Notes from Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff

First, you don’t want your message to trigger fear alarms. Second, you want to make sure it gets recognized as something positive, unexpected, and out of the ordinary —a pleasant novelty.

Setting the frame Telling the story Revealing the intrigue Offering the prize Getting a decision

Frames don’t merge, they collide and the stronger one wins

When you are responding ineffectively to things the other person is saying and doing, that person owns the frame, and you are being frame-controlled.

If you have to explain your authority, power, position, leverage, and advantage, you do not hold the stronger frame

Every social interaction is a collision of frame, and the stronger frame always wins.

Frame collisions are primal. They freeze out the neocortex and bring the crocodile brain in to make decisions and determine actions.

“I only have 15 minutes” “That’s ok, I only have 12”

You must commit to your frame. Practice plowing. Always moving forward. Never stopping. Never any self-doubt.

No one takes a meeting to hear about something they already know and understand.

If the audience discovers the answer to the puzzle you are presenting is close to their guess, they will check out.

Narrative and analytical information does not coexist.

Intrigue story:

1. Brief with relevant subject to pitch
2. You are at center
3. Risk, danger, uncertainty
4. Time pressure, ominous consequences
5. Tension, you try but are being blocked
6. Serious consequences, failure is not pretty

The analyst frame gets crushed by this

Money is almost useless to any buyer/investor until it purchases what you have.

Money is a commodity, it is available in a thousand places, it’s all the same.

The lobby is a beta trap served to demote you from the moment you arrive.

Public spaces are the most deadly beta traps and should be avoided.

Walmart’s office in Bentonville is the world’s most efficient salesperson-grinding apparatus you will ever see

Walmart turns everything into a commodity and every commodity is acquired through this process.

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.

Avoid social rituals that reinforce the status of others. Idle social banter diminishes your status.

Seizing situational status:

1. Politely ignore power rituals and avoid beta traps.
2. Be unaffected by your customer’s global status.
3. Look for opportunities to perpetrate small denials and defiances that strengthen your frame and elevate your status.
4. As soon as you take power, quickly move the discussion into an area where you are the domain expert.
5. Apply a prize frame by positioning yourself as the reward.
6. Confirm your alpha status by making your customer who now temporarily occupies beta position, make a statement that qualifies your higher status.

Have you ever done a deal this large before?

You create novelty by violating the target’s expectations in a pleasing way.

The addition of time pressure to a decision-making event reduces decision quality.

How to eradicate neediness:

1. Want nothing
2. Focus only on things you do well
3. Announce your intention to leave the social encounter

I don’t need these people, they need me. I am the prize.

People won’t do what you tell them to. They must feel as if they have free will to make their own decisions. They won’t even know what to do unless you have created primary basic and inescapable emotions for them to react to.

Fundamental to successful frame control and seizing alpha status, and to social dynamics in general: humor and having fun.