Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (18 page)

This is going to give you a narrative arc that takes the target, quickly, on a strong emotional ride that has conflict and tension, and doing it this way wil fire the hot cognition.

Things don’t always need to be told in terms of extreme events—but they always should be extreme in terms of the character’s emotional experience. This is what makes a good narrative.

Why use this pattern? The man-in-the-jungle formula forces you to deliver a narrative in a human, active way where you do something in the real world that shows drive and tenacity, self-confidence, and a connection to reality.

When we listen to your narrative, it’s not what happens to you that makes you interesting, but it’s what you do about the situations you are in.

The emotional power in a narrative comes from a character that engages difficult obstacles and finds ways to overcome them.

Here’s another example of the pattern, where I built an intrigue frame with a compel ing narrative. I was taught this pattern by a Hol ywood screenwriter. It’s cal ed the “ticking time bomb”:

Put a man in the jungle.
I had an $18 mil ion deal some time ago in which I was responsible for finding $6.4 mil ion from investors (the bank would provide the rest of the money). It took about 10 days, and I had commitments on for al $6.4 mil ion. Then, less than 72 hours before closing, something unwanted happened.

The beasts attack.
One of the investors, Jeff Jacobs, went AWOL. His bank would not wire the money without his signature, and I could not close the deal. That was a Friday afternoon. The entire $18 mil ion deal was in jeopardy. I was imagining the worst: Maybe he was at the bottom of his Malibu swimming pool clutching a bag of bricks and a “goodbye cruel world” note. I spent al weekend looking for him—but he could not be found. By Monday morning, I had less than eight hours to come up with either Jeff Jacobs or his money. Al my phones were ringing. On the other end of the line: the other investors, the bank, the sel er, and my partners. Each cal er was madder than the last.

Will he get out of the jungle?
I sat down at the computer and started e-mailing consultants and sales types in our industry. I offered $1,000 for any kind of information on Jacobs. One of them found me a second address and a phone number, which I cal ed. A woman answered.

Luckily, it was Mrs. Jacobs.

“You’re his wife?” I asked.

“Yes sir, I am,” she said.

I was thril ed. “Mrs. Jacobs, I am so glad I found you,” I told her. “Can you please sign these closing documents on behalf of your husband—they al ow for the wife to sign. I would appreciate it so much. I’l even drive out there [to Palm Springs].”

“Oh, you said this is to help Jeff out?” she asked nicely.

“Yes!” I said.

“Wel . You know I would love to do that for you …”

I cut her short, “Great!”

Then she cut
me
off. “
But
I’ve been separated from that snake-eyed sonofabitch for 11 years,” she told me, “and I’l burn in hel before I sign anything to help him out.”

The minute I heard that, I dropped everything and jumped the jet for Palm Springs.

That’s the important fourth step to the narrative pattern building the intrigue frame:
Get the man to the edge of the jungle, but don’t get him out
of it.
In other words, the intrigue is created by the fact that there’s no final resolution.

To hold intrigue and make it work as an emotional event, a hot cognition, I don’t complete the story (although it has a truly great ending, and it wil always come up later) and instead move to the next frame in the stack: the prize frame.

Hot Cognition 2: The Prize Frame

As I mentioned in Chapter 2, the prize frame—or
prizing
—let’s you position yourself as the most important party in the deal, not the people on the other side of the table. Successful prizing
flips the frame.
Even though you are pitching the deal—it results in the target chasing you, trying to win
your
attention.

A simple example of the prize frame comes from my trip to the Helen Woodward Animal Shelter in Rancho Santa Fe, California—one of the first times I recognized my own power disrupted and status seized and watched as the frame
flipped on me.
On entering the animal shelter, I had the classic hero’s frame, announcing, “I’m here to rescue a homeless, abandoned dog.” It was true. The dog that impressed me the most would win the prize—moving in with me and getting free food and medical care for life. Soon I found the dog I liked and was ready to pay the fee and complete the rescue. Spot seemed like a good name. But wait!

“Excuse me, sir.”

It was the “Adoption Counselor.” She was in her early 20s, and if she was your sister, you’d tel her to use less hair gel and lose the purple glitter eye shadow.

“What kind of home do you run?” she asked. “Do you have young children? What kind of job do you have? If you’re backyard isn’t big enough, we don’t recommend a pet like this. And who wil take care of the animal when you are at work? What’s their number, and what’s your income level?”

This was wild. A 23-year-old volunteer with pink streaks in her hair was tel ing me I might not be a suitable rescuer of this homeless mutt. My hero frame was smashed. Now I was busy defending myself. Giving examples of how I real y was a good person.

I answered her questions. Once she gave the nod, I was ready to pay the fee and rescue the animal. Wait! Next, I had to fil out an application.

Then I was told to come back in a few hours to see whether I was approved. I came in the hero, and the shelter turned me into a supplicant. Now I was begging to be considered a good enough citizen to rescue a homeless, abandoned animal, of unknown potty skil s. I became the commodity, and Spot became the prize. The shelter had flipped the frame.

Let’s continue with an example of using the prize frame in a pitch. Because it’s specific to my business, pitching deals, I’l start with a detailed example and fol ow up with a more generic pattern that you can use to develop your own prize frame. What fol ows can be used toward the end of the pitch session:

“Guys, I’m glad I was able to find some free time to come here and show you my deal. I don’t always get to meet the buyers. I know we’re having fun here, but I have to wrap up. I have another meeting. We are busy, and there just aren’t many deals like this—and obviously none that include me

—and I’m fortunate to be in demand. Getting serious for a moment, I do have to choose which investors to let in and which to turn away. Before things go any further here, I need to figure out who you people real y are. Yeah, we have your bios and know your reputation. But we have to be cautious about who we bring on board. And I have to sel you to my partner, Joshua—who is going to want to know why I think you would be good partners.
Can you give me that—can you tell me why we would enjoy working with you?”

