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Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/OrenKlaff
Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/PitchAnything
Follow Oren on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/OrenKlaffBuy Flip the Script on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2lTHtKm
Buy Pitch Anything on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2lTHtKm -
Jim Davies' book Riveted on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2kQeFlU
https://www.jimdavies.org/Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/OrenKlaff
Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/PitchAnything
Follow Oren on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/OrenKlaffBuy Flip the Script on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2lTHtKm
Buy Pitch Anything on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2lTHtKm -
All Stories NEED Conflict
Language was developed to convey information about risk, danger, and conflict. It was NOT created for the purpose of selling SaaS software. Sure, you can use it for that. But itâs not what itâs meant to do. If your pitch doesnât have conflict, you need to add some. At the start of this episode, I spend a few minutes explaining how this works and why it is so important. I also give a couple examples so you can see how to apply it to your own pitches.
Get Control of the Sale
The second half of this short episode is devoted to another topic that I see giving people problems during a sale. Itâs the moment when the buyer says they need to discuss your proposal with their partner, spouse, or boss. If you allow this, youâve just lost control of the sale. Youâve let the buyer put you on a shelf and now youâll have to patiently sit there waiting for them to pull you back off if they ever decide they need you.
Instead, you need to learn how to prevent this from occurring. You need to get control from the beginning so that the prospect canât use this tactic against you. And in case it does happen, you need to know how to respond. Iâve got some tips in this episode and, of course, in my new book, Flip the Script.
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Who Is Eric Matthews?
After spending 10 years working in the entertainment industry, Eric Matthews left his job managing $3B in assets for a Beverly Hills finance firm and started his own wealth management company. He had an A-list Rolodex and was a savvy investor, but he realized he needed to learn how to sell himself. He started practicing his pitch and he became a student of sales. Eventually, he started closing deals and was able to grow his company to where it is today.
Discovering the âTrickâ
Ericâs closing ratio skyrocketed when discovered a simple trick for closing big deals. The idea came out of his experience in the entertainment industry and his love of films and as soon as he started using it he noticed massive results. When Eric told me about this it blew me away and I immediately knew I had to invite him on the podcast to share it with the world.
Leveraging Pre-Wired Ideas
The trick works by tapping into something called pre-wired ideas. Eric found he could be much more influential when he tied the ideas he was trying to communicate to the most emotional parts of the buyer's favorite movies. Over the years he has refined this approach to a step-by-step process for closing a deal. On this episode, he reveals exactly how he does it and the science behind why it works.
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Why Introductions Matter
In college I worked for a carpenter and I discovered that everything has to be sanded and primed before itâs ready to receive a coat of paint. Today Iâm a speaker and Iâve learned that priming is equally important for giving a good speech. When the audience isnât primed properly during your introduction, the speech is set up to fail. Unfortunately, giving a good introduction is much harder than it looks and few people give it the time and attention it deserves.
Where Most Intros Go Wrong
Hereâs what happens most of the time. Whoever is introducing you will Google you on their phone a few minutes before they are supposed to go onstage. Generally they come across your LinkedIn profile and whatever 3-5 year old bio you have on your website. After reading over this for a few seconds they will then proceed to walk out on stage and âwingâ your intro. Often they get the actual information WRONG. Even when they get it right, they almost never give an intro that primes the audience properly.
The Real Job of Your Introduction
This is about more than just telling the audience who you are and what you do. The real job of the introduction is to prime the listeners on you expertise, status, and credibility. Importantly, the intro should get people excited for your talk, but not TOO excited. You want them to be interested and curious, but not overly emotional. The more worked up they are the harder it will be for you to match the audiences energy when you take the stage for your talk.
Elements of A Perfect Introduction
Donât leave your intro to chance, itâs too important! Write your intro yourself and send it to the client ahead of time. Before your speech, spend some time chatting with the person who will introduce you so they have familiarity with you. This allows them to start off their intro in a casual and social way. I also recommend a bit of randomness in the intro, a clear conveyance of your status, some humility, and a sense of complete trust that the speaker is going to be great. Jim and I reveal exactly how to do all of this on todayâs episode.
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The Importance of Dominance
You canât overlook the role of status in every interaction. Getting a deal done is no different. It requires you to successfully complete a complex social dance that takes into account the status and expectations of everyone involved. If you donât understand everyoneâs role, then you can end up paying too much attention to the wrong person and not get your deal done.
Managing Your Status During A Deal
Itâs a fine art to maintain perfect status alignment during an entire deal. Iâve developed a lot of helpful tricks. For instance, think about a high school football player who is recruited to play for a college team. He will be more likely to say yes if the head coach calls with the offer than if the assistant coach calls. Similarly, in a deal, you need to save yourself for only the most important communications and let your team handle everything else.
