Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (22 page)

It was getting close to noon. I headed to the lobby. Sam was there, dressed casual y, sitting on a blue vinyl couch. Both of us were uncomfortable at first—as if meeting for the first time—we both had our game faces on.

“You know I can’t let the plane idle on the runway for too long, so pack up and let’s head back,” Greenberg said with a straight face.

Ahhh, the time frame—it would need to be dealt with.

“At this altitude, after your 25-minute short hop, that jet can idle for three and a half hours in 98 degree heat with a half tank of fuel,” I said, cracking Greenberg’s power frame in half with the stronger expert frame. “And I’m hungry. It’s your turn to buy lunch.”

Greenberg countered the expert frame with a prize frame. “You’ve never made as much money as you have working with me,” he calmly replied.

“Look at you—you’re leaning forward, hanging on every word I say. You’re practicality drooling. That’s how much you want this deal. It’s almost sad.”

“Ah, you’re throwing a prize frame at me! I taught you too much!” I said, easily handling Greenberg’s reframe. “Look, we could do this al afternoon. Forget it. Let’s go eat. You’re stil buying. Fol ow me.”

On the way to the sandwich shop, we continued to frame and reframe and deframe about who would buy a $20 lunch, even though Greenberg’s fueled, piloted, and ful y staffed jet was on the runway burning $8,400 an hour.

“Let’s get back to doing what we always do,” Greenberg said, continuing the conversation at the restaurant.

“Market says that’s a bad idea,” I replied.

This was probably an anticipated objection. He decided to chal enge me. Chide me a bit.

“Why exactly did you come here?” he asked. “You just ran away.
You left because you lost your edge
,” Greenberg continued.

“There was a point where I thought you might be one of the best,” he said. “Now, the only thing next to your name wil be …
quitter
.”

That one made me clench my teeth. I stood up and gave him a long stare. I was ready to walk away right there.

“You’re mad because I’m right,” he said. “Maybe you’l come back with me and prove me wrong. You can’t hang out and be a hippie—or whatever you cal this—the rest of your life.”

I could feel his neediness, and it was clear that I had the upper hand, for the moment. But you never have that upper hand long with Greenberg.

“Give me a minute to think about it,” I told him.

The $1 bil ion figure for this deal was off the charts—I’d been accustomed to pitching deals in the $30 mil ion range. This would be the biggest deal I’d ever put together. And it was only fal ing into my wheelhouse because the bad economy had sent everyone else scrambling. The fact that Greenberg had flown out to the middle of the desert also gave me a sense of importance—and a notion that loyalty stil existed in the cutthroat world of investment banking.

“Let’s talk about this,” I said final y, looking across at Greenberg. “What exactly are you offering if I get back in the game?”

Greenberg’s eyes lit up. The bul ying had worked. He now had a hookpoint. It was time to take advantage. For the next 15 minutes, he explained the deal, pitched it actual y, and laid out my role in the big picture. Then he closed the deal and sealed it, giving me some reasonable terms and a rare handshake.

Little did I know that Greenberg had withheld a key piece of information—there was a competitor in this pitch—a
big competitor
.

Preparing the Big Pitch

The next day, back in Los Angeles, Greenberg and I got together at Greenberg’s high-rise office to discuss an action plan. It was Wednesday.

Greenberg came to the meeting knowing that he’d have to mention the competitor. But he waited until the end of the meeting and then sprung it on me.

“Did I mention that Goldhammer is pitching the deal, too?” Greenberg asked.

I almost spit up my coffee.

“What?!”

“Yeah, they have a team on it,” Greenberg said. “Relax. It’s nobody we can’t take down.”

“You knew that when you flew out, and you didn’t tel me?”

“What does it matter?” Greenberg said, trying to play it down.

“It matters because they beat us most of the time,” I said. “Goldhammer is Goldhammer. They have 10 times the resources, and they have the Goldhammer pedigree.”

“That’s why I got you, so we could beat them,” Greenberg said.

“No,” I said. “You didn’t disclose this, and if you had, I wouldn’t have come. I’l go toe to toe with anyone, but this is not a fair fight.”

