Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (11 page)

Beta Trapping in Bentonville.
In the town of Bentonvil e, Arkansas, the art of beta trapping has been taken to an unparal eled level. You might cal it the “Frame Supercol ider.”

The world leader in the design, construction, and operation of beta traps is Walmart. At its headquarters in Bentonvil e is the world’s most efficient salesperson-grinding apparatus you wil ever see. No matter what you have to offer the company, no matter how great its value, to do business with Walmart, you must submit to a process that is designed to beat you down and wipe out your status, al in the name of lower prices.

Think I’m exaggerating? Go to 702 Southwest Eighth Street in Bentonvil e. Walk into the lobby. There you wil find two enormous reception desks, one on each side of the room, with a hospitality area on the far right fil ed with grade school–style chairs with writing desks attached to them for those who need to fil out forms. The perimeter of the room is lined with junk-food vending machines for those who need a quick energy boost to endure what is coming.

Between the two reception stations is a gleaming blue hal way marked with the Walmart logo that leads to another long hal way lined with dozens of six- by eight-foot meeting rooms. These meeting rooms are equipped with a door, one window, one smal table, and four smal plastic chairs.

These rooms are where Walmart buyers meet with vendors.

Let’s take a look at the company’s process. First, you sign in, receive a visitor’s badge, and are told to wait in the lobby. You are welcome to enter the company’s hospitality room, and you can purchase candy and Walmart-branded soft drinks from the vending machines. The person you are visiting receives a message that you are in the lobby. When the buyer is ready to meet, you are paged to the reception desk and walked back to an assigned meeting room, where you are instructed to wait for your buyer to appear. As you are escorted to your assigned meeting room, you are al owed to see other vendors through the smal glass windows of their cel s. When you reach your cel , you are instructed to remain in the room until you are escorted out. Final y, the door is closed.

Eventual y, one or two buyers wil enter the cel , and your meeting wil begin. The meetings are short and focused on price, volume, logistics, your financial ability to support the Walmart account, and then price again. Price is methodical y and systematical y driven down, whereas your logistical and product-support responsibilities are increased until you can no longer negotiate. When this point is reached, the Walmart buyers make a decision (buy or not) and move on to the next item in the product category.

The frame is so tightly control ed that even the most successful sel ing techniques do you absolutely no good. Walmart turns everything into a commodity, and every commodity is acquired through this process. Using scale, magnitude, and domination psychology for purchasing, Walmart has created the most effective frame supercol ider in the history of free enterprise.

This is an extreme example of how beta trapping strips you of your power and ability to do good business. Old-fashioned sales techniques can help, but you are disadvantaged, you do not control the frame, and you are at the mercy of the buyer.

To compensate, you would need an enormous amount of self-confidence and self-belief to be convincing enough to succeed. You are forced to browbeat, manipulate, and cajole targets into buying decisions, and this is precisely why conventional sales methods focus on pressure closing.

Most of us don’t have the required stamina and chutzpah—I certainly do not—and it’s emotional y draining to have to make 100 sales cal s to win an order or two.

When you are held down in beta position, the only tool you have at your disposal is emotional manipulation. At best, it works in the moment, and maybe you can land a deal. But your success is random, and it’s not satisfying because the buyer real y does not want to buy. He is doing so to please you now and wil regret it later (buyer’s remorse).

There is a much better and more natural way to attract business opportunities. You simply elevate your social value, and it’s easier to do than you might think.

The Cardiac Surgeon and the Golf Pro.
Most golf professionals make their living by teaching the game, running golf clubs, operating golf courses, and dealing in golf equipment—not by caddying for touring professionals, like Phil Mickelson. In the United States, the label
golf pro
means an experienced golfer who helps other golfers with their game. It’s a fun job. In many ways, being a golf pro is a dream job. You’re working outside, teaching people a sport, and getting paid for it. The catch? It doesn’t pay wel . And being a golf pro does not bring you much global status.

That is to say, when someone asks you what you do, and you say, “I’m a golf pro,” it’s not like saying, “I’m a CEO” or “I’m a doctor” or “I’m a professor.” In fact, it’s more like saying, “I’m chronical y underemployed,” which doesn’t carry much cachet.

What should we make of this? Is the golf pro any less intel igent, sociable, or reputable than, say, a cardiac surgeon from the regional hospital?

Of course not. The only difference is that the golf pro holds a lower position on the social hierarchy. Your position in the social hierarchy is an artificial measure of your worth to others, a construct based on your wealth, your popularity within society at large, and the power of the position you hold. This is not my formula. This is just the way we measure each other. The golf pro doesn’t make a lot of money compared with a cardiac surgeon. That makes his social status even lower.

Or is it? When the surgeon takes a lesson with the golf pro, the status of each suddenly becomes fluid. Something cal ed
situational status
takes over. Out on the golf course, whatever wealth, power, and popularity the surgeon has become irrelevant. The domain has changed, and with that comes instant and significant changes in social value. Once the surgeon stepped into the realm of the golf pro, his status fel , and the golf pro’s rose, and this change in social elevation remains in effect for as long as the surgeon is in the golf pro’s domain.

The golf pro’s situational status is suddenly very high—now much higher than it was back in the parking lot. Now the golf pro tel s the surgeon what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. If the surgeon doesn’t comply, the golf pro reprimands him. Through a simple domain change, the roles have reversed.
And it is in this role reversal that we begin to see the incredible power of situational status.

Think about this for a moment: Your social value is fluid and changes with the environment you are in—or the environment you create.
If you wish
to elevate your social value in any given situation,
you can do so by redirecting people into a domain where you are in charge.
This is easier to do than you might think.

