Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (19 page)

In every social situation, there are basic, human, hardwired functions. Let’s cal them
ritual elements
of social interaction. Every person navigates the world through social encounters. In each further contact with other people, as we have been discussing, each person brings a frame, which is a viewpoint or perspective. It doesn’t matter if the person intends to bring a frame, he always wil find that he has done so. Al social encounters are framed. In light of this, when we think about it, not only do physicians such as Dr. David Scheiner tel us what to do, their frame is so powerful that we are nearly helpless in its presence.

In fact, the doctor frame may be the most powerful frame in the world.
Really?
The most powerful frame in the world? Let’s explore.

If we want to stay alive, we al fol ow our doctor’s orders. And we have deep respect for the medical profession. Physicians, cardiologists, radiologists, internists, and surgeons—these are people who can save our life or the life of a loved one. So we have an embedded script that we fol ow when we deal with medical professionals. When the surgeon stands, we sit. If the surgeon waves his hand toward the table, we go sit on it, uncomfortably trying to cover up private areas.

Literal y, when the surgeon does anything, we are programmed to react. We react to the surgeon automatical y. He doesn’t react to us. We obey him. The surgeon only nods appreciatively when we say something but doesn’t react.

The consulting surgeon wears whatever he wants, sometimes a nice suit, other times comfortable-looking casual clothes, whereas at the same time we are dressed in a generic green gown, sans underwear, that signifies our low situational status. If we were seen anywhere in public in this ridiculous gown, it would cause us emotional scarring. The surgeon is wealthy, and has al the accoutrements of status: a prestigious degree, a respected position, and an expertise that took nearly 20 years to acquire, and he literal y has the power to determine life or death.

We are hardwired to fol ow this script. Most of us, but not al of us. Certainly not Mother Teresa.

In December 1991, Mother Teresa entered Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jol a, California, where she was treated for bacterial pneumonia and heart problems. With such a notable world figure under their care, doctors and surgeons rushed in to meet her. And frames col ided.

The doctor’s frame has three rules:

Rule 1: Do what I say.

Rule 2: Defer to my expertise.

Rule 3: Accept my conclusions about life (and death).

However, when encountering Mother Teresa, the doctors found a person who did not fol ow the script or fal into the frame.

Here was Mother Teresa’s frame:

1. Material wealth is worth nothing.

2. Life and death isn’t critical.

3. Help the downtrodden.

4. A rich man is less likely to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel is to pass through the eye of a needle.

Her frame is not powered by wealth or expertise—instead, by a high moral authority: Help the downtrodden! Life and death isn’t critical!

As doctor after doctor met with Mother Teresa, their strong frames col apsed like a series of dominoes. She did not react to their status or their control over life and death. After al , even death was not one of her primary concerns, and she had often ignored doctors’ orders in the past. And as they fel into her frame, something remarkable happened: These doctors could not impress her. Their power frame was disrupted.

This is why she so easily convinced American doctors to do something that they hadn’t previously considered. Before coming to La Jol a—an affluent seaside community in north San Diego, Mother Teresa had visited Tijuana, a city across the U.S.-Mexican border where poverty is severe.

It was there she learned of the huge disparity between the United States and Mexico, between Tijuana and La Jol a, between the haves and the have-nots. So, as these doctors fel over themselves to visit her, she sensed a tremendous opportunity. She asked the doctors what they were doing to give back. And then she asked them if they had ever seen the medical facilities, a mere 25 miles away, in Tijuana. Most of them said no.

She then asked each doctor to add his or her name to a signup sheet outside her room, pledging to donate time and resources to help mobile medical clinics in Tijuana.

The doctors, who were used to having the dominant frame, couldn’t impress Mother Teresa with any of the usual trappings of success. They could only do it by pledging their time and expertise to her cause.

When it was time for her to leave the hospital, after 20 days at Scripps, Mother Teresa had imposed her frame on the richest, smartest, best-educated, and highest social class in southern California, and this was evidenced by the sheer number of doctors who had pledged their time to help out in Tijuana. And the doctors? Without any noticeable effort, their frames had been shaken, broken, and disrupted. With the high-status surgeon power frame disrupted, Mother Teresa’s frame took over. According to the
Los Angeles Times
, “On January 16, 1992, Mother Teresa of Calcutta was released from the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation hospital, after securing a pledge from doctors and nurses to set up a volunteer network of mobile medical clinics to serve the poor of Tijuana.”

When asked whether she was going to take better care of herself, she replied, “Oh, sure.”

Reality Is Waiting to Be Framed

A hot cognition—or a series of hot cognitions—is a fast method for getting the target’s croc brain to want you and your big idea.

But this is not a ‘sales technique. Stacking frames is not going to work, in my opinion, if you view it as just another type of sales tactic. Those old-fashioned sales techniques are about chasing the neocortex with features and benefits and rational explanations. “Sel ing” tempts you to do the three things I dislike the most: (1) supplicate; (2) make rational appeals to the neocortex, and (3) ask invasive questions. Hot cognitions, on the other hand, do not hit the target like a sales technique.

Hot cognitions are primal.
Whenever there’s a rush of excitement, it’s hard to get the neocortex to do any work at al . To protect us from potential physical or social threat, the croc brain hijacks brain function. No analysis gets done. As a result, it’s much easier and natural to react to what’s hot and vivid and moving right in front of us.

Hot cognitions are unavoidable.
You might be able to control the
expression
of emotion, but there’s no way you can get out of the path of having and experiencing it.

Hot cognitions tend to be instant and enduring.
Do you like the movie you just watched? Do you like the new model of Ford Mustang? Do you like eating snails? You never sat down to analyze these things; they’re obviously hot cognitions—you got a sense of these things the moment you encountered them.

