Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal (23 page)

I was now reframing the entire campaign to include a human element. Sometimes deals are done strictly on numbers—but not this time. This time, it was about people.

McFarlen nodded and got back to his numbers.

The Day of the Pitch Arrives

At 2:52 p.m. on pitch day, I saw Tim Chance entering the building a few steps ahead of me. In the main building lobby, I went over the pitch again in my head. The plan was to focus on the Hol ywood story aspect—to talk about the people I’d met in Spring Hil , the community where the airport was located. I felt certain that neither Tim Chance nor anyone else at his firm had ever set foot in Spring Hil before. As I made my way up the elevator to the ninth floor, I had a quiet confidence in my pitch strategy. The financial structure was solid, and Greenberg Capital had a strong track record to stand on, but the story I’d prepared had something stronger. A human angle that was compel ing.

Simon Jeffries’ office covers 3,000 square feet of prime Los Angeles office space. I walked into the reception area and saw Chance tapping out a text. We made eye contact, and I arched my eyebrows—my way of saying hel o—and turned to the receptionist.

“The Greenberg team is here,” I said, grinning.

“Go ahead and have a seat,” she said.

There were six chairs in this beta-trapped lobby. Rather than sit, I tried to provoke Chance a little (“You texting headquarters for last minute advice?”), but he wasn’t in the mood to talk. He knew this was frame control in action. Anything he said would be framed, deframed, reframed, and flipped.

“Good luck,” Chance said, and looked back down at his iPhone.

Jeffries eventual y entered the reception area and shook hands with me and then Chance.

“Okay, gentleman, come this way,” he said.

He led us down a long hal way into a conference room.

“Have a seat,” he said.

Chance and I exchanged an uneasy look.

Jeffries excused himself, and as soon as he was out of earshot, Chance said, “We’re pitching in front of each other? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Perfect. “This happens al the time,” I said. “You should get out and pitch more.”

What Jeffries probably knew was that if he listened to both of us pitch, on our terms, he’d get our rehearsed efforts. If he was going to trust either of us to raise $1 bil ion, he wanted to see how we reacted when things didn’t go as planned.

Just then, a third pitchman entered. He was from a firm in London. This thing was going to be even more competitive than I’d anticipated.

Anatomy of a Pitch

Two months ago, I’d begun sizing up Goldhammer and wondering how I could get an advantage. Both teams would be working from the same information, so what would make the difference? It was a puzzle to solve, with the winner earning the opportunity to raise $1 bil ion and getting a $25 mil ion payday.

Despite the stakes, I’d rewired my mind to think about it as “just another pitch” so I wouldn’t feel al the pressure or do anything desperate when the moment came. Easy to say, but difficult to do. How do you spend weeks or months working on a big presentation and
not
be anxious about it? I had to invert my own psychology because, as human beings, we are al hardwired to be emotional about important social encounters. What worked for me were the three rules of
eradicating neediness
:

1.
Eliminate your desires.
It’s not necessary to want things. Sometimes you have to let them come to you.

2.
Be excellent in the presence of others.
Show people one thing that you are very good at.

3.
Withdraw.
At a crucial moment, when people are expecting you to come after them, pul away.

If I could not eliminate my desire to win while preparing, then the team likely would seem needy and desperate on the day of the pitch. If I could not be excel ent at pitching just one simple idea, then the competition would win because they were, on average, stronger. If I didn’t have the nerve to withdraw at the right time, then I would just end up chasing the deal—and therefore losing it.

I knew that this had become a simple game involving the four pitch phases, and I should just have fun playing it. Toward that end, the first task for the team was to understand the mind-set of Simon Jeffries. I had to tune my pitch message to Jeffries’ crocodile brain.

First, I had to hit the right tone.
In fact, this would be a formal affair. Jeffries had been dealing with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for several years. That experience surely would have set the “fun-dial” to low—these guys wouldn’t be used to free-wheeling humor and high energy.

Jeffries also was working with city, state, and federal agencies, so I would have to show a certain serious, respectful tone. But a “serious” tone, doesn’t mean somber. Having fun with the pitch was absolutely critical. If the presentation isn’t fun for the person giving it, then everyone else becomes anxious. And because there’s no way to fake “having fun,” I would real y have to be enjoying myself. That in itself would eliminate desire.

Second, I had to get the frame right.
This can be explained quite simply: The competition would make this about money and profits. They were sure to frame this deal as a “money-making opportunity.” That’s what they always did. What was being overlooked by these Wal Street types is that Simon Jeffries is not the head of just any old development company. He was head of a company that was about to redevelop one of the most historical y significant airport runways in southern California. Jeffries would want to be known as the man who
saved
Davis Field when others couldn’t. This redevelopment plan had been tried many times before—and failed. Jeffries would be building an airport on 1,000 acres of southern California land, land with a history dating back to the 1920s. This didn’t have to be a deal about money. Instead, it could be about something bigger, something that tapped into the human desire to be the alpha in a social situation. The brain is wired to do things to achieve status, not money. And within that notion, the big idea was born. This deal was about
legacy
.

This deal was about building a legacy from a piece of American history. Simon Jeffries wanted to be remembered for doing something important. That is desire working, not greed. In this realization, the hard work was done. Al I had to do was tune my pitch to this desire and be part of the plan by which Jefferies could secure his legacy.

Third, I had to hit the buttons that produce hot cognitions with a sledgehammer.
Al the hours logged on Sam Greenberg’s plane had made an impression. Jets are intoxicating, plain and simple. They are pure hot cognition. Jeffries and the committee were deeply involved in the aviation business. They either owned planes or worked with them. Two were pilots themselves. When presenting to someone who loves jet aircraft, hitting hot buttons is almost too easy. You just show lots of visuals of jets.

