Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (15 page)

Earlier we also talked about the importance of a simple introduction to your big idea but that simple is not always better. The dopamine kick explains why:
People enjoy some intermediate level
of intellectual complexity.
It has been argued that people are curious about things they cannot explain but that seem explainable—mystery stories work this way. And this, of course, is why novelty is so important in the pitch. Curiosity is the croc brain becoming interested—feeling like it’s safe to learn more. Curiosity derives from an information gap—the difference between what you know and what you want to know. This is the addictive quality of curiosity—and what you are trying to create for the target: curiosity about the big idea.

It’s only when the target feels that he knows enough to ful y understand your big idea that the curiosity ends—and he becomes satiated.
At that
point of satiation, whether you recognize it or not, the pitch is over.

Novel information has the potential to trigger one of two responses—retreat or exploration. Curiosity is a feeling of novel information taking on the second, exploratory path, which is the first step toward a satisfying intel ectual experience.

When a signal from the pitch tells the target there is something new to be discovered, dopamine is released in the brain.
Unexpected (and pleasant) rewards release more dopamine than expected ones. But dopamine has a dark side, too; if the target is expecting a reward and don’t get it, dopamine levels fal off fast. And when dopamine levels drop that fast, the feeling of stress is just around the corner. Not only does the target stop taking in new information from you, but he starts forgetting the information you’ve already delivered.

In summary, expecting rewards generates dopamine. Dopamine is the buzz of novelty. Alone, however, it’s not enough to create attention. While dopamine is the chemical of curiosity, interest, and desire, it can’t generate attention without norepinephrine, which tends to create tension, and this is why I cal it the
chemical of alertness
.

Tension

In the earlier discussion of novelty and desire, I talked about just half the formula for creating attention. The other half of that formula is
tension
. First, let’s start with some definitions:
Tension
is the introduction of some real consequences to the social encounter. It’s the response to a clear and unequivocal realization that something wil be gained or lost. It is letting the target know that there are high stakes.
Tension indicates
consequences and therefore importance.

There’s no reason for the target to pay attention when there are no stakes—when tension is absent. A few words about the purpose of tension wil help. Here we are interested in the interplay between pushing the target away and pul ing him toward us. Not as a point of manipulation—at no point in the pitch are we ever interested in that—but as a way to keep the target alert. If you want your target focused and energized—to real y pay ful attention—you also must get him to stay alert. Tension accomplishes this by injecting a shot of norepinephrine into the target’s brain.

This brings us to an examination of the relationship between novelty and tension. Without both, Dennis, the avocado farmer, loses $640,000;
Jaws
becomes one of the worst movies of al time; and Benoit, the French waiter, can barely make a living.

We may never have thought about attention this way before, as a cocktail of neurotransmitters, and honestly, why bother now? We certainly don’t know what neurotransmitters are, and if we’re being honest with ourselves, this is something we don’t real y care about at a deep level. To most of us, it’s worthwhile only in that it il ustrates the fol owing:

The two parts of the attention cocktail are novelty and tension, which in a pitch work together in a feedback loop for about 20 minutes until—

no matter what you do or how hard you try—they get out of balance and then stop working altogether.

Tension comes from conflict. Some beginning presenters want to rely on their charisma (a pure form of novelty) and try to avoid al conflict in their pitch narrative. They want everyone to play nice. Only smiles, no grimaces. Why? Because in regular life, outside the pitch, confrontation can be stressful and nerve wracking, so it makes sense that we would try to avoid it everywhere.
But in narrative- and frame-based pitching, you can’t be
afraid of tension. In fact, you have to create it.

The rudimentary patterns I have outlined below have proved extremely rewarding in my career. This might seem surprising—and not because patterns are so simple and basic, but because they are intended to build tension. This is what has given me an edge.

There are three tension patterns, each with an increasing level of intensity. These are conversational patterns you can use at any point in a presentation when you sense the target’s attention dropping.

Low-Key, Low-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.

PUSH: “There’s a real possibility that we might not be right for each other.”

[Pause. Allow the push to sink in. It must be authentic.]

PULL: “But then again, if this did work out, our forces could combine to become something great.”

Medium-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.

PUSH: “There’s so much more to a deal than just the idea. I mean, there’s a venture-capital group in San Francisco that doesn’t even care what the idea is—they don’t even look at it when a deal comes in. The only thing they care about is
who
the people are behind the deal. That makes sense. I’ve learned that ideas are common, a dime a dozen. What real y counts is having someone in charge who has passion and experience and integrity. So if you and I don’t have that view in common, it would never work between us.”

[
Pause.
]

PULL: “But that’s crazy to think.
Obviously
you value people over smart ideas. I’ve met corporate robots before that only care about numbers—

and you are definitely not a robot.”

High-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.

PUSH: “Based on the couple of reactions I’m getting from you—
it seems like this isn’t a good fit.
I think that you should only do deals where there is trust and deals you strongly believe in. So let’s just wrap this up for now and agree to get together on the next one.”

[
Pause. Wait for a response. Start packing up your stuff. Be willing to leave if the target doesn’t stop you.]

There’s a two-way connection between pushing and pulling that, when it operates simultaneously, introduces enough tension to create
alertness.
If you always pul the target toward you, he or she becomes cautious and anxious. Constantly pul ing someone in, also known as
selling
hard
, is a signal of neediness. It’s a balancing act, of course, because if you are constantly pushing them away, they wil take the hint and leave.

One of the most celebrated examples of this push/pul in the Pitch community involves
Mad Men
’s Don Draper, a pitchman for a fictional ad agency who gets a negative reaction from a client during a pitch. He pushes.

