Book Summary: Pitch Anything

• Author:: Oren Klaff
• Full Title:: Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal
• Book Type:: Book
• My Rating:: 3/5

Why

Most presentations and pitches fail because they focus on logic. Humans are emotional beings.

Short Summary

Pitch Anything talks about why the conventional approach of using logic and facts to deliver your big ideas fail and how you can use the power of frames in a social encounter with storytelling to trigger the right emotions and desire in the listener.

5 Key Takeaways

1. You talk from the rational neo-cortex, the cognitive logical part of the brain but the message is processed by the listener in the primitive part that deals with instincts and emotions. #system1 #system2 [[Daniel Kahneman]]
2. When you pitch, lead with triggers that work on the instinctive and emotional response of the brain. Facts come later to support your case. The ancient brain ignores more than it accepts, needs high contrast options to choose from, provides an emotional response, prefers the here and now, craves novelty, and needs verifiable evidence over abstract concepts.
3. Every social interaction has an undercurrent of power dynamics. To get the attention, to keep it and convince the listener, you need to own the “frame”. Steps include: Set the frame, start with intrigue, tell a story, make your offer the prize, add a time constraint and close with authority.
4. Avoid traps in social encounters which puts you in a lower position. Or bust through frames being imposed on you through denials, rejections, but with humour so as to not offend. Neediness erodes status.
5. Your passion for work, the domain expertise and knowledge become the source of your strength and confidence that allows you to challenge oncoming power frames and beta traps. Needs deliberate practice but also needs time to evolve organically to suit your personality and your work. Any forced fit will most definitely have negative consequences.

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Long Summary

Brain Analogy

• Crocodile brain: survival
• Mid-brain: social relationships
• Neo-cortex: problem-solving (cognitive)
• Messages are composed by the new-cortex, but received and processed by the crocodile brain first.
• Crocodile brain
  • ignores more than it accepts
  • needs high contrast and well-differentiated options to choose
  • emotional response
  • here and now
  • craves novelty
  • verifiable evidence and not abstract concepts

STRONG Framework

• setting the frame
• telling the story
• revealing the intrigue
• offering the prize
• nailing the hook
• getting a decision

Frame Control

• Every business conversation is a collision of frames, points of view, perspectives, with the weaker one being subsumed by the larger one. The larger one then dominates the narrative
• Your frame is a result of your power, authority, strength, information and status
• Types of opposing frames you encounter
  • power frame
  • time frame
  • analyst frame
• frame response types
  • power-busting frame
  • time constraining frame
  • intrigue frame
  • prize frame

Power Frame

• Power is derived from their ego and status
• Avoid power rituals in business situations that reinforce their alpha status
• Power-busting move:
  • use a mildly shocking but not unfriendly act
  • use defiance and light humor
  • use the first opportunity to perpetrate a small denial
  • act out some type of defiance
  • Capture and keep attention until your pitch is complete

Prize Frame

• Subtle reframing of everything your audience does and says as if they are trying to win you over
• Make the buyer qualify themselves

Time Frame

• Set your own time constraints first before anyone else does.
• Time frames can be used to challenge your frame by disrupting you and taking back control.

Hot & Cold Cognitions

• Hot cognitions = feelings of want and desire

• Cold cognitions = analysis
• Don’t let audience slip into cold cognitions during the pitch by removing unnecessary technical details. When asked for details, keep it brief and refer them to spec sheet later.
• Focus is on the business relationship they seek to build with you
• A hot cognition is the inner certainty of “knowing” something that comes through feeling it. A cold cognition is the certainty of “knowing” something is good or bad by having evaluated it.

The Intrigue Story

• If the audience can guess the movie is about and what happens next all the time, they tune out.
• Most people want novelty and intrigue. Figuring it out is a form of entertainment.
• No one goes to a meeting wanting to hear something they already know. Most of the times the audience is trying to understand how similar is the idea you’re pitching to something they already know or a problem they have already solved. If the answer is yes, they tune out.
• Intrigue frame is useful because it bypasses the logical brain and triggers the primitive one.
• When the listener drills into a technical detail, respond with a short story about you.
• Keep their attention by not telling how the story ends until you want to.
• Characteristics of our intrigue story should include:
  • Brief and relevant to your presentation
  • Story about you
  • Element of risk, danger or uncertainty
  • Time pressure with ominous consequences
  • Tension/conflict with a villain

Prizing

• A series of deliberate actions to frame you and your offer as the prize and shift the balance of power in your favour
• One of the ways of doing this is by making the buyer qualify themselves back to you.
  • Ask them questions like “Why should I do business with you?”
  • Make them “apply” for your services
• Another thing to guard against are attempts to change the agenda, meeting times and who will attend which alter status back in their favour
• “Always be closing” a popular catchphrase in sales coaching materials emphasizes the need to keep closing deals, not the quality of deals, not the deals you should focus on, but just the number of deals.

