Pitch Anything

Oren Klaff’s Pitch Anything views the world through the assumption that social status is a zero-sum game in which your goal is to seize and leverage more social status. Through this lens, Pitch Anything gives strong frameworks and examples of how to gain, retain, and apply social status focusing specifically on 2 core concepts:

1. Power Frames
2. Emotional Engagement

1) Power Frames

How powerful do you feel when a cop pulls you over?

The sirens go off, you pull over on the side of the road. You don’t think you have done anything wrong, but both you and the police officer know who has a higher position of social status. At best you manage to project an air of calm innocence — hardly a power play. The police officer’s “frame” is noticeably stronger than yours.

Defining “Frame”: A frame is the instrument you use to package your power, authority, strength, information and status.

Establishing your social status

Pitch Anything assumes that you want something of someone else. You may be seeking an investment, a job, or simply a seat at the table.

A common default behavior is to be deferential to people who have something that you want. Pitch Anything argues that people in a position of power observe social pandering all the time, and respond more positively to those who present themselves in a position of relative importance.

Imagine the following conversation:

Target: “Thanks for coming over, I only have 15 minutes this afternoon.”
You: “(Laughing) Totally understand — To be honest, I’m actually only here for 10 minutes and I’ve got to run to another meeting”

What just happened?

The target, consciously or unconsciously, implies that their time is of high value and that you deserve only 15 minutes of their time. You, in turn, politely inform them that they have the order of social status backwards and that sadly you can only be gracious enough to give them 10 minutes. When presented with this information they are pushed to revaluate why your time is so valuable, and to consider whether it is actually you who has something that they want. Below are a few recommended practices to turn the tables.

Key recommendations for seizing social status:

• Defiance and light humor are the keys to seizing social power
• Momentum is key. Create high status immediately. Do not hesitate. The longer you wait, the more you reinforce the status of your target
• Avoid social rituals that reinforce the status of others. Idle social banter diminishes your status.
• Have fun. Enjoy your work. There is nothing as attractive as someone who is enjoying what she does. It attracts the group to you and allows you to build stronger frames and hold them longer.

In broad strokes, two ways to disrupt another person’s power frame and capture emotional engagement are to:

1) Perpetrate a small denial

2) Act out some type of defiance

Example scenario

You place a folder on the conference table that is labeled “Confidential — [Name of Target]”. When the target reaches for the file, you grab it and say “Hold up. Not yet. You have to wait for this…”

Whether through words, physical motions, or a dramatic silence, deviating from the script, denying someone else something they expected or doing the opposite of what you were expected to draws people’s attention and creates an opportunity to redefine the terms of the relationship.

2) Emotional Engagement

Move from “Interested” to “Involved” to “Committed”

Heightened states of emotion create strong memories.

If you have ever felt truly threatened, scared, or alarmed — it is easy to recall the scene that caused these emotions.

The brain has to distinguish between significant experiences and mundane ones and emotions are how we encode things of value and how we link events in our memory.

Interested?

You may be interested by the history of a certain company, but if the founder emotionally reveals a time that her company came within minutes of financial insolvency, and then changes the topic before explaining whether the company managed to survive … you get involved.

If a target is getting distracted by complex technical details — break the frame by telling a brief, relevant, intriguing story that involves you.

Provide a story provides a level of intrigue that pushes your audience to be curious enough to ask for more information.

When you reach the point that instead of giving information, your audience is asking you for more information you have them hooked, they are certainly involved and you have a higher chance of getting them committed.