Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

by Oren Klaff

Nobody cares about narratives where you witnessed something. They want to see someone forced into action and positively overcoming obstacles.

People want to know how you have faced obstacles and overcome them. They want to see you in situations that reveal your character. They want to know that you are someone who rises to whatever level necessary to overcome obstacles and someone who travels in the company of interesting people who are players in whatever game you are playing.

In narrative mode, the croc brain sees human characters confronting real-world obstacles in time scales that make sense.

A narrative that feels correct in time will convey a strong sense of truth and accuracy.

Here’s a pattern that will give any of your stories a dramatic arc that ends with intrigue: • Put a man in the jungle. • Have beasts attack him. • Will he get to safety?

Things don’t always need to be told in terms of extreme events—but they always should be extreme in terms of the character’s emotional experience. This is what makes a good narrative.

When we listen to your narrative, it’s not what happens to you that makes you interesting, but it’s what you do about the situations you are in.

That’s the important fourth step to the narrative pattern building the intrigue frame: Get the man to the edge of the jungle, but don’t get him out of it. In other words, the intrigue is created by the fact that there’s no final resolution.

1. I have one of the better deals in the market. 2. I am choosy about who I work with. 3. It seems like I could work with you, but really, I need to know more.

4. Please start giving me some materials on yourself. 5. I still need to figure out if we would work well together and be good partners. 6. What did your last business partners say about you? 7. When things go sideways in a deal, how do you handle it? 8. My existing partners are choosy.

Affection or contempt is the hot part. Researchers found that 22 times as much information is given in the hot part of the message.

In nearly all instances, the addition of time pressure to a decision-making event reduces decision quality. It is true, for instance, that you can get someone to buy a car more easily if you tell him that the sale ends at the end of the day. Why does this strategy work so well? There’s a scarcity bias in the brain, and potential loss of a deal triggers fear.

But good deals with strong fundamentals are like an Amtrak train, or more like a deal train. They stop at the station, pick up investors, and have a set departure time.

Every single person knows what you’re talking about when you say the train is leaving the station at such and such date and time.

Hot cognitions are primal.

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.

Instead, stack the four frames, trigger hot cognitions, and create the instant evaluation that ought to be wanting.