Any product that your target consciously or subconsciously believes wil enhance his social image
will get his brain hot with desire.
Show the brain something that society values, and you won’t just be hitting hot buttons, you’l be
stomping on them.
Dopamine wil pour into the reward structure of the brain, and the emotion of pleasure wil rise fast. It’s the same reward structure that’s involved in the response to recreational drugs.

When most people enter a social interaction that involves something like a Ferrari; a Rolex; beautiful ornaments; a Renoir, a Cezanne, a Titian, or a de Kooning; a pedigreed Rottweiler; a beachfront mansion; or as in this case, a private jet, their hot cognitions fire like crazy. They anticipate desire and rewards, and it feels good to them.

This is why I planned to show Jeffries and the committee large poster boards covered with “aviation porn.” Every few minutes, I’d flip around a new posterboard—each with an increasingly provocative photo of a beautiful jet taking off, landing, or doing a high-bank turn.

In other presentations, when pitching derivatives or abstract financial instruments, it was much harder to hit the target’s hot buttons visual y, but with this deal, the jet narrative would make it
easy
.

I knew if I could just make it to the final selection, it would come down to Goldhammer and us. They had the deepest bench, the best track record, and the most influence. The inventory of their strengths was awesome. In the preceding 10 years, they had trounced us whenever they went after the same target. And there is no doubt that they would be discounting us because of our smal size. I’d personal y raised $400 mil ion. But those guys?

Goldhammer was doing bil ions.

As the presentation began to take shape, I built it around the four phases:

Phase 1:
Frame control, grab status, introduce the big idea.

Phase 2:
Explain the problem/solution and our special advantage.

Phase 3:
Offer the deal.

Phase 4:
Stack frames for hot cognition.

There was a deeper problem than just the competition. Simon Jeffries and the committee were natural alphas. During the pitch, they would be vocal, disruptive, and distracting. If I didn’t seize the status and control the frame, these guys certainly would. At any point, if my pitch slowed to a crawl, they would jump in and try to assert their alpha status. They’d demand to know, “How do you plan to do that specifical y?” or “Where’d you get those figures?” or “How much wil such-and-such cost?”

To keep them out of this detective mode, I would need to constantly deploy push/pul s. This would keep them either rocked back on their heels or leaning forward and intrigued to know more. They wouldn’t have time to become cold and analytical. They wouldn’t be able to disrupt the frame.

They would always be in
my
frame, reacting to
me
. I would have to seize star power status early.

Prepitch Thoughts

Here’s what was running through my head at the last minute:

1. Get the tone right, frame myself as the alpha, seize status, and hit their hot buttons.

2. Deploy a big idea that is human and captures the theme of “building a legacy.”

3. Keep it captivating with visuals that resonate.

4. Create hot cognitions. Make Jeffries and the committee
want
the idea before they even know the details.

The plan was to have a 20-minute high-temperature conversation with the targets’ croc brains. The goal was to achieve a pitch ful of hot cognitions. I believe that if two equal y skil ed people pitch the same idea and one tunes it to the neocortex and the other tunes it to the crocodile brain, you have two very different results. I had tuned my pitch for the targets’ croc brains and was ready to start.

The Presentation

I’d been preparing for over two months, and now, with Chance watching, I stood up to address Jeffries and his committee. Speaking slowly, I began:

“There is a tremendous responsibility for al of us today. This is a decision not about who is the most charming or the most skil ed in finance but instead about who has the
right ideas
that can raise $1 bil ion for Davis Field. Others have tried this kind of thing before and failed, so it’s not that the best man should win or that the best team should win, but instead, the best ideas should triumph today. This runway has served the United States of America in World War II and hosted squadrons of B-17 bombers and other fighter planes that took part in the Pacific campaigns. Today, we are not talking about building a shopping center or strip mal or motel. We are building an airport, and we are doing it on hal owed ground. This has to be done right.”

It was critical to get the frame right at the beginning. And because Goldhammer definitely would open by highlighting their size, experience, and track record, I had to pick a frame that minimized their strengths and focused the lens of attention on ours. This is why I chose the
best idea frame
.

In other words, I was tel ing the targets that they should forget about picking a bidder with size and power. Instead, they should focus on the quality of ideas. We could not compete on size and power against the others, but if I changed the frame, if my big idea frame was stronger than Goldhammer’s, then we could stil win.

I’d also cranked up the tension, injecting norepinephrine into their brains by saying, “This is hal owed ground.” In other words, a screw-up would have serious consequences.

If had I hit the tone just right, then a strong frame would be in place. The next task was to reframe the competition:

“We are honored to be competing against two other great firms today. I know each of them could serve you wel because they have large teams, multiple offices, legions of young, energetic researchers, and the best-paid analysts in the world, and when working a deal, these firms spare no expense to tackle the job.”

This was my way of saying that Goldhammer and the group from London were big, bloated corporations with too many people, many of them young and inexperienced. With this statement, I had reframed the competition as young, overstaffed, worried about their fees, and general y overweight. This fit the general image that dogged Wal Street banks in the media and would be an easy idea to convey. I knew that Goldhammer’s Tim Chance would have to invest much of his precious time digging the company out of that frame. Chance recognized what I’d just done, and it’s no wonder he was scowling. Things had started wel for us.

“Simon, the vast majority of people you have met in the last three months have told you that the market is flat and that nothing has changed for some time. But if you start chal enging the way these folks are thinking, you can start to see this market through a different lens—the lens we use.

Let me explain. Three market forces that we fol ow very careful y have formed an important market window that we can step through—if we time it right. We don’t think the window stays open for long, but if we do this now, we can go get $1 bil ion from investors faster than any other deal out there. Here’s our analysis of the way markets are moving: