Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (8 page)

What’s new here is not that you should tel some kind of story to your target. What’s new and important is
when
to use it—as soon as you recognize that the target is coming at you with an analyst frame. Then use it to nudge him out of analytical thinking. There are half a dozen other ways to disrupt the analyst frame—anger and extreme surprise are two. But in most social situations they are impractical. The intrigue frame does it better and does it fast.

Here is my intrigue story, which I wil tel you first, and then I wil show you how I tel this story to my audience.

My Intrigue Story: The Porterville Incident.
Recently, I was traveling in our company plane with my business partner and our attorney. We were at an airstrip in Portervil e, a smal California town about 300 miles from San Francisco. While this tiny airstrip served mostly smal local aircraft, jet traffic in the air was heavy because of the many commercial planes going in and out of San Francisco. A jet must make a rapid and steep ascent after takeoff to join in with the busy traffic pattern.

In a pitch setting, I do not tel this story the way I just relayed it to you. When I was meeting with officials from a local airport, I told this story much differently. Knowing that my audience was made up of aviators, engineers, and guys interested in jets, I came to the meeting with this story prepared and ready to deploy if needed. As it happened, I did encounter an attack from an opposing analyst frame, and this story easily brought the meeting back under my control.

As the audience’s attention began to shift to analytical questions, this is what I said:

“This reminds me of the Portervil e incident. A while ago, my partner and I flew to Portervil e to look at two deals. You guys know, they have a tiny airfield; it’s visual-flight-rules-only and has no control tower.”

“Mostly they get single-engine traffic—Cessna Skycatchers and Beechcraft Bonanzas—and maybe a few smal jets. So when we got there, our big Legacy 600 skidded to a stop at the far edge of the runway. But the landing was nothing compared with the takeoff.

“Since Portervil e airspace is under San Francisco air traffic control, 260 miles away, the trick to getting out of there is to climb fast and merge quickly into the traffic pattern. We expected an aggressive takeoff. It was no big deal when we found ourselves accelerating hard into a steep climb.

“The Legacy 600 is a ‘muscle car’ of a jet. When it’s under ful power, you feel it. So we’re heavy and deep in this ful -power ascent, we’re having casual business conversation, and I would estimate that our altitude was 9,000 feet when abruptly the jet surges and then
nosedives
.

“We dropped 1,000 feet in a few seconds.

“My seat is facing forward, toward the cockpit. The door is open, and I can see the pilots.

“We are al clinging to our seats and cursing, a Klaxon is howling, and one of the pilots is saying, ‘It’s the TCAS! It’s the TCAS!’ But I didn’t even know at the time what a traffic col ision-avoidance system was.

“I’m trying to figure this al out, and I’m thinking this is it—I’m done,
Soy un perdedor. . . .

“As we’re plummeting in this nosedive, I look through the door into the cockpit and see both pilots with their hands on the throttle.
Then
the plane rol s into a steep climb,
and I see the pilots fighting
, literal y slapping each other’s hands off the throttle. The climb is short—just five seconds—and then the plane goes into a
nosedive again
.

“Anyway . . .”

And I go right back into my pitch. Why does this strategy work so wel ? The most extreme explanation is that the audience becomes immersed in the narrative. They take the emotional ride with me. Sure, they know that we obviously survived, but I’ve piqued their curiosity—
why were the pilots
fighting?
They want to know. When I do not tel them, the intrigue spikes high enough to shock them out of the analyst frame.

In my experience with this approach, the opposing analyst frame gets crushed by emotional, engaging, and relevant narratives like this.

Attention redirects back to me, allowing me to finish my pitch on my agenda, my timeline, and my topics.

After I finish the pitch, I complete the narrative arc by explaining the whole story:

“It turns out that the sudden dive was caused by the traffic col ision-avoidance software built into the autopilot system. It had detected another airplane flying into our ascent path, and the computer had taken evasive measures just in time to avoid a crash. This was a very close cal , and I am fortunate to be able to share this story with you now.

“The reason the pilots were fighting over the controls was because the copilot did not know the computer had taken over. But the pilot, older and more experienced, knew this and was pul ing the copilot’s hands off the controls. The col ision-avoidance software was doing its job.”

This true story has everything I need in an intrigue story—it’s brief; it has a tight timeline; it has danger, suspense, and intrigue (what were those pilots doing?)—and it happened to be perfectly relevant to a pitch I was making to the operators of an airport, which you wil read about later.

Perhaps, in a broader sense, this is why we tell each other intriguing narratives—to participate in powerful emotional experiences involving
high-stakes situations that we hope we will never have to face ourselves.
A short, personal narrative like this is important to your audience because it reveals something about you, your character, and your life. As you think about your intrigue story, don’t be afraid to make it very personal. As long as it’s relevant to your business and has the six elements described earlier, it wil serve you wel .

Stop the Analyst Frame Cold

The key to using an intrigue frame is to trust in its power to stop the analyst frame cold. Remember, the person using the analyst frame wil break your pitch into pieces and ultimately crush it if unchecked. The analyst frame filters your deal like this: 1. It focuses on hard facts only.

2. It says that aesthetic or creative features have no value.

3. It requires that everything must be supported by a number or statistic.

4. It holds that ideas and human relationships have no value.

Do not let your audience go there—keep audience members focused on the relationship they are building with you. Your intrigue story breaks this analyst rule set in an entertaining way and replaces analytical thinking with narrative discourse.

Breaking the Analyst Frame with Suspense

Consider the movie
Jaws
for a moment. This 1975 Steven Spielberg film is a classic, and decades later, it is stil doing a brisk business on DVD.