I was seething. Greenberg had purposely withheld this information, and now I felt betrayed. We were up against Goldhammer, who would throw 12 to 15 people at the effort against our 6. But the potential rewards certainly made the effort worth it. If we won the pitch and actual y raised the $1

bil ion for the airport over a period of five years, Greenberg Capital would reap more than $25 mil ion in fees. Of that, I would take 30 percent. So I had a lot to prove, a lot at stake, and a lot to gain. Al I had to do was take down Goldhammer and my old arch-rival Timothy Chance.

Meanwhile at Goldhammer

The Goldhammer office in Los Angeles occupies the entire twelfth floor of a gorgeous downtown skyscraper with a view al the way across Hol ywood to the Pacific. The floor is decorated throughout with touches from the Orient—a jade dragon, ornate vases, and Japanese flower arrangements. I’d tangled with Goldhammer before, so I’d been in that office. I could picture in my head
exactly
how the company’s planning session against my team was going. This is how I envisioned it:

Inside the main conference room, seven people would be gathered to discuss a big deal—a monster deal, the airport deal. The discussion would be led by Bil Miner, a second-generation investment banker who had been hand picked by Goldhammer corporate to lead the Los Angeles office.

It was Miner who had chosen the Far East motif for the office, and Miner often quoted his favorite book, Sun Tzu’s
Art of War
. After briefing everyone on the background of the airport, he would turn his attention to the competitors—us.

“There are three or four of the usual suspects involved,” he would say. “But the wildcard is Greenberg Capital.”

This name would be familiar to al of them—we were local, and occasional y, Goldhammer and Greenberg would cross paths.

Goldhammer’s top pitch guy, Timothy Chance, would be quietly listening. He knew us and had worked with me for a few months in the 1990s.

Since then, we had clashed several times. Three years ago, at a funding conference, Chance and I had exchanged words and had to be separated.

In the end, I imagined that Chance and Miner would look at each other, both knowing that this was the biggest pitch of the year—the one that bonuses would rest on. And it would be the one deal that would let the industry know who was best.

Strategy Sessions and Research

The first meeting at Greenberg Capital was a strategy session. Sam Greenberg, Rob McFarlen, and I sat in a conference room, and Greenberg delegated the various responsibilities. The pitch was a risk for al parties—the legal fees alone would be nearly $40,000. And the final bil for al the soft costs would be close to $100,000.

McFarlen and I began the long and arduous task of running numbers on the deal. McFarlen was a quantitative analyst, and he knew the types of financial models that were needed.

I had the role of putting together the big picture and the storyline—and I would be the one to actual y make the presentation.

Greenberg would pay the bil s and make sure that everything was tracking to his liking.

A few hours later, we took a break for lunch and started talking about Goldhammer.

“I’m wondering if they are gonna bring in Timothy Chance.” Greenberg said.

“I hope so,” I said. “He’s the best they have, and the good news is that I know how his mind works.”

“What do you think, Rob?” Greenberg asked.

McFarlen had a conflict of interest because he freelanced for Goldhammer as wel . He shrugged. “My job is just to run numbers, not to pick sides.”

“Go ahead. You can say it,” I told him.

“Timothy is as good as they get,” McFarlen said. “Superpolished. But I’m sure you are, too.”

Greenberg watched me wince and smiled to himself. I’d taught him frame control, and now he was using it on me. Nice. This was typical Greenberg, always playing the game, trying to get people to work beyond their limits.

“You know what I think,” I said. “If they do bring in Timothy, it wil make things difficult. He’s good.”

We were making progress on the financing structure of the deal. We’d done research on comparable deals worldwide and felt that we had a good finance strategy in place with a track record to back it up.

We also confirmed that, indeed, Timothy Chance would be making the pitch on behalf of Goldhammer. This provided a jolt of adrenaline that helped me through the late nights of preparation.

Over the years, I’d been obsessed with putting together a method to the madness of presenting and closing deals. I’d developed the concept of neurofinance, perused scholarly journals, interviewed professors and researchers, and even set up experiments with executives to gauge their reactions to various pitching styles. However, al this research, as wel as the 10,000 hours I spent on the subject, would do nobody any good unless it real y worked. And it was clear that this $1 bil ion airport pitch would be the ultimate test of what I had learned and, if Greenberg Capital won, the ultimate confirmation of my methods.

