Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (21 page)

In the movie, Dex has developed his own derivative version of the Tao that draws its inspiration from popular culture. He cal s it the “Tao of Steve”—named for three guys named Steve who embody al the coolness and social poise that Dex is seeking. The three Steves are Steve McQueen, Steve Austin, and Steve McGarrett.

McQueen, the so-cal ed King of Cool, rode an antihero persona to become the highest-paid actor of his generation. His roles in movies such as the
Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape
, and
Bullitt
won him a legion of female admirers and also cemented his reputation as a “man’s man.”

Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) was the detective in charge of the elite crime unit on the popular 1960s show
Hawaii Five-O
. He was a no-nonsense, dedicated investigator who always stayed one step ahead of the bad guys.

Steve Austin (Lee Majors) was the bionic man in the 1970s hit,
The Six Million Dollar Man
. Austin was a former astronaut who survived an experimental plane crash. He was rebuilt with bionic parts and became an operative for a covert government agency.

Al three were noted for being cool without real y trying. The actors helped convey this feeling by maintaining poise in pressure situations. They never got flustered, even with the bad guys closing in.

Dex believed that the three Steves attracted admirers not because they had cool cars or bionic legs, but rather because they understood the three main rules of the Tao:

Eliminate your desires.
It’s not necessary to want things. Sometimes you have to let them come to you.

Be excellent in the presence of others.
Show people one thing that you are very good at.

Withdraw.
At a crucial moment, when people are expecting you to come after them, pul away.

The Tao of Steve is the perfect philosophy to use when you finish your pitch. Use it to stifle the urge to seek approval from your audience.

People want what they can’t have. So, when you finish your pitch, deny your audience. Start to pul away. In so doing, you banish insecurity and trigger a powerful prizing effect on your audience. They wil come to you.

The Final Pitch

Now, final y, it was the day of my fourth and final pitch. Six months ago, I had hundreds of thousands in my bank account. Now I had $468, enough for half of a payment on my Porsche, and that was if I didn’t pay rent or eat. Nevertheless, in my head, I ran a constant audio loop:
I don’t need these
people; they need me. I am the prize.

I stood in front of Enterprise Partners, the largest VC firm south of Silicon Val ey. It was nearly 4 p.m., and the people inside were ready to go home. I needed to electrify them, light up the room, and most important, I needed to forget that this was
do or die.
If they sensed any desperation, my partner and I would go home busted. This was my last chance.

I walked into a room of tired-looking investors. They’d been hearing pitches al day; none of them even bothered to say hel o. It was unnerving.

They asked me a series of hostile questions. They wondered aloud if the market was big enough or if there was too much competition already.

One of them actual y laughed at our idea. And to make matters worse, the partner who brought us through the door (
sponsored us
, so to speak) questioned whether we should even be an Internet company, instead, suggesting that we settle on making PC software, which was the equivalent of saying, I no longer support this deal.

But none of that mattered. I delivered the knock-down, drag-out, bare-knuckled superpitch. Exactly 20 minutes of hardcore finance in a sexy Internet wrapper. At the end, I continued with my plan to run the prize frame and qualify them.

I made three points. Here’s what I told the Enterprise investors:

1. This deal wil be ful y subscribed in the next 14 days.

2. We don’t need VC money, but we want a big name on our cap sheet that wil strengthen our initial public offering (IPO) registration.

3. I think you guys are interesting, but are you real y the right investor? We need to know more about you and the relationships and brand value your firm can bring to our deal.

That was it. I was total y spent. At that moment, I couldn’t muster enough mental power or energy to do anything but sit stil and be silent. Now it was my turn to be the stone-faced gnome. I just sat there, with no trace of validation-seeking behavior, no neediness, waiting for them to react to me.

To my surprise, they ful y engaged with me and in minutes had committed to the deal. They wanted what I had. I’d redeemed myself with a great opening and finished the pitch with confidence and poise, and the whole thing came together perfectly.

We sat in the room for another hour and discussed al the variables. We came up with a huge $14 mil ion valuation—$6 mil ion more than I had expected.

