Book SummaryPitch Anything, by Oren Klaff

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Pitch Anything

Too often, when we pitch an idea, product, or project, we pitch it incorrectly. We use too much detail and analysis as we try to make our target’s neocortex (the analytical part of the human brain) fall in love with our concept.

Unfortunately, it’s the “croc brain,” not the neocortex, that does the falling in love. The croc brain is the more primitive part of the brain, highly attuned to recognizing danger and driven by emotions and “gut” responses.

When a person encounters new information—including your pitch—she listens to it first with her croc brain, not her neocortex. If her croc brain filters it out, your message is ignored. The key to making a successful pitch is to figure out what the croc brain wants to hear.

Pitch Anything teaches you how to appeal to your target’s croc brain by understanding what makes it tick and working with its primitive instincts. The process starts by establishing your agenda and your perspective as dominant over your target’s, through what we’ll call “frame control.”

Frame Control Is the Key to a Successful Pitch

A person approaches every interaction, social or business, with a particular “frame.” A frame is how a person views the world, and how she expects the world to view her.

When two frames meet, they compete for dominance. The winning frame controls the tone and agenda of the meeting, and the losing frame is stuck in a reactive position, responding to the dictates of the person in control. The key to a successful pitch is establishing your frame as the dominant one.

There are three common frames you will encounter as you move through the business world, and each has its own set of techniques to counter it. These are:

• The “power frame”
• The “analyst frame”
• The “time frame”

The Power Frame

A person using a “power frame” is accustomed to being in control of the room. She is often arrogant, controlling, and dismissive. You can counter a power frame, and transfer her power to you, with a “power frame disrupter”: a small act of defiance or a denial that lets your target know you are not playing by her rules.

Find an opportunity to deny your target of something or to defy her in some small way. For example, if you’ve brought visuals, and you catch her sneaking a peek, take them away and say playfully, “Not until I say so.”

A power frame disrupter tells her croc brain that you are in charge, not she. The key to doing this successfully is to use humor. If you don’t, your defiance comes across as arrogant and will put her off.

The Analyst Frame

A person with an “analyst frame” views the world through cold cognitions: problem solving, rational thinking, analysis. However, you need your target to see your pitch with hot cognitions—desire, excitement, emotion—to excite her croc brain.

An analyst frame can kill your pitch by getting mired in details, derailing its momentum, and freezing excitement for it. You want to keep her focus on the bigger picture, which will emotionally connect your target to your concept. To do this:

• Separate your pitch’s numbers and technical details from the rest of your materials.
• Answer questions about specific financials competently but briefly, and pivot back to the larger vision.

The Intrigue Frame

Sometimes, your meeting still gets lost in analysis mode, despite your efforts. You can direct your target back into her croc brain by grabbing her attention with a suspense-filled story. Our brains can’t function in analysis mode and narrative mode at the same time, so hijacking her croc brain with a story overrides her neocortex. Go to each meeting ready with a personal story to pull out if your meeting gets stuck in analysis.

• It should be brief and related to your pitch.
• You must be the protagonist.
• It must have tension and serious consequences.
• It should demonstrate your skills in action and have a human element. People naturally gravitate to and understand stories about humans better than they do about numbers.

For example, your intrigue story may sound something like this: “I was working on a $15 million deal where it was my job to come up with $8 million of it. At the last minute, one of my investors disappeared, and the bank wouldn’t wire her money, putting the whole $15 million in jeopardy. I couldn’t find her anywhere but I managed to track down her husband. I explained the situation and asked him for a signature—as her husband, his would do—but he told me he’d separated from his wife six years ago and would rather cut off his finger than help her out. As soon as I heard that, I jumped on a plane and headed to his town.”

The most important element to using an intrigue frame is to leave your story unresolved. Stop at a tension-filled spot. Redirect your audience back to your pitch, and finish your story later in your presentation. Leaving your target in suspense keeps her attention sharp and tells her croc brain that you are in control.

The Time Frame

The “time frame” is a time constraint thrown at you by your target. It is a way for her to assert her dominance by setting the rules and forcing you to work within her restrictions. Our croc brains are highly attuned to rule-setting: The person who sets the rules is the one in control.

