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Pitch Anything
An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal
Pitch Anything (2011) introduces a unique, new method for pitching ideas. Through psychology, neuroscience and personal anecdotes, Klaff explains the tactics and techniques needed to successfully pitch anything to anyone.
- Anyone whose job involves selling products or ideas
- Anyone trying to raise money from investors
- Anyone interested in a method of persuasion based on neuroscience and psychology
Oren Klaff is an investment banker who has raised over $400 million of capital over the past 13 years, and continues to do so at a rate of two million dollars a year. He has accomplished this with his unique pitching method, which he developed over years of trial and error after he tired of the usual weak sales techniques that did not produce results and seemed more like begging.
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Pitch Anything
An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal
- Read in 15 minutes
- Audio & text available
- Contains 9 key ideas
Synopsis
Pitch Anything (2011) introduces a unique, new method for pitching ideas. Through psychology, neuroscience and personal anecdotes, Klaff explains the tactics and techniques needed to successfully pitch anything to anyone.
Key idea 1 of 9
To secure your target’s attention, you must create desire and tension.
The one critical thing you need throughout your pitch is the attention of your target. To successfully attain this, research has shown that you must evoke two sensations in your pitch: desire and tension. Desire arises when you offer your target a reward, and tension arises when you show them they might lose something, like an opportunity, as a result of this social encounter. On a neurological level, this effectively floods your target’s brain with two neurotransmitters: dopamine and norepinephrine.
Dopamine is a chemical associated with anticipating rewards — desire. One such reward would be the pleasure of understanding something new, such as solving a puzzle. Thus, to increase the level of dopamine in your target’s brain, you must introduce novelty through a pleasant surprise, like an unexpected yet entertaining product demo.
Norepinephrine, on the other hand, is the chemical responsible for alertness and it creates tension in the target. If your pitch convinces them that there is a lot at stake here, their brains will be flooded with norepinephrine.
To create tension, you must create a bit of low level conflict with a push-pull strategy. This means first saying something to push the target away, like, “Maybe we aren’t a good match for each other.” You then counter this by pulling the target back toward you with something like, “But if we are, that would be terrific.”
This push-pull dynamic creates alertness in the target, as they sense that they might lose this opportunity. Depending on the situation, you may use very powerful push-pull statements, especially if you sense your target’s attention beginning to wane.
To secure your target’s attention, you must create desire and tension.
Key ideas in this title
- To secure your target’s attention, you must create desire and tension.
- To control a meeting, you must first establish frame control.
- You will often encounter the power frame, time frame and analyst frame, hence you must know how to counter them.
- Use prizing to make the target seek your acceptance.
- Stack frames to trigger hot cognitions.
- Don’t be needy – make the target chase you.
- To pitch effectively, you must attain situational alpha status.
- Keep your pitch short and simple.
- Final summary