Situational Status

• Most business environments are setup with moats to put you in a low social status and when you pitch from that low-level your ability to persuade diminishes.
• A “beta” is a subtle social ritual to put you in a low-status position and keep you there.
• You break out of this or elevate your low-status through small acts of defiance and denial, And also by redirecting to your domain. Use your domain expertise and knowledge to then take the high-status position. AKA “local star power”
• When you’re in the client’s territory, to neutralize the person holding the high-status, temporarily capture, redistribute to others who can become your allies.
• Things to do when you know you’re going to start a meeting from a low-status position
  • Be on time
  • Don’t partake in social rituals that reinforce the target’s status
  • Create high status immediately. Force a frame collision and set your frame early.
  • Redirect to your domain of knowledge and expertise
  • Add a prize frame to yourself and your offer
  • Make your customer say something that reinforces your status

Pitch

• At the start, the audience is wondering how long they’re going to be stuck listening to you. Put them at ease and mention you will only take 20 minutes and leave 10 minutes for Q&A.
• When presenting, your mastery over time and attention is more important than mastery over the details.
• 4 Phases of the pitch: Introduce yourself and the big idea – 5 min, Explain the What and secret sauce – 10 mins, Offer the deal – 2 mins and Stack frames for a hot cognition

Pitch Phase 1 – Introduce yourself and the big idea – 5 mins

• Speak about your track record of things built and successes. < 2 mins
• one great thing about yourself > one great thing + one good thing
• Don’t get hung up on details, questions and deep conversations at this stage
• After the “Who I Am” story, introduce the “Why Now” story. Frame your idea as new and emerging. Contrast it how it was before and paint the future. Convey that your ideas were the result of your observation of patterns to answer why it is relevant, important and should be considered now

Three-Market-Forces Pattern: Trendcasting

The three basic steps of trend casting are:

1. Explain the most important changes in our business. Forecast the trends. Identify important developments both in your market and beyond.
2. Talk about the impact of these developments on costs and customer demand.
3. Explain how these trends have briefly opened a market window.

Three-Market-Forces Pattern:

• Economic trends
• Social trends
• Technology trends

The secret structure of great talks

Movement – if we show two possible states without highlighting the difference, people may not always see it. Need to show the movement from one to the other. Movement might also suggest threat, so it needs to be carefully presented as an opportunity.

The Big Idea Time

For [target customers] Who are dissatisfied with [the current offerings in the market]. My idea/product is a [new idea or product category] That provides [key problem/solution features]. Unlike [the competing product] My idea/product is [describe key features].

Pitch Phase 2 – Explain the What and your Secret Sauce – 10 mins

• Possibility of scaring the ancient brain multiply when you start to explain how your product/solution works.
• Avoid lengthy details about how it works. Details about relationships between people is welcome

Attention = Desire X Tension (balance)

• Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of desire. Norepinephrine is the neurotransmitter of tension. Together they add up to attention.
• Attention = Offer a reward X Take something away
• Attention – directly proportional – information novelty
• Novelty = violating the target’s expectation in a pleasing way
• Create information gap (what they know and what they want to know) which leads to curiosity of the big idea
• When curiosity is satiated, pitch is over.
• Tension indicates consequences and therefore importance.
• Create tension through push and pull patterns Push and Pull Tension Patterns
• If you only pull it will be perceived as hard selling
• If you push too much they will leave
• Tension loops: push-pull-create tension-resolve it.

