Day 51: Forget about those old
All right, i m going to casually write some my post reading thoughts about this fantastic book <pitching anything> written by one of the most smartest "pitch-ers" named Oren Klaff.
Obviously i m impressed by his innovative way of pitching. His sound theory proven by neuroscience and experience on pitching open another world to the business owners and in fact, to the wider social encountering involves sales or persuasion.
The whole package of his pioneering approach starts with the basic understanding of how human brain reacts when socialising. Instead of being processed by the "neocortex" part of the brain, which is considered as the "analytical" and the most advanced part of the brain, the incoming message is normally taken by the "lower stack " of the brain first, which is so called "croc brain". "croc brain" is the oldest system in human evolving journey that our brain processing the incoming messages with our instincts, such as survival response, basic emotions etc. While inevitably most of us believe pitching is sort of abstract concept that would require "neocortex" part of the brain to process, the author of the book believes that we need to deal with the "croc brain" instead, as if the message doesnot get pass thru the lower stack to the advanced part of the brain, pretty much the pitch signal is treated as " threat" and discarded by the pitching target, simply NO deal.
The psychological way to tackle " croc brain" is to invoke the hot cognition of the target and maintain it thru the whole pitch with different technics. On top of this, the four social frames （namely power ,time, analyst and prize frames)are very novelty as the tactics as opposite the traditional sales cliches that we have been told to. There are real life cases that narrated by the author how these 4 frames collide with each other, and what are the strategies he implies to always change the situation towards his favour side. These ways to identify beta traps, label social frames, imply push/pull technics, and frame control by creating tension, leverage sense of humour and charisma are very eye catching to me.
The most inspiring part for me is the method for ending the pitch. In a common way that we would politely lower our gesture and ask for the taking from the target, however it is that kind of "neediness" lower the frame of pitch and ultimately, transfer the power to the target side. The desire to close the deal and the desperation to get the money often weaken our status. It is suggested to eliminate the desire and withdraw yourself, especially in some crucial moment when people is expecting you to come after them, you pull it away. Coincidently, i have read some cognition psychology books mentioning the similar concept here, one of the techniques of adopting reciprocity.
The book ends with a very fascinating story about pitching a $1 billion airport deal, where the author applied all his methods by astonishing the target with unbeatable morality frame. It was not just simply the facts and figures, business models, and track of records but perfectly tackle the "croc brain" of the alpha target. Well played game! Although i m not sure whether i would be overwhelmed if i were the target.
To summarise, a very well written book with intelligent mind behind the words, where i can definitely relate to the contexts and the tension as if i were in the game.