Don’t confirm your target’s dominance by acquiescing to her time constraints. When faced with a time frame, counter with a time-frame disrupter. For example, your target may tell you that she only has 15 minutes to meet with you. Counter with an even tighter time frame: Tell her you only have 14 minutes. Be lighthearted about it. But mean it.

Alternatively, you can refuse her time constraint and offer to reschedule. This tells her croc brain that you value your time, and by implication, so should she. Refusing to accept overly-tight restrictions raises your value in your target’s eyes, and is part of a technique called “prizing.”

The...

Pitch Anything Summary Chapter 1: Understanding the Croc Brain

Too often, when we pitch an idea, product, or project, we instinctively try to appeal to our target’s higher reasoning powers, using logic, facts, numbers, and elegantly-crafted arguments. Unfortunately, our audience is listening to our message through a much more primitive system, one that is based on threat avoidance, novelty seeking, and emotional responses.

Resolving this disconnect is the key to crafting successful pitches.

The Three Levels of the Human Brain

As the human brain developed over millions of years, it evolved from a relatively primitive organ into one that operates with greater complexity.

• The crocodile brain (“croc brain”) was the first part to develop and is therefore the most primitive. It is focused on survival: fight-or-flight response and emotions. It has been fine-tuned by millions of years of evolution to be hyper-aware of danger, and it does not have a lot of reasoning power.
• The mid-brain was the second type of brain to develop. It assigns meaning to things and figures out social situations: how people are related to one another, for example.
• The neocortex was the third and final step in the evolution of the...

Pitch Anything Summary Chapter 2: Working Within Frames to Control the Narrative

The first step in managing the primitive instincts of your target’s croc brain is understanding “frames” and mastering “frame control.”

Frames are mental structures that shape how we see the world. They are our particular, specific perspective on the world, and they regulate how people interact with one another: Are you the one in control? Are you the “prize” in this relationship? Who’s paying attention to whom? Frames are controlled by the croc brain and are shaped by very basic desires: power, authority, strength, knowledge, and status.

Controlling the Frame Is the Key to Selling Your Idea

In any business or social interaction, two frames will meet and compete for dominance. The person with the winning frame will set the tone and agenda of the meeting. The losers will play by her rules, acknowledging her authority, respecting her opinions, and accepting her decisions with minimal push-back. To successfully sell your pitch, you must win this “frame collision” and establish your frame as the dominant one.

Mastering the power of frames is the most important thing you’ll learn regarding pitching. Without this skill, you might find yourself resorting to typical...

Shortform Exercise: Draft an Intrigue Story

An intrigue story is one you’ll inject into your pitch if you need to jolt the audience’s attention back onto you and out of analysis. It should be brief and describe a risky circumstance with tension and consequences.

Think of a short intrigue story you could use to grab your audience’s attention. Remember to ground your audience with a backstory, introduce obstacles, increase those obstacles, find a suspense-filled moment to pause your story, and then finally, resolve it. Some thought prompts:

1. Have you ever rescued a deal at the last minute?
2. Did you ever arrive at a pitch to find something completely unexpected?
3. Does your idea, product, or service have an amusing backstory?

Pitch Anything Summary Chapter 3: Status and Your Pitch

Your status is your value as a person in the eyes of others. It is how others measure your worth in terms of wealth, power, and popularity. It affects how people instinctively treat you, and it can make or break your pitch.

No matter how elegant your logic, how solid your arguments, or how well-crafted your points, if you do not have high status, you will not command the attention and respect necessary to make your pitch heard.

Two Types of Status

There are two kinds of status.

1. Global status is determined by your professional position, your wealth, and your reputation. It is your permanent status, and how you are perceived in society in general. There is nothing you can do to change your global status moment-to-moment. You can’t suddenly be a CEO when you walk into a meeting.
2. Situational status is your status during your current business or social encounter. Situational status is fluid: It can change from meeting to meeting. A person with lower global status can have higher situational status temporarily. A tennis pro has a lower global status than a brain surgeon, but during a tennis lesson, the tennis pro is the alpha, holding the dominant role:...

Shortform Exercise: Recognize Beta Traps

Beta traps are business procedures and social rituals that reinforce your lower-status position.

Think back to your last sales call. What beta traps did you encounter before you even began your pitch?