Control Others By Controlling Yourself
One easy way to establish your status is to set rules for what you will and wonât do during a deal. Itâs not hard to create some boundaries and set certain behaviors as off-limits. The key is to make it about what you will and wonât do, not to try and make rules about what other people should and shouldnât do. Bev and I explain how to do it and give examples on this episode.
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The 3-5 Second Rule
Lying is not our natural state. We are designed to tell the truth. When someone asks you a question, your brain goes and finds the answer. Then, if the answer is something you donât want to reveal, your frontal cortex gets involved to construct a lie.
When someone is telling your the truth, this whole process should take around 3-5 seconds. And they should have a normal human reaction during this time. They shouldnât appear nervous or anything weird like that.
Establish a Baseline
Before you can spot any lies, Jason told me, you have to establish a baseline. This means you start by asking some very basic easy questions and watch the personâs reactions. Then you can increase the pressure later on with more difficult questions to figure out what their âtellâ is.
During this episode, Jason explains exactly how to find a baseline for the other party during a business negotiation. Youâll learn what you can say to figure out whether they are telling the truth and Jason will show you how to break the idea in a way that also gets you a ton of information about the other person.
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When Events Go Wrong
Once, I spoke at an event where the light from the projector was hitting the back of my head. It was super distracting and the photos of me all look crazy. Iâve arrived at events planning to use my laptop to control my slides only to find they donât support Macs. Once my slides froze halfway through my talk. I saw a guy say he didnât need slides but they couldnât turn off the screen, so he had the screensaver behind him during his whole speech.
Avoiding Mishaps
On this episode, Jim and I talk about many ways to avoid problems during your event. Having all of the right technology is very important. We cover the main things events often get wrong with regard to their tech. Adapters are big! Another way to avoid mishaps is to have a good tech session the night before the speech. And to give the speaker the right kind of space to prepare for the talk. We cover all of that and more on this episode.
The Perfect Confidence Monitor
For me, a good confidence monitor is one of the big keys to a great talk. But many events donât get these right or donât have them at all. The confidence monitor is the little screen that shows you what slide you are on. If itâs in the wrong place or if itâs set up wrong it can wreck an entire talk. I share my secrets for getting the confidence monitor right on this episode.
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Eliminate Arrogance
If you donât eliminate arrogance early on during a deal, it will only continue to escalate. People who are allowed to think that their time is more important than your time will be very difficult to close later on. It is essential that you call these people out on their arrogant behavior the instant you see it. Do it in a nice way but be clear you arenât going to tolerate it.
Using Power Plays
As Iâve mentioned on a previous episode, when someone shows up late to a meeting I usually say, âOh, youâre here for the 10:07am call? I didnât know about that one.â It works perfectly and sets the right tone for the rest of the meeting. On this episode, Jason Hanson reveals some of the power plays he developed while he was working for the CIA.
What if You Canât Rock the Boat?
Not everyone can cancel a meeting because someone was late or call out the buyer on his arrogant behavior. Sometimes you have to be more tactful. For instance, maybe youâre a small firm and you are meeting with one of your three clients, the CTO for IBM. Even in these situations, you arenât powerless. There are still subtle power plays you can make to establish yourself as an equal in the relationship. Listen to the full episode for more.
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Making the Approach
My new book, Flip the Script, is about how to approach someone important who doesnât know you and get them interested in working together. I reveal a number of specific scripts you can use to achieve this. What all of my scripts have in common is that they have to be delivered in a very specific way. You have to approach the prospect with complete confidence and non-neediness.
Just Like the CIA
Ex-CIA agent Jason Hanson told me the exact same thing about the way he used to approach prospects when he was trying to recruit them to spy for the United States. He says non-needy confidence is so important that CIA agents are trained to literally make an introduction and then turn and walk away without even waiting to see how the person responds. This signals that you really donât care what the person thinks about you.
Get Confident Through Research
For Jason, this level of extreme confidence usually comes from research. He conducts extensive background checks on every prospect before he ever attempts to make contact with them. But how can you do this in the business world? On this episode, Jason reveals his best tips and tricks for researching prospects and gaining extreme confidence and non-neediness in your next business negotiation.
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How Do You Prepare?
When you have to get ready for a big meeting with an important prospect, what do you do? I used to do a lot of preparation before every meeting but lately I havenât had time to do as much research before sitting down with someone. I wondered if this has been hurting my win/loss ratio. To find out what next-level preparation looks like, I talked to Jason Hanson, an ex-CIA agent and the author of the new book Agent of Influence. Jason told me how the CIA gets ready for an important meeting.