“Looks like there’s not much else to do here. Let’s cal it a day,” he tel s the client, extending a handshake. “Gentlemen, thank you for your time.”

Draper stands up to leave.

I’ve watched the clip on many occasions, and the result always leaves me with a greater appreciation for the perfect push/pul delivery, one that creates a blast of norepinephrine in the client’s brain.

In the clip, the tension grows as the client, surprised, asks, “Is that al ?”

Draper replies, “You’re a nonbeliever. Why should we waste time on Kabuki [theater]?”

The client responds to the push—suddenly interested in Draper’s ideas and paying attention, he asks Draper to sit back down.

Perhaps the most outstanding example of a push/pul pattern that I’ve encountered occurred some years ago when an audience tried to impose its wil on me at a conference.

I was offered an opportunity to pitch my deals to a handful of the most influential investors in a $10 bil ion market. How could I resist? I would meet them at an upcoming conference in a closed-room, one-on-one experience. The conference organizers charged me $18,000 for the privilege, and they set it al up.

I gladly paid the fee, and I jumped my company jet to Denver, looking forward to a great opportunity to generate new business. After breakfast, I went up to the conference room, ready to rock. I walked in and was shocked by what I saw.

Inside the room were 25 people—more than I expected—and here was the kicker: They were not investors or buyers. They were
due-diligence
analysts
. I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it.

A
due-diligence analyst
, as the name suggests, is someone whose job is to analyze and evaluate a deal based on facts and figures. These are neocortex people, and they are tough to pitch because they are al about numbers and are trained to avoid emotion. Imagine a bunch of nicely dressed robots looking for flaws in everything you do and say. Dealing with just one of these people is hard enough, but now I stood in front of 25 of them. And none of them could pul the trigger on a deal, anyhow. This was the worst possible audience for my deal.

The tables and chairs were set up in a U-shape, and I stepped up in the horseshoe, despite my misgivings. I started my pitch by passing out our marketing materials—a beautiful 56-page deal book.

The book outlined the math behind a new kind of financial technique cal ed
bifurcation
, which can real y amplify profits. As the audience studied it page by page, I launched into my pitch. And I absolutely nailed it—or so I thought. But my pitch was al dopamine and no epinephrine—that is to say,
all promise of reward and no tension.
I looked up at one point, hoping to see smiling faces, expecting to hear a barrage of questions from these due-diligence guys. Instead, I got stone cold faces looking back at me. Silence. Not a single question. Imagine looking out at 25 concrete garden gnomes. I can’t remember such a nonresponse to one of my pitches. Ever! This doesn’t mean that the targets were unreachable. It just means that they had strong analyst frames that were not easily disrupted.

I said, “Guys, since you can’t think of any questions to throw at me, let me get those bifurcation books back from you.” I started walking around the horseshoe, taking them gently out of their hands. In some cases, I had to pul more aggressively. That’s when I knew:
I had the prize frame.
Now they had something to lose—and questions started flowing. Over the next two years, I closed over $5 mil ion with these targets.

To hold your target’s attention, there must be tension—a form of low-level conflict—guiding the interaction.
If there’s no conflict, the target may be politely “listening,” but there’s no real connection. The target is thinking, “He seems like a nice guy, and his idea seems good, but I have other things to worry about right now.”

This is a confidence problem. I used to be afraid of creating tension. I was afraid to do anything that might upset the target in any way. Sure, when you and the target are each nodding in happy agreement, it
feels
great in the moment. You think to yourself,
it’s a lovefest.
But when it goes on too long with no counterbalance—it’s boring. At the end, the target gets up and says, “That was real y nice,” and then walk away. Targets want a chal enge of some sort. They don’t want the easy answers.

If there’s a single reason why some of my most important pitches failed, it’s because I was nice and the audience was nice, and we were al very polite with each other. There was no tension or conflict. Conflict is the basis of interesting human connections.

As businesspeople, we come together to find solutions to problems—not to admire problems that have already been solved for us.
If you don’t have a series of chal enges for the target to over-come—with pushes and pul s and tension loops—then you don’t have a
pitch narrative
.

A pitch narrative can be thought of as a series of tension loops. Push then pul . Create tension. Then resolve it.

When there’s no tension between you and the target, there’s no interest in what happens. The target also has no emotional involvement in what’s going on. In other words, the target doesn’t much care about what you do, why you’re doing it, or what happens to you after you leave. Without tension loops, nothing is compel ing the reader to stay with the pitch storyline.

The Heart of the Pitch

Once you have attention by creating desire and tension—you’re ready to deliver the heart of your pitch. But keep moving fast because this cocktail of dopamine and norepinephrine you’re serving is sloshing around in the brain of the target in the right combination for just a few minutes. And as we discussed earlier, no matter how hard you work, eventual y the target’s desire is going to become fear, and the tension in the room is going to turn into anxiety.

The greatest problem in short-form pitching is deciding what details and specifics to single out for attention—what to leave in and what to leave out. And since I’l need to give you specific examples, I think that sel ing a company or raising money is a good framework in which to discuss this subject. For one thing, it is the market with which I am most familiar. I have been working in the capital markets for about 15 years. For another, these markets have provided a fantastic test bed for me because hard data and fast feedback have been readily available. I’ve got this down to a method.

Actual y delivering the core of the pitch is very straightforward stuff. The main requirement is that you understand that what’s happening in your mind is not what’s happening in the target’s mind. Package the information for the croc brain, as I described in Chapter 1. Big picture. High contrast. Visual. Novel. With verified evidence.