Push-Pull Patterns

• Low-Key, Low-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
  • PUSH: “There’s a real possibility that we might not be right for each other.”
  • [Pause. Allow the push to sink in. It must be authentic.]
  • PULL: “But then again, if this did work out, our forces could combine to become something great.”
• Medium-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
  • PUSH: “There’s so much more to a deal than just the idea.
  • I mean, there’s a venture-capital group in San Francisco that doesn’t even care what the idea is-they don’t even look at it I when a deal comes in. The only thing they care about is who the people are behind the deal. That makes sense. I’ve learned that ideas are common, a dime a dozen. What really counts is having someone in charge who has passion and experience and integrity. So if you and I don’t have that view in common, it would never work between us.
  • [Pause.]
  • PULL: “But that’s crazy to think. Obviously you value people over smart ideas. I’ve met corporate robots before that only care about numbers-and you are definitely not a robot.”
• High-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
  • PUSH: “Based on the couple of reactions I’m getting from you-it seems like this isn’t a good fit. I think that should only do deals where there is trust and deals you strongly believe in. So you let’s just wrap this up for now and agree to get together on the next one.
  • [Pause. Wait for a response. Start packing up your stuff. Be willing to leave if the target doesn’t stop you.]

Pitch Phase 3 – Offer the deal – 2 mins

• What you will deliver, when and how.
• Explain their part, role and responsibilities
• Offer summarized facts and not details to ensure they have a complete picture of the offer
• most important deliverable in your deal is you.

Pitch Phase 4 – Stack frames for a hot cognition

• Hot cognitions = feelings of want and desire
• Order of stacking: intrigue frame, prize frame, time frame, moral authority frame

Hot Cognition 1: The Intrigue story

• It’s not about the What, but Who and how the Who reacted to the situation
• Your idea is an abstract notion, but you in situations reveal your character
• 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.

Hot Cognition 2: Prizing Prize frame

The basic elements of the Prize Frame include:

1. I have one of the better deals in the market.
2. I am choosy about who I work with.
3. It seems like I could work with you, but really, I need to know more.
4. Please start giving me some materials on yourself.
5. I still need to figure out if we would work well together and be good partners.
6. What did your last business partners say about you?
7. When things go sideways in a deal, how do you handle it?
8. My existing partners are choosy.

Here’s the internal pattern, the words you say to yourself to fully activate and deploy the prize frame:

• I am the prize.
• You are trying to impress me.
• You are trying to win my approval.

Hot Cognition 3: Time frame

• Time pressure reduces decision making quality. Push it too far and it has negative consequencs
• Scarcity bias

Hot Cognition 4: Moral Authority Frame

• Stack the frames, create the desire and trigger instant hot cognitions. Don’t wait for the evaluation that might trigger cold cognitions.
• Reality isn’t waiting to be discovered it’s waiting to be framed.

Neediness

• Neediness erodes status
• It’s perceived as a threat and leads to avoidance
• The awkward two-minute period after the pitch is the most vulnerable time
• Reasons for this behavior:
  • When we want something (money, project,job) that only the target can give
  • When need cooperation and can’t get it
  • Validated when target says yes
  • Target is uninterested or loses interest in you
• It’s an involuntary fear response when triggered
• Solution: Expect nothing, focus on what you do well and leave the social encounter

Social Dynamics

• 3 insights into social dynamics
  • Structural – package ideas for the brain that triggers hot cognitions (desire and wanting)
  • Procedural – be on the lookout for power frames and win the frame collisions with stronger frames
  • Humor and passion for your work

Steps to learn the method

• Learn to recognize the beta traps
• Gradually side step them
• Identify and label social frames
• Initiate frame collisions with safe targets at first
• Take control of a social frame through conflict and tension. If you trigger defensive responses, you might be coming on too strong
• Stick to a few frames that work for you and avoid complication

Language of Frame Control

• Use the language and practice with your team
  • “These guys set beta traps from the lobby all the way to the conference room. You have to time frame them immediately and withdraw. After that, they just hit you with power frames. Just break it with a prize frame. And then frame stack a few push/pull patterns.
  • “Here comes the analyst frame. Let’s hard-core intrigue frame, seize local star power, and withdraw.”
• Here are the most important terms for you to know and to own personally:
  • Frame control
  • Power-busting frame
  • Frame collisions
  • Prizing
  • Beta traps
  • Seizing status
  • Local star power
  • Push/pull
  • Alpha
  • Hot cognition
  • Crocodile brain
  • Neocortex