Hot versus Cold Cognition

Maybe the best way to define hot versus cold cognition is to compare it to chocolate and spinach. You know the cold, hard facts. Spinach is good for you, it has lots of nutrients, and you should be eating more of it. But when offered a piece of chocolate instead, you go for it.

The acid test of whether your pitch goes wel wil be: Does the target want to buy your stuff, be a part of your team, or invest in your idea?

How much thinking about your presentation does your target need before he or she forms a preference about it? How “ful y and completely” must an idea be presented and thought about, and how much rational analysis needs to be completed before the target decides: “good” or “bad”? I argue here that as you approach the end of your pitch, you don’t need to wait for an evaluation, or the target wil wander off into a cold cognition process and think about you: did we like him, did we like his deal? Instead, stack the four frames, trigger hot cognitions, and create the instant evaluation that ought to be
wanting.

If hot cognitions targeted at the croc brain are so powerful, why do most people make presentations in the cold cognition style targeted to the neocortex? Here’s why I think people go this way: Our faculties of reason tel us that the neocortex is way smarter than the croc brain. We think that if we create a message in our own smart neocortex, it should be sent to the target’s neocortex, which wil do a better job of understanding the pitch.

It makes sense to think this way because the neocortex real y
is
an insanely capable problem solver. It has awesome language and math and creative abilities. It’s a Swiss Army knife of mental ability.

By contrast, if the neocortex is like a Swiss Army knife, then the croc brain is a like a rubber mal et—best for simple jobs only. It works on only a few emotions, and those are very limited in scope and range. The croc brain almost seems too simple to “get” our smart ideas. We think,
Who are
we going to trust this decision to, the target’s infinitely capable neocortex or the emotional and simplistic croc brain?
Our intuition tel s us to trust the neocortex. But that’s not the right choice. Let’s return to the essential idea from Chapter 1:
No pitch or message is going to get to the logic
center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we
evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult.

By this point, you know what I’m going to say next: Focus your energy on getting the target’s croc brain to want your product. Because, at best, no matter how much you try to sel to the neo-cortex—
it can only “like” your idea.

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.

As we’ve said before,
hot cognitions are extremely fast.
Hot cognitions develop through the ancient brain structures—the brain stem and the midbrain—our croc brain. Cold cognitions are analytical and develop in the neocortex. Cold cognitions are calculated and take time to suggest a solution—this is how the neocortex goes about its business—it aggregates information over time and solves problems. You’ve heard the expression, “Just give me the cold, hard facts?” This is what is meant by a cold cognition, the labor-intensive processing of facts through a decision matrix.

You can trigger a hot cognition instantly, but cold cognition can take hours or days.
Most presentations are set up to take the target down the path of a cold cognition. They try to justify the big idea with facts and information.

Hot cognitions encode value. It’s the anticipation of a large financial gain that is emotional y compel ing to the target. Actual y receiving it is not nearly as exciting. As one researcher noted, “The human brain acquired its reward-reinforcement system for food, drink, ornaments, and other items of cultural value long before money was discovered.” The brain thinks of money as it does of food, ornaments, and drugs and records the utility that can be col ected by using it only indirectly. There’s no cash register or balance sheet up there.

George Soros once wrote: “The philosophers of the Enlightenment put their faith in reason; … and they expected reason to provide a ful and accurate picture of reality. Reason was supposed to work like a searchlight, il uminating a reality that lay there, passively awaiting discovery.”

As we have been discussing, reality isn’t waiting to be discovered—it’s waiting to be framed. By stacking four frames quickly one after the other, you can achieve the hot cognition in the target—helping the target to discover a
wanting
. Yet, once the frame stacking is complete, we’ve got the target’s attention for about another 30 seconds. And it stil can al go wrong. We have to find, in that brief time, a way to translate the target’s desire into action. But how? What do you do now?

Over the years, I have faced a lot of rejection. And the disturbing thing about rejection is that you never real y get used to it. It’s natural and even unavoidable to feel disappointment when you get a “No.” We al do. What’s certain is that none of us like being rejected. We want to avoid it. In high-stakes situations, we’re nearly always anxious about it.

As businesspeople, friends, neighbors and citizens, we believe that when we need something from another person, there is a thin line of empathy that runs through al human hearts. We believe that we’l be treated wel by others
just because
. But there isn’t, and we won’t. So we nearly always become anxious and needy.

Showing signs of neediness is about the worst thing you can do to your pitch. It’s incredibly bad for frame control. It erodes status. It freezes your hot cognitions. It topples your frame stacks.

If you talk to investment bankers, the pros that make mil ion dol ar decisions almost daily, they’l tel you—validation-seeking behavior (neediness) is the number one deal kil er.

Four Pitches, No Room for Mistakes

Twelve years ago, I was trying to raise money for a technology company that I had also invested in. The company was quickly burning through cash.

I needed to find a big-time investor, so each day I’d make up to 50 cal s to leading venture-capital (VC) firms. I talked to a lot of receptionists and secretaries, and I got a lot of voice-mail action. But nobody was excited enough to return my cal .

My company had a great idea, but it was difficult to explain over the phone. I needed face time to explain it, so I was desperate to simply land a meeting. I continued to be persistent, and the fol owing week, I got a few people to pick up and tried to pitch them by phone. That didn’t go wel . Bil Reichert at Garage Technology Ventures told me, “I have no idea why anyone would want to build it, use it, or invest in it.” Ron Fisher, at Softbank VC said, “Do yourself a favor, son. Try a different idea.”