Pitch Anything Summary Chapter 4: Making the Pitch

Now that you understand frames and status, and how they affect your standing in your target’s eyes, it’s time to talk about the specifics of making your pitch. This chapter first delves into the mechanics of attention—what grabs it and what holds it—and then walks you through the first three (of four) phases of a successful pitch.

Understanding Attention

In order to effectively command your target’s attention—not just spark her interest, but hold it—you must understand the factors that control attention. A person is paying full and close attention only when she feels both desire and tension.

These feelings are controlled by two specific neurotransmitters in the brain. [restricted term] is the chemical of desire, curiosity, and interest. It can create interest, but by itself it’s not enough to hold it. [restricted term] is the chemical of tension and enhances the effects of [restricted term] by threatening to take it away.

Desire

Desire is your croc brain telling you that this thing in front of you will improve your life or your chances for survival. It is one of your brain’s most primitive responses, and in order for your pitch to be successful, you must...

Shortform Exercise: Crafting Your Idea’s Backstory

Your idea needs a backstory that answers the question, “why now?” It should discuss changes in economic, social, and technological forces in your industry, and how these changes have opened a market window.

How have economic forces developed in your industry or in the market in general, that would affect the success of your idea?

Pitch Anything Summary Chapter 5: Creating Hot Cognitions Through Frame Stacking

By this point, your target will understand who you are, why your idea is important, how it works, and what she can expect by signing on. Now you will enter Phase 4 of your pitch, in which you will ignite her croc brain’s passions so completely, she will be compelled to pursue you and your concept.

Hot Cognitions and Your Pitch

To an overwhelming degree, people make decisions, even critically important ones, based on hot cognitions—emotions—rather than cold cognitions—rational analyses. We use facts and data to justify our decisions after we’ve made them, but we make the actual decisions based on what “feels” right.

When you make your pitch, you are looking to engage with your target’s hot-cognition-based croc brain, not her coldly-calculating neocortex.

After you’ve offered the deal in Phase 3, your pitch enters a crucial and delicate phase. It is here that your target can drift off into cold cognitions as she reviews and thinks about what you’ve presented.

To finish strong, you must leave your target steeped in hot cognitions, with her croc brain enthusiastically transmitting desire to her neocortex. You can do this by “stacking frames.”

Frame stacking is not...

Shortform Exercise: Stack the Frames

In the final phase of your pitch, you’ll throw a series of four carefully crafted frames (intrigue, prize, time, and moral authority) at your target, to create a set of hot cognitions that will drive her forward.

Intrigue: Think of an element of your idea that can be used as a promised “reward,” that will pique your target’s curiosity and make her want to stick around. The author’s example was an eccentric partner who would be joining the deal later.

Pitch Anything Summary Chapter 6-8: Putting It All Together

You’ve now got a good handle on:

• Recognizing and disrupting frames
• Capturing situational status
• Commanding and keeping your target’s attention
• Packing your pitch full of hot cognitions to appeal to your target’s croc brain

In these last few chapters, we’ll discuss “neediness” and how it affects your pitch; we’ll look at a deal the author was involved in that demonstrates many of these ideas in action; and we’ll talk about your next steps as you start to master these techniques.

Neediness Kills Pitches

There is nothing that can kill your pitch swifter than signs of your neediness.

When your target sees you as needy, she sees weakness, and her croc brain tells her to run. Thousands of years of evolution have taught us that weak people die and strong people survive. Your target does not want to die, metaphorically or otherwise, and does not want to partner with a weak person. Even if you’ve held your target’s interest all the way through and have made a fantastic pitch right up until the end, you can kill it by suddenly projecting even a momentary neediness.

Neediness is a response to anxiety or disappointment, and a pitch is chock-full of...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Frames

Frames are the psychological perspectives through which we see the world. To master frame control, you must learn to recognize the frames you run into.

Think of an encounter, either in a business or social setting, that you’ve had in the past week. What frames did the other people bring to the table? How could you tell—what signs broadcast their frames?

Shortform Exercise: Practice Tension Loops

Tension loops are an interplay between pushing your target away and pulling her back in, to create just a bit of conflict and keep her attention sharp.

Imagine at lunch, your colleague starts texting while you are speaking. What low-intensity push/pull loop can you use to draw her back to your conversation?