesn’t like abstract because they have to send it up to the neocortex. Stories involve people and the croc brain understands people, because they are easy to relate to.
Doing this can get people out of paradigmatic mode.
The Formula= Story needs structure so it doesn’t wander around pointless. Put the man in the jungle. Have beasts attack him. Ask “will he get to safety?” Hold him outside of safety for as long as you want to hold the intrigue frame. It doesn’t always have to be extreme events. Just extreme emotions for the person involved. Shows drive and tenacity.
Take him to the edge of the jungle, but don’t take him out – then move to The Prize Frame.
Prizing= Making them prove themselves. Make them chase you.
For example, look at trying to RESCUE a dog: They make you fill out an application!! What kind of home do you have? Have any children? What do you know about dogs? What’s your income level? Fill out this application and come back.
Toward the end of any pitch session: “Guys, I’m glad I found the time to come here and show you my deal. I don’t always get to meet the buyers and, you know, we are having some fun here talking about this stuff. But, I need to wrap up now. I have another meeting. We are super busy. And, as you know, there really aren’t that many deal like ours around. And, obviously, none that include me in it. And fortunately, I’m in high demand. So getting serious here for a minute. We are deciding which investors to let in and which investors to turn away. So I need to figure out who you are. Not just the bios. And I have to sell you to our partners. Can you give me that? Can you tell me why we would like working with you?”
Let’s break down the elements: You told them that we have one of the best deals in the market. Told them that I’m choosy who we work with. Seems like I COULD work with you. Please give me some materials and credentials on yourself. I still need to decide if we would be good partners before I let you buy in. What would your last business partners say about you? My business partners are super choosy so you have to empower me to sell them.
- Shows the croc brain that you are important and in demand.
- Relies on the strength of your conviction as to who or what is the prize.
The Internal Pattern that you need to run is I am the prize. You, buyer, are trying to impress me. You, buyer, are trying to win my approval.
Time Frame: Reasonable time constraint.
- “my deal, XXX, is a great deal. And we both know it. You can’t bluff me that you are not interested. Consider the situation we are in. We are at your corporate headquarters for a 3rd meeting. I’m looking at your team, and you are here en force. Because you love the deal. And you should love it because the deal is hot. And that’s no secret even though I haven’t tried to pressure you. But we can’t ignore it either. And that’s the reason that we have to make a decision in the next week. Why 1 week? Because it’s not in my control. It’s the market working. It’s harsh but true. We have to decide by July 18th if you are in or out.”
It’s been true for as long as time that the reduction of time taken reduces decision quality. There is a scarcity bias in the brain. The brain doesn’t like the thought of losing a deal. But don’t let it seem cheap. And not extreme. Balance fairness and pressure.
- “I don’t like time pressures and neither do you. But good deals are like an amtrak train. They stop at a station, pick up passengers for a set period of time, then they are off to the next station. You are either going to love this deal, or you shouldn’t do it. You have plenty of time to decide that you love it and want to get on board. The deal is bigger than me. It’s going forward on its own timeline. So really we have to decide by the XXXth of the moneth.”
Moral Authority: Can you handle this? We evaluate each other constantly. We evaluate each other’s behavior. And we evaluate the motives and results of that behavior. We are going to get evaluated no matter what. So we might as well get the evaluation that we want.
You have to create “wanting”. Use hot cognitions to create wanting and desire. You have to create “wanting” to get from pitch to hook point. We all bring a frame to each social encounter. MA Frame is about who’s frame rules.
The President can order a nuclear strike but gets naked the min his doctor tells him.
Doctor frame may be the Strongest frame in the world. But Mother Teresa got top docs to set up free mobile clinics. And she was broke, and their clients were broke.
Hot Cognitions are primal. “Sales Tactics” hit the neocortex with features and benefits. Hot Cognitions are in the croc brain because the croc brain can hijack things. They are also unavoidable, instant, and enduring.
- Hot vs Cold Cognition: Spinach is good for you but Chocolate = mmm. Do they WANT to buy Your Stuff? How much thinking do they need to do? The less rational they need to do, the hotter the cognition. Cold Cognition = the cold, hard, facts.
We think that, since we construct the message, in our neocortex that we should speak to it. We think that our croc brain isn’t smart enough to handle it. Remember, we don’t get to their neocortex without going through their croc. Hot Cognitions encode value. Its the anticipation of a gain. Actually receiving the gain isn’t even as exciting as the anticipation.