Why does this story work so wel ? In the first part of the film, Spielberg doesn’t show you the shark. The great white lurks below the surface, creating a sense of terror and suspense. Where is it? When wil it strike next? How big is it?

We see someone in the water, minding her own business. Then we see her as a victim, screaming, kicking, getting pul ed under, and eventual y disappearing in a froth of red water. This predator is unseen, and we have no idea when it’s going to strike next. This creates great tension, and we are riveted to the action.

Now let’s reimagine
Jaws
. Let’s assume that the shark is fitted with a GPS transponder and that we know its exact location at al times. We know where the shark is going, where it’s been, and what it looks like. When it comes time to hunt the shark, Police Chief Martin Brody and the crazy shark hunter, Quint, know exactly where to go and what they’re up against.

Strapping a GPS transponder on the shark strips away the mystery and the intrigue. Tel ing the story this way would have wiped out nearly a bil ion dol ars in box office revenue.
If you know where the shark is at all times, you have no tension, no suspense, no blockbuster.
The same can be said for your narrative.

Use the elements of surprise and tension, and as you approach the most interesting part of the story, move away from it and leave the audience
intrigued
—until
you
are ready to reveal. Clearly, this technique made Spielberg one of the most successful directors in history. It works for me in business settings, and it wil work for you.

The Prizing Frame: Reloaded

Prizing is a way to deal with threatening and fast-approaching frames that are likely to push you into a low-status position.
When you prize, you frame yourself as high value in the eyes of your target. Prize correctly, and your target wil be chasing you.

Establishing a prize frame is the very first thing you need to do when you are on someone else’s turf, ready to begin your pitch. When you get to the end of your pitch and it’s time to get a deal, your success depends on how wel you establish your frames at the beginning and how strong those frames actual y are.

For a moment, think of the alternative to having strong frames. One is to sel harder by making more cal s and being more pushy. In fact, our business culture has a fascination with the idea that a salesperson should never take no for an answer. There’s pressure from the top. Always be chasing. Always be closing.

Everyone has heard a friend tel a version of this story: “The buyer didn’t want my product, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I just kept pounding away, until he final y signed up.”

Such stories dramatize the myth that you can succeed by badgering your clients into buying something. The truth is, this rarely works, and when it does, you are sure to encounter buyer’s remorse.

The same is true with pitching. If you think you can browbeat your target until final y he relents, you have it backwards.

Whenever we chase someone or value someone else more than ourselves, we assume the subordinate position and put ourselves at a disadvantage. Although we talked briefly about this before, I’l now introduce you in greater depth to the concept of prizing and the prize frame.

Who is the prize, or who is chasing whom, is one of the underlying social dynamics that influences most meetings. The answer establishes a person’s motivation and tel s us how they wil probably behave in the meeting. The basics: If
you
are trying to win your target’s respect, attention, and money, he becomes the prize.

When
your target
is trying to win your attention and respect, you are the prize. (This, of course, is what you want.)
Prizing
is the sum of the actions you take to get to your target to understand that he is a commodity and you are the prize. Successful prizing results in your target chasing you, asking to be involved in your deal.

Why Is Prizing Important?

Successful prizing restores calm and poise to the social interaction.
You won’t have to chase as hard or worry so much about impressing your target. But there’s another important benefit. It reduces your feeling of needing to perform to get a reward. Consider the way people talk about a presentation—they often cal it a “dog and pony show.” This label evokes self-defeating imagery of you riding around in a circle on a pony. The only thing missing is rainbow suspenders and a clown nose.

Getting rid of those negative labels and ideas is an important step. When you are no longer performing for the money, the frame changes drastical y.

Sure, it’s easy to think that you have to earn the buyer/investor’s approval to win the money. Especial y when you’re in the investor’s office, on his turf, giving your pitch. The prize frame is the window through which you look at the world that al ows you to see yourself as the prize: The money has to earn you, not the other way around. You’re flipping the script.

Why Does Prizing Work?

Your pitch is first going to register in the target’s croc brain. And as we discussed in Chapter 1, the croc brain would like to ignore you. But if you are dynamic enough—giving new and novel information—you wil capture the croc’s attention. Once that happens, the croc is going to have one of two primal reactions:

Openmirrors.com

Curiosity and desire, or

Fear and dislike.

Breaking it down into such simple terms helped me to understand a crucial concept: If you trigger curiosity and desire, the croc sees you as something it wants to chase. You become the
prize
.

Let’s consider three of the most fundamental behaviors of human beings:

1. We chase that which moves away from us.

2. We want what we cannot have.

3. We only place value on things that are difficult to obtain.

Are these universal y valid laws that can be relied on in al social interactions? I think they are. And by now, you can see where I’m going with this. If you pitch in front of strangers, you know how easy it is to come across as a little too eager to do business. At the same time, you might make it seem too easy to get what you have. Al your audience has to do is nod, and you wil do everything else—it’s too obvious that you’re wil ing to do anything at al to make them happy.

The problem with this approach is that if it is true that people only value things that are hard to get, you are not hard to get. There’s no
challenge. Behaving this way means that you are failing to prize.

And if you’re pitching for money, your problems can multiply. Framing money as the prize is a common error—and often a fatal one. Money is never a prize; it’s a commodity, a means for getting things done. Money simply transfers economic value from place to place so that people are able to work together.

Prizing 201: Avoiding the Mistakes

The prize frame works only if certain conditions are fulfil ed. In Prizing 101, you learned two basic ideas: 1.
Make the buyer qualify himself back to you.
Do this by asking such questions as, “Why do I want to do business with you?”

2.
Protect your status.
Don’t let the buyer change the agenda, the meeting time, or who wil attend. Withdraw if the buyer wants to force this kind of change.