Our position in the social hierarchy is not locked in place. While the global status of our social standing may remain whatever it is, our situational status can be mobilized in order to temporarily create a high-status position whenever that is needed. While we temporarily hold high power, we can get a lot of things done just as effectively as those with financial or political means.

This is cal ed creating
local star power
. This is critical y important. With local star power, you’l be able to succeed in pitching audiences who don’t know you; the ability to create and sustain local star power literal y is going to mean the difference between success and failure.

The first impression we make on another person is based on that person’s automatic calculation of our social value. As a survival mechanism, the other person’s brain is making it a priority to understand where you fit in the social structure. The person makes a hasty judgment using three measurable criteria: your wealth, your power, and your popularity. Based on some quick mental shorthand, the person is going to assign you a social status level, and from that calculation, a frame wil be fixed. The person wil not necessarily even consciously think about this. The people jaywalking behind the man in the nice suit did not deliberately pause to consider his status or think about whether it meant he was likely to cross streets safely. They just automatical y calculated his likely status and behaved accordingly.

Elevating Your Social Status

The first thing you do when you meet with a target is to establish local star power. If your meeting happens to be on your turf, like the golf pro or the French waiter, use your domain expertise and locational knowledge to quickly take the high-status position.

If you are meeting in the target’s domain—his (or her) office or at an off-site location—you must neutralize the person holding high status, temporarily capture his star power, and redistribute some of his status to others in the room who wil support your frame.

I have given you two examples of situational status and how to capture local star power. Now let’s look at how you can elevate your status when your target is coming at you with the power frame.

The Hedge Fund Manager

A couple of years ago, I took a meeting with Bil Garr, a hedge fund manager. The meeting was arranged by a mutual friend, Dan. Arriving a few minutes early, I checked in with the receptionist and immediately recognized the lobby beta traps. Sign the guest book, here’s your visitor badge, take a seat, and how about a stale cup of coffee? Someone wil attend to you shortly.

Looking around the lobby, I made a quick read of the situation. Green marble floors, modern chrome and leather furniture, rich accents, al designed to convey a single message—I’m rich, I’m powerful, fear me,
revere
me. I knew what this was. I was on a conveyor belt headed straight for a status-crushing machine. Soon, my forehead would be stamped “Beta,” and I’d have a 15-minute meeting with Bil and then would be shown the door. I knew instinctively that our first frame col ision would not yield power to me. While I waited for Bil , I began to think of another way to acquire high status and take control of the frame.

Eventual y, an assistant ushered me back to Bil ’s corner office. The level of luxury had been taken up a notch. His private office made the lobby look like a construction trailer. Teak furniture, Persian rugs, titanium and glass fixtures, a couple of dozen framed pictures of Bil with various politicians and celebrities, and from his windows, a panoramic view of Beverly Hil s that rivaled the view from Mulhol and Drive.

“Have a seat,” Bil said, without looking up from a document he was reviewing at his desk. I took a seat at the conference table by the window.

“No, come over here,” he said, pointing to a low-slung Eames chair in front of his desk.
The secretary’s chair
, I thought to myself as I took the seat.

Bil was old school and enjoyed using classic power rituals like seating people below him to confirm his position as Lord Wil iam. I began to feel excitement because I have learned that the bigger they think they are, the harder they fal when my hookpoint is set. But I could sense that it was going to be a real chal enge to get there.

Bil pressed a button on his phone and said, “Gloria, please ask Martin and Jacob to step in.” A moment later, two smart-looking Ivy League MBAs came trotting in, taking subordinate seats on either side of mine.
I’m surrounded
, I thought.
Points for style, Bill
.

Bil reached into a rare Jean Cocteau ceramic bowl sitting on his credenza and plucked out a large red apple. As he did, he asked me to hold on another moment while he asked Gloria to e-mail someone he had forgotten to cal . Turning back to me and his underlings, he propped one foot against a desk drawer and took a large bite from his apple. He set it on his desk while he searched for a napkin, and that was when I saw my first opportunity.

While he was chewing on his bite of fruit, I tried to get some kind of frame control. “Look, guys, I only have 15 minutes, so I’m going to get right to it. This is the deal I’m working on,” and I quickly briefed the group on the project. But this frail attempt didn’t accomplish much. The status gap between us was too big to overcome with just frame control. I could see that Bil was hearing every third word—he was more interested in his apple than in the opportunity I’d come to offer. I made a good opening and my pitch was progressing, but my status was stil too low to have any chance at getting this deal to the closing table.

I’m good at this stuff
, I said to myself.
Don’t force an error. Wait for it.

That was when I saw the golden opportunity. After years of dealing with similar—but not as difficult—social situations, the idea formed in my head, and I knew how to crush his frame, captivate his attention, and establish high status for myself with one simple move.

I said, “I need a glass of water. Excuse me” and raced for the kitchenette I had seen on the way in. There I grabbed a glass of water, a paper towel, and a plastic knife. I thought,
If this doesn’t work, Bill is going to grab this knife and kill me with it.

I walked back in but didn’t sit. I said, “Listen, Bil , I hope that isn’t how you do deals,” nodding toward the apple that already had a bite out of it.

“In a real deal, everyone needs a piece. I’l show you what
my
deals look like.”

I reached for the apple on the desk. “May I?” Not waiting for an answer, I took the apple, cut it in two, and took half for myself.

As I returned the half-apple to the place on the desk where Bil had set it, you could hear the roar of silence. The do-boys Martin and Jacob were stunned, and Bil was staring at me with mean and squinty eyes. I took a bite of apple, chewed it quickly, complimented its flavor, and commented a little more on how our deals always have been split fairly with investors. Then I finished the pitch, acting as natural and as informal as if I were having a conversation in my living room with friends.