Yes, my bank account had dwindled to $468, but the next day, Enterprise Partners official y agreed to invest. And a few days later, they wired $2.1 mil ion into my account. I remember going to the ATM and getting a balance slip so that I could see the $2.1 mil ion printed on it. Thirty days later, Enterprise completed the financing with an additional $4 mil ion.

Despite the difficulties and hard work, going after a deal is a thril . Sure, I do it because I want the results—the loan, the job, the money, the deal

… whatever. But that’s not the only reason. I chase these things because the adventure excites me. Al deal makers know: There’s a king-of-the-world moment when we close a deal that is never forgotten. It’s the satisfaction of preparing for a high-stakes meeting, giving a mouth-watering pitch, and with a chest ful of confidence, getting the deal.

Over time, I would have had many fewer of these moments if I had not learned:
Never be needy!

This is the story of a pitch so massive and so high stakes that in order to tel it properly, I’l need to tel you what happened in the months leading up to the day of the pitch. There is perhaps no other single deal I’ve ever been involved with that better demonstrates the ideas at the core of my method and why it works. If you find that the story borders on the cinematic at times, wel , that’s what it was like to be there, and that’s what it’s like when you’re playing with hundreds of mil ions and there’s so much at stake. Let’s begin.

I was 100 miles away from Los Angeles and in no hurry to return to the city. I had a very good reason, too: Business was dead. The col apse of the U.S. economy had seized the credit markets, freezing deals for more than a year. After pitching nearly nonstop for more than five years, I found myself with nothing to pitch—literal y nothing. This lack of action was frustrating because at heart, I like the adrenaline rush that comes from playing this game. That’s why I do it. I get the same adrenaline rush from action sports as I do in a boardroom—where I’ve raised more than $400 mil ion.

Then it al went away—
Poof!
—as the economy soured and the deal window shut. It was clear, after a ful year, that it wasn’t going to return to normal—for a long time. That’s why I’d decided to get away—from al of it. The deal business had been very good to me, and I was in a position to do anything I wanted. I told friends, col eagues, everyone that I was done.
“I’m hanging up my guns,”
I said.

And now I was due for some serious downtime in the middle of nowhere to figure out what I’d be doing next in life. A one-week vacation to the Anza-Borrego Desert had turned into two, and I was enjoying al that the tiny town of Ocotil io Wel s had to offer—which wasn’t much. It was a Monday in December, a dry 78 degrees, and most of the weekend guests had now retreated from this outpost in southern California on the east end of the Salton Sea. The solitude felt good. Most of my day was spent mountain biking and relaxing on a mesa. I snapped pictures of the sun as it settled behind a bluff. Life was good. And I was oblivious to the fact that someone was desperately trying to reach me.

A Monster Deal

Across the mountain range that separates the high desert from the coast, in Los Angeles, Sam Greenberg was that someone. He sat in his office, frustrated, wondering what it would take to get in touch with me. I had pretty much made myself unreachable—my phone had been switched off, my e-mail autoresponder was switched on, and almost no one knew where I was staying.

Greenberg had a deal on the table, a big deal—10 figures, $1 bil ion. He wanted me to be his point man, just like the way things were before the economy col apsed. Greenberg was a man of action. He kept a private jet at Palomar Airport—not as a luxury item but as a tool to get to deals faster than the next guy. He would find me, get the plane in the air, and get me back to work. At least that was his plan, and it served his purpose.

An acquaintance final y spil ed my hotel information, and Greenberg left a short message on the hotel answering machine.

“I’ve got a monster deal,” he said in a loud voice. “Cal me, today. ASAP.”

Three hours later, I entered my hotel room and saw the red light flashing—so much for privacy.
Who needs to reach me that badly?
Only a handful of people knew how to get in touch. I listened to Greenberg’s message, alternately ignoring it and then wondering about it.
No
. After 10

years of nonstop deal making, I’d sworn off deals. I’d sworn off the industry.

No.

