Posted on July 15, 2024

The business deal is the foundation of American capitalist culture. It determines whether a burgeoning startup blossoms into a billion-dollar global titan or deteriorates into a financial failure. The ironic beauty of a business deal is that success often depends less on quantitative research and more on qualitative insights into human social behavior. A successful pitch needs qualitative research designed around innate human social activity. Many people in the world of business lack an understanding of the comprehensive neuroscience behind financial proceedings. To effectively understand your target is to understand how they think. After reading Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff, I have a more secure understanding of the art of the deal. A frame is a verbal narrative that you use to package your message. It encourages certain interpretations that promote your message and discourages interpretations that discredit your message. The frame you build around an idea completely controls its meaning. Frame control is a bridge that safely delivers your message to your target. It filters information and provides meaning to what you say. When setting a frame, you are essentially constructing a viewpoint where people can believe your assertions and eventually validate your words. Frame-based business utilizes social dynamics in order to influence and persuade. Every person uses frames in their day to day conversations, whether they’re aware of it or not. Frames do not coexist peacefully; when people are placed in scenarios with others, everyone’s frame will clash with the other, until one takes full control. Stronger frames absorb weaker frames, and thus controls the social interaction. The construction of a great and successful pitch depends on the ability to build strong frames that cannot be undermined by your target’s opposing frame. The most notable frames discussed in the book that I will describe are the power frame, time frame, analyst frame, and intrigue frame.

The power frame is the most common frame you will encounter in a business setting. It derives from a person with a large status, who expects a certain level of respect from anyone around them. Their ego is massive, and they expect anyone who is of a lower occupational position to be subordinate and obedient. Ego-driven, high status people will be vulnerable to a power-busting frame because they likely don't encounter many people who will challenge their authority due to fear of judgment, scrutiny, and highest of all, losing their job. When entering deals, you must have the strongest frame in the room. If you do not have the strongest frame in the room, it will be diluted by a stronger frame from another person. Abiding by the rules of power instead of establishing your own gives credence to the target’s power frame. Some methods of busting a power frame are to either act out in small defiance or deny information they are attempting to funnel you. It is ideal to use humor when partaking in this, however. Displaying a light sense of humor will display poise in the face of your target’s power frame. When your target makes an attempt to use a power frame, they might utilize their high position, years of experience, or their self-appointed authority over you. They are attempting to squander your confidence and challenge your pitch. You must challenge their frame as soon and effectively as possible, or else you risk pitching to a person who has all the control in the dynamic. Eventually, you’ll be bending to every requirement, suggestion, and permission they say, placing you in a desperate position as a salesman. It is integral to display that you are a powerful force to be reckoned with. When you own the frame, others react to what you do. When you don’t own the frame, you’re reacting to what the other person does.

A prize frame sets up a business interaction where your audience does things in order to appease you. Prizing subconsciously informs your audience that you are not here to entertain them, in fact, they should be trying to win your attention. You are the prize. This mindset flips the common viewpoint that you, a subordinate businessperson, are a dime a dozen in the eyes of large companies. Instead, the prize frame suggests that you are a commodity that these companies should be bending backwards to impress. You could find a plethora of potential partners for any deal, but there’s only one of you. Similar to the Kanye West lyric, “There’s a thousand you’s, there's only one of me”. When businesspeople who are eager to make partnerships enter pitch meetings with larger industries, it’s hard not to automatically feel inferior to their pure scale, achievement, and wherewithal. However, you must not let that encourage a power dynamic that Klaff calls the “beta trap”. Essentially, this describes any sort of scenario in a business interaction where the target will try to reinforce an idea that you are lesser than them, and that you must abide by their rules, even if they agree to a deal or not. Prize frame is an ideal frame for escaping that trap because it forces your target to legitimize themselves in front of you. For example, flipping an interview question the other way and asking your potential partner why YOU should enter a deal with THEM. This subverts expectations and establishes you as a powerful and dominant individual. When you use the prize frame, you frame yourself as someone of high value in the eyes of your target, thus making them more likely to close a deal. If you are trying to win your target’s respect, attention, and money, they become the prize. If your target is trying to win your attention and respect, you are the prize. In lucrative deals, the money has to earn you, not the other way around. One ironic rule of humans is that we always want what we can’t have, and we place value in things that are hard to obtain. You create novelty by violating the target’s expectations in a pleasing way. There’s no reason for a target to pay attention if there’s no risks involved. Under little threat of danger, a wild animal will pay less attention to its surroundings. Establishing tension through your presentation will introduce within the target a lingering fear of missing out on the prize, which is you. The key is to push them away while also pulling them in, meaning you must display your skepticism of their worthiness of inheriting the gift, while also intensifying the appeal of the prize. If you pull the target too much, you will seem needy and desperate, which will scare the target away. If you push the target too much, they will think you are uninterested in them and leave. Liken this to a used car salesman who “will never take no for an answer”. People don’t respect these salesmen because they are desperate to make any type of deal possible. They know that nobody wants to buy any of the disheveled cars scattered on their lot, but they try their damndest to squeeze some sort of deal from you, no matter how disingenuous they get. Following this example, let’s say that you were a car salesman as well, but instead of using the “I won’t take no for an answer” frame, you apply the prize frame. You know what your cars are worth, and you know they are valuable. The key is to convince potential customers they need this car by framing it as something you don’t need to sell them. Selling them this car isn’t necessary for you, you aren’t desperate. You control who takes this car off the lot. Always remember, you are the prize. Your target is trying to convince you to work with them, not the other way around.

The time frame typically occurs later in a pitch meeting, after someone has already established frame control. When you’re making your pitch and you see that your target’s attention is beginning to wane and their attention is diverting, the time-frame collision is about to occur. Once this begins to happen, start wrapping up whatever points you have. The key is to impart more valuable information early. Use time as your ally, always act as if it is scarce, rather than abundance. Learn to effectively denote your agenda with urgency, efficiency, and detail. The human brain is not designed to sit through an hour-long meeting, and there is no way anyone can withhold so much monotonous information without eventually losing interest and using time to build resentment towards you. Demonstrate that your time is valuable. Never allow one to rush you through a presentation, as this will demonstrate that you lack confidence in the materials you’re presenting.

The intrigue frame takes control of the attention span of the target. The first thing you must understand is hot cognitions and cold cognitions. Numerical calculations, statistics, and all sorts of algorithmic problem solving are associated as cold cognitions. These details will diminish your pitch and force your target to use their cognitive analysis, thus making it highly difficult for you to persuade them. When the target is using their analyst frame, all appeal through emotionality is powerless. Hot cognitions are feelings like desire, wanting, and excitement. Keep the target invested in every word you say, but do maintain some mystery and excitement in your dialogue. Once someone can connect the dots on who you are and what you’re trying to sell, they will completely mentally check out. Narrative and analytical information cannot coexist, the target can either follow your journey, or start dissecting every number and graph you present to them. Never let your audience focus on the facts, evoke them to focus on the relationship they are building with you. Hot cognition is the inner knowing of something based on feeling, a cold cognition is the inner knowing of something based on evaluation.

Pitch Anything was an immensely compelling read for its experimental marketing principles based on experiential practice from Klaff himself. I recommend this book for any burgeoning entrepreneurs who are looking to make strides towards financial prosperity in their career. As a young artist, entrepreneur, and student nearing graduation next spring, I found countless nuggets of wisdom in the contents of this book. I have many multimedia projects and startup ideas that will be set in motion once I finish school, and it is imperative to learn how to pitch my concepts effectively to where I can make my worth noticed, respected, and compensated.