CIA-Level Preparation
Of course, CIA agents always memorize multiple entrance routes and exit routes into and out of a building before they attend an important meeting. They also run something called a surveillance detection route (SDR), which is a very long sequence of stops designed to make it easy to tell whether or not there is anyone following you. Additionally, they conduct extensive background checks on everyone who they might come in contact with.
Next-Level Readiness in Business
It turns out CIA agents use tactics very similar to the ones I present in my new book, Flip the Script. Jason recommends conducting detailed research on your prospect so you can casually use insider language when you first meet them. But he also stresses the importance of authenticity and not coming across like you are using a pre-written script. How do you walk this line? Thatâs the topic of todayâs episode. Tune in to find out.
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The Importance of âRepsâ
Iâm currently reviewing a book by an ex Hollywood agent and thereâs a story in there where he goes to meet with Jon Bonjovi and heâs playing something on his guitar. This agent asks what heâs playing, expecting Bonjovi to say itâs a new song heâs working on. But actually Bonjovi said, âIâm just working on my scales.â The best in the world make it look easy but they never stop practicing the fundamentals. When it comes to speaking, you absolutely need to get ârepsâ in before you try to deliver your talk.
Where Most People Go Wrong
Itâs easy to fall into the trap of just reading through your speech on paper or going back through your slides over and over and practicing the speech in your head. The problem with this, Jim explains, is that it generates a feeling of confidence and success without actually forcing you to do any of the things that make speaking so hard. Another thing people often do is write out the entire speech word-for-word and spend a bunch of time trying to memorize it.
Science-Based Practice Strategies
In this episode, Jim explains the science behind the best times to practice a speech. We also talk about how to memorize your talk, whether you can use notecards, and how well you should know the material. I reveal some of the strategies I use to prepare for my own speeches and I also share an idea from my new book, Flip the Script, and show you how to apply it to your speeches.
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Reading is Not the Same as Speaking
I spent two years writing my new book, Flip the Script, and itâs a great read. But last week I had to spend 5 days in the studio recording the audio version and I realized that good writing is not the same thing as good speaking. Many of the things that worked well on the page sounded strange when I first read them out loud. In fact, my publisher hired a professional audiobook director to coach me through it because this is a very common issue.
Donât âWriteâ Your Pitch
When companies come to me for help with their pitch, I always start by speaking the words out loud. Thatâs how I develop the content. Then someone from my team transcribes it and our graphics department creates slides and turns the speech into a pitch deck. This process always felt right to me and now I have realized why itâs so effective. There is a fundamental difference between written content and spoken content and if something is going to be delivered out loud itâs never a good idea to write the first draft on paper.
How to Avoid Awkward Speech Writing
I hear a lot of people talking about âstorytellingâ and delivering a âstory pitchâ, but I donât recommend focusing on that unless you are a professional storyteller. The key is to write your pitch in the way that you actually talk. People donât talk in stories, they talk in terms of situations. Focus on a situation instead of a story and your pitch will sound much more natural. I reveal exactly how to do it, along with some specific examples, on this episode of the podcast.
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Psychological Reactance
It has a terrible name, but âpsychological reactanceâ is one of the most important concepts for sales people to understand. In popular culture, this is what we refer to as âreverse psychologyâ. The basic principle is that when you tell someone what to do they often react by doing exactly the opposite of what you are asking.
As Andy explained to me, when someone feels like you are threatening their autonomy or reducing their freedom, they push back in order to prove to you and to themselves that they arenât being controlled by you. Of course, this is a critical factor in sales, where it often seems like the harder you push a buyer to say âyesâ, the harder they resist you.
Itâs All About Identity
One important key with psychological reactance is that people will resist much more strongly if they feel like the topic is central to their identity. Whereas if itâs a topic they donât care about, they might not resist at all. So if you sell used cars to little old ladies who donât know anything about cars, this might not be an issue for you. But if youâre in B2B sales and your buyers actually work in your industry or even if youâre selling to amateur enthusiasts, you absolutely need to avoid triggering reactance.
How to Avoid Buyer Resistance
On this episode, Andy and I reveal some specific things sales people to do trigger reactance and we discuss what you can do about it. Asking the wrong questions at the wrong time is one of the biggest problems I see. We talk about what those questions are and why you should avoid them during this episode.
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Start Big, Start Strong
If your presentation doesnât start out with a high-stakes Big Idea within the first 15 seconds, youâre going to lose your audience. This means you have to provide some new information that makes your topic more urgent, compelling, and important in the listenerâs mind. If you get this wrong your audience is going to be playing on their phones and barely listening to the rest of your talk.