I was resolute, but I owed Greenberg enough to cal him back and tel him as much. When he answered the phone, my first word was “No.”

“I haven’t even told you the deal,” Greenberg said.

Greenberg had a natural gift of persuasion and typical y got what he wanted, but this time I was sure I wanted no part of it.

“My answer is stil no,” I said.

“Just listen to me for one minute,” Greenberg demanded.

“It’s not going to matter,” I said. “I’ve seen about every deal out there—it’s a wasteland.”

Greenberg told me about a deal right in our backyard. Davis Field, a regional airport on the outskirts of Los Angeles, was being rechristened as a large private fixed-base operator (FBO) as a relief valve for the overflowing Los Angeles air space and would need a whopping $1 bil ion raised to finance the effort.

“You
can’t
turn this one down,” Greenberg bel owed. “This is not some shopping center. This is a
friggin’ airport!
”

“Sounds great, but I can’t do it,” I said. “I’m out of the game.”

After three or four expletives, Greenberg tried another approach.

“That’s fine. I got someone else lined up anyway, so …” His voice trailed off.

After a long pause, I took the bait. “Who?”

“Barnes.”

“Oh, please.”

“He can pul it off,” Greenberg said. “And on your end, I guess we’l just chalk it up to a missed opportunity. You’re gonna kick yourself.”

Greenberg indeed had another guy lined up, but everyone knew that Paul Barnes was not exactly “the best.”

Greenberg decided to stop his pursuit—for now.

“Have fun sticking your head in the sand while we’re doing a monster deal,” he added in closing. Then he hung up, not even waiting for a response.

I laughed and thought about the cal . Over the years, I’d become hardwired to analyze every pitch to find out what worked and what didn’t.

Greenberg’s pitch meant there was just one deal in a dead market, and that was no reason to unretire. I cal ed the front desk and asked the clerk to hold al cal s.

Two weeks went by, and sure enough—Paul Barnes did not perform as expected. Sure, he was confident and had a great analytical mind, but he couldn’t think on his feet. If circumstances changed or things got off plan, he spooked easily. When Greenberg suddenly asked him to fly to Chicago on a red-eye for a meeting, Barnes begged off. “I need a few days to prepare,” he said.

One of the things my business associates know about me is this: I would go anywhere, anytime to make a deal happen. If a flight was canceled, I’d drive. No cars? I’d take a bus. And after al these years, Greenberg trusted me. He wouldn’t think twice about making a strategy change based on my recommendations.

So Greenberg was worried. He had two months to prepare the pitch for the airport selection committee—not just a presentation, but a ful -pitch package, complete with a detailed financial analysis and strategy. He knew I could deliver a real face melter of a pitch, a compel ing and dramatic story that explained everything.
Why now, why us, critical path, upside, downside, and competitive advantage
. Al stuff that I’d done hundreds of times.

After Barnes proved unsuitable for the situation, Greenberg realized that he needed me.

Greenberg Goes to Borrego Springs

Greenberg’s Legacy 600 landed at the alarmingly tiny runway in Borrego Springs before 10 a.m., and within 15 minutes, he was in a car, headed to the Borrego Val ey Inn. I’d agreed to meet him at noon in the hotel lobby.

It was nearly 10 years earlier that Greenberg had listened to one of my pitches and tried to hire me on the spot. I turned him down, saying I wasn’t for hire, but we went on to partner up eventual y. Together we made a lot of deals that propel ed Greenberg Capital into a premiere position in the financial markets.

Now, the team had disbanded, and no deals were happening.

At 11:54 a.m., he approached the lobby. This was classic Sam Greenberg, who, like the legendary Carthaginian commander Hannibal, would either find a way or make one. This guy would not fly back without pushing our relationship to the brink. This was just the way he worked.

Shortly after 11:30 a.m., I thought about possible scenarios. Was there anything Sam could say to sway me? Not likely. Was the deal economy coming back any time soon? Also not likely.

There was a certain peace I had now, away from the rat race, not tied down by phones and e-mails. And I didn’t miss the grind. Not at al .