So what have I done in such a statement? I’ve delivered the prize frame, and the basic elements 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 real y, I need to know more.

4. Please start giving me some materials on yourself.

5. I stil need to figure out if we would work wel 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.

The prize frame is a hot cognition that signals the target’s croc brain that you are strong, you are not needy, and you are not going to supplicate for a deal.

Dr. Robert Zajonc, writing in
The American Psychologist
, describes the importance of these hot cognitions and the importance of these emotional processes. He suggests, for example, that it’s not real y important for us to know if someone has just said, “You are a friend” or “You are a fiend.” What you real y need to know is whether the statement was made with
affection
or
contempt
. Whether the word was
friend
or
fiend
is the cold part of the message. It doesn’t matter. Affection or contempt is the hot part. Researchers found that 22 times as much information is given in the hot part of the message.

Unlike some of the other frames, the prize frame relies a great deal on how strong your conviction is. In the pattern noted earlier, I’ve given you the external formula for the prize frame—which is what you say to the target. However, the prize frame doesn’t come only from words that you say.

It’s how you’re organized internal y. Here’s the internal pattern, the words you say to yourself to ful y activate and deploy the prize frame: I am the prize.

You are trying to impress me.

You are trying to win my approval.

Over time, as you get good at this stuff, you’l begin to see that the prize frame does not rely on words and explanations. It’s more about the strength of your convictions about who or what is the prize.

Hot Cognition 3: The Time Frame

When I was sel ing a deal cal ed
Geomark
to Boeing, I used this version of the time frame:

“Guys, my company, Geomark, is a great deal, and you can’t bluff me about what you are thinking; I know you agree. Consider the situation we’re in. We are here for a third meeting at your corporate headquarters. Right now I’m looking at your team: four Boeing executives, three engineers, and two of your consultants. Why are you here in force? Because you love the deal. And you should love it. The deal is hot, that’s no secret, and I’ve never used this fact to pressure you, but we can’t ignore it either. For this reason, we have al got to make a decision about the deal in the next week. Why one week? This time constraint is not under my control; it’s the market working. It’s harsh but true: We have to decide by July 18 if you’re in or out.”

The effect of time on decision making has been researched for 100 years, and nothing has changed about human nature in that time: In nearly al instances,
the addition of time pressure to a decision-making event reduces decision quality.
It is true, for instance, that you can get someone to buy a car more easily if you tel him that the sale ends at the end of the day. Why does this strategy work so wel ?
There’s a scarcity bias in the
brain, and potential loss of a deal triggers fear.
But just because imposing scarcity works wel isn’t a recommendation to use it—we don’t want to taint our deal with the whiff of cheap 1980’s sales tactics. We want the target to see us as a professional agent. To trust us. So I tend not to use much time pressure at al . Extreme time pressure feels forced and cutrate. But the truth is that time is a factor in every deal. You have to find the right balance between fairness and pressure and set a real time constraint.

Here’s the time frame pattern you can use and fol ow:

“Guys, nobody likes time pressure. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it. No one does. But good deals with strong fundamentals are like an Amtrak train, or more like a
deal train
. They stop at the station, pick up investors, and have a set departure time. And when it’s time—the train has to leave the station.

“You have plenty of time to decide if you like me—and if you want this deal. If you don’t love it, there’s no way you should do it; we al know that.

“But this deal is bigger than me, or you or any one person; the deal is going ahead. There’s a critical path, a real timeline that everyone has to work with. So we need to decide by the 15th.”

That’s it. You don’t have to do any more. With just that simple pattern, the time constraint is set. You don’t have to be overt or aggressive with time pressure. Every single person knows what you’re talking about when you say the train is leaving the station at such and such date and time.

Hot Cognition 4: The Moral Authority Frame

Robert Zajonc, the thought leader on hot cognitions, once wrote, “We evaluate each other constantly, we evaluate each others’ behaviors and we evaluate the motives and consequences of that behavior.” And this, of course, is the key to the reason we stack frames. Because we are going to be evaluated no matter what happens and what we do, let’s get the evaluation we want, something Zajonc cal s
wanting
.

So, while it’s tempting to get caught up in the best way to explain the financial mumbo-jumbo and how to best demo our products, the heart of the matter is that you have to do what it takes to create this wanting. There may be other factors that contribute to our effectiveness in the pitch, but certainly one of the most important is getting this wanting to happen. How is it done? To create a desire in the target’s mind and to go on from the pitch to the hookpoint, every presenter has to use hot cognitions to create wanting and desire.

Until a wanting evaluation is in the target’s croc brain, the information you are giving is largely being ignored or at least not making a big impression.

Now that we’ve gone through prize frames, intrigue frames, and time frames and their uses, here is another example that wil deepen your understanding of how to use frames to create hot cognitions and wanting.

The Morality Frame in Practice
The most powerful politicians in the world have people underneath them who wil do exactly what they are told.

Each has phalanx of subordinates who do his or her bidding.

Take the president of the United States. If he orders a precision air strike on a clandestine enemy stronghold, a succession of people underneath him wil execute his order, al the way down to the pilot in the F-22. The president can lead us into a war or, with a few pen strokes, sign a bil that wil affect mil ions. His frame, in most of his encounters, is stronger than that of nearly any opposition.

The president, like many other world leaders, isn’t used to being told what to do. Think about what one has to go through just to become president, how many personal attacks you suffer, and the constant political reframing of things you have said. Once president, though, you may have one of the most sophisticated and strongest frames in modern history. Yet there is one person whose direction the president wil fol ow, almost blindly. When David Scheiner says to Barack Obama, turn around and take your clothes off—he does it without question.