For ANY topic there is a way to raise the stakes. Donât tell me itâs impossible in your industry because you sell something boring like industrial air compressors. I could make a #2 pencil into a matter of human survival if I had to. Itâs about making the problem seem more important to the listener. On this episode, I speak with Jim Davies about the science of raising the stakes.
Donât Drop the Nuke too Early
One of the biggest problems I see is people let the cat out of the bag in the first two minutes of their talk. They try to raise the stakes but they end up giving away the punch line. You canât drop the nuke right at the beginning of the movie.
Jim told me that the human mind is a change detector. So if you introduce an idea as being important it will grab our attention for a short while. But unless you keep raising the stakes and making it MORE important, weâre going to get bored. The idea is going to slowly fade from our minds. This means you have to gradually build intensity during your talk.
The trick is figuring out how to raise the stakes during the first 15 seconds while still leaving yourself somewhere to go. You do this by posing questions. The answers need to come later on in your speech. Start with the questions. Jim and I break down exactly how to do this in this episode.
A Script for Raising the Stakes
One way to raise the stakes is using the words âeitherâ and âorâ at the start of your presentation. Tell your audience that by the end of your talk you are going to either decide to work together or decide not to work together, but it isnât going to end on a âmaybeâ. This poses a question and makes the discussion seem much more important.
On todayâs episode, Jim and I provide four different scripts you can use to raise the stakes in your own presentations, along with specific examples of how they work.
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Money is Counter-Intuitive
Sales approaches donât work for raising money. Actually, standard sales and marketing tactics scare professional investors away because people with money donât want to be âsoldâ and marketed to. They want to be attracted to you and your deal naturally.
What Money Wants
The first place I see people go wrong is they donât understand what investors are actually looking for. Most of us think that people with money must be looking to make as much money as possible. When we pitch a deal, we naturally focus on how much money the investor will be able to make if they invest in our deal.
But, actually, investors donât want to make money, they want to properly balance risk and reward and they want the deal to be the right size for them. Different investors are looking for different things depending on where they are in their careers and you need to be able to give them what they want. On this episode, I explain exactly how to do it.
The Language of Money
When you talk to investors, you have to use certain words to describe your deal. If you arenât using the proper lingo, investors wonât understand your deal and they wonât invest. Speaking the language of money lets your listeners know that youâre a pro and it makes them feel comfortable giving their money to you. Use the wrong words and you look like you donât know what youâre doing. On this episode, I explain how the language of money works and I give some specific examples of how to âspeakâ it.
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Reaching Level X
I have a very hard time collaborating with others and working with coaches because Iâm already running at such a high level in my own life and business. I might not be the best at jet skiing or yodeling, but when it comes to writing a pitch, nobody beats me. The problem is that coaches donât agree with your own plan. Coaches are people who tell you what to work on. But when you reach the highest levels itâs very hard to trust people enough to let them coach you.
Many sales people have this problem where they have taken so many different seminars and worked with so many different sales coaches that now they sort of have a Frankenstein personality. But Iâve noticed that top performers never have this problem. They are always very clear about who they are and they can take a few things away from a seminar without letting it completely change up their approach.
Forming the Group
One of my current side projects is to assemble a group of top performers in a variety of fields to address this issue. Iâve noticed that top performers donât easily allow others to hold them accountable because they want to be holding themselves accountable. So the idea of the Level X Group is to get these top achievers together and find new ways to hold ourselves accountable and push ourselves forward in life and business.
On this episode, listen as Casey and I conduct the first meeting of Level X and start to establish some of the groupâs founding principles.
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Two Underrated Tools
At the start of a call, you need to do something to grab the prospectâs attention and set yourself apart from all the other sales people out there. Iâve discovered that your tone of voice and the pacing of your speech are two of the best tools you have for this. In this episode I reveal how I use these tools on my own calls.
Donât Get Self-Deprecation Wrong
One tone I often use at the start of a call is self-deprecation. This works well for making you approachable but it can also undermine your expertise and authority. Iâve found the key is to be self-deprecating about everything that doesnât apply to your business but nothing that does. Bev and I cover some specific examples and scripts for this during todayâs episode.
Use a Provocative Tone
Being provocative is about saying things that are light but not funny. You want to stir up a small controversy to get people talking. Iâve found this works best if you immediately relieve the tension by following provocative statements with a bit of self-deprecating humor. Iâll reveal exactly how I do it today.
Get Serious About Pacing
I only have one rule on pace and itâs very simple: talk faster about less important things and talk slower about the big stuff. Itâs fine to breeze through your opening at a face pace but when you get to talking about the price, you need to slow down. To convey seriousness and authority, drop your voice and start talking at half speed when you reach a discussion of price.
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