Middle of January

The daily rhythm of work, the rhapsody of ticking things off the to-do list, the grind of crunching numbers—these things were giving me a sense of purpose and a daily jolt of exhilaration. I didn’t tel Greenberg, but I’d been bored out there in the desert. Yeah, hot sand feels good on your toes, but if you’re used to being a gunslinger, there’s
nothing
like being in a live deal.

McFarlen had come over to my home to discuss the latest numbers, and I was explaining this very thing—the thril of the deal.

“In a sense, it’s very gladiator-oriented,” I said. “You have to kil —or be kil ed. And if you do go down if you fail, the spectators, the people you’re pitching, often experience perverse joy.”

McFarlen nodded. I was always giving him vivid and clarifying metaphors, but McFarlen wasn’t wired to real y pay attention to al that. He was an introvert, who only broke out of quiet mode to defend his financial analysis. He was a numbers guy with a low-key personality.

“Who is Goldhammer using to run these numbers?” I asked. “If you know.”

“They are doing it in-house, so it’l be Brandon Caldwel ,” McFarlen replied.

“Can he do what you do?” I asked.

“What do I do?” McFarlen wondered.

“You make magic out of the mundane,” I said.

“No,” McFarlen said. “Caldwel can’t do … what I do. Not with the short timeline.” And this was the most bravado that I could pul out of McFarlen.

In McFarlen and me, Greenberg had indeed lined up two very skil ed professionals. But Greenberg was no slouch either. He was a math whiz, and when I was just starting in the business, I looked up to Greenberg as my pitching mentor. This little team certainly had the talent and the experience. We just had a lot to overcome to bring the airport deal home.

The Client

Simon Jeffries owned the airport deal. He had worked for years to get al the pieces in place. Jeffries and Greenberg had known each other for more than a decade, and from time to time, they’d see each other in development circles. Now Jeffries was in an alpha status position. He was the guy who would hear the Goldhammer and Greenberg pitches and ultimately decide who would get a contract to raise $1 bil ion for the new airport.

Interestingly, while Chance was probably doing tons of research on Jeffries, I did none. I was not interested in building so-cal ed deep rapport—a personal connection with my audience.

My research had shown that the smal talk at the beginning of a pitch typical y was fruitless. People who make mil ion- and bil ion-dol ar decisions don’t care where you play golf or whether you had trouble finding a parking spot. I had learned this early on and avoided the deep-rapport trap that many pitchmen step into. I would be focused, instead, on a unique theme and storyline. A compel ing human drama.

On paper, the proposed JetPark Airport is a beauty. A renowned architect had designed a 1,000-acre metropolis built around the famous Davis Field runway, which extends nearly 7,000 feet. The plans included restaurants, shopping, and amenities. Most of the buildings—now just renderings

—would be multistory glass-and-steel monoliths. No detail had been spared.

The revamped airport was expected to help southern California deal with a staggering rise in air traffic (an estimated 30 mil ion passengers wil fly out of LAX in 2010 alone). The airport also would service smal er aircraft and provide quality office space for businesses that support the aviation industry. Al told, the airport was expected to bring 10,000 jobs and and to have an economic impact of $2.2 bil ion.

Getting funding, therefore—this was serious business. Southern California
needed
the new airport. The new airport needed money. And both Greenberg and Goldhammer needed to win.

Nine Days Before the Big Pitch

McFarlen was working 16-hour days reconfiguring the deal structure. Today, I was working with a graphic designer on creating a visual “face-melter” to accompany my pitch. I wanted the visuals for the presentation to pop and shock.

I also was working on the elements of “the story.” Some of my friends were Hol ywood screenwriters, and they had beat it into me:
Every pitch
should tell a story.

“There’s gotta be an intrigue hook,” I told McFarlen. “If the shark in
Jaws
has a GPS beacon on it, and you know where it is al the time, then there’s no drama, and the story is not interesting.”