“Pitch Anything” Quotes

I recently read “Pitch Anything: An innovative method for presenting, persuading and winning the deal” by Oren Klaff. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book.

“I was faced with the presenter’s problem: You can have incredible knowledge about your subject. You can make your most important points clearly, even with passion, and you can be very well organized. You can do all those things as well as they can be done-and still not be convincing. That’s because a great pitch is not about procedure. It’s about getting and keeping attention.And that means you have to own the room with frame control, drive emotions with intrigue pings, and get to a hookpoint fairly quickly.” (4)

“I got him to the hookpoint, the place in the presentation where your listeners become emotionally engaged. Instead of you giving them information, they are asking you for more on their own. At the hookpoint, they go beyond interested to being involved and then committed.” (5)

“And though most of us spend less than 1 percent of our time doing it, pitching may be the most important thing we do.” (7)

“Our thought process exactly matches our evolution: First, survival. Then, social relationships. Finally, problem solving.” (9)

“But this is exactly where my thinking—and probably yours— went off track. I assumed that if my idea-making abilities were located in the neocortex (as they are), then that’s where the people listening to my pitch were processing what I had to say.
It’s not.
Messages that are composed and sent by your young neocortex are received and processed by the other person’s old crocodile brain.” (9-10)

“But no pitch or message is going to get to the logic center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult.” (10)

“Ultimately, if they are successful, your pitches do work their way up to their neocortex eventually. And certainly by the time the other person is ready to say “Yes, we have a deal,” he is dealing with the information at the highest logic center of his brain. But that is not where the other person initially hears what you have to say.” (10)

“First, given the limited focus and capacity of the croc brain, up to 90 percent of your message is discarded before it’s passed on up to the midbrain and then on to the neocortex.
Second, unless your message is presented in such a way that the crocodile brain views it to be new and exciting-it is going to be ignored.
Third, if your pitch is complicated-if it contains abstract language and lacks visual cues-then it is perceived as a threat.” (12)

“What is vitally important is making sure your message fulfills two objectives: First, you don’t want your message to trigger fear alarms. And second, you want to make sure it gets recognized as something positive, unexpected, and out of the ordinary—a pleasant novelty.” (14)

“coming our or my neocortex and present them in a way that the crocodile brain of the person I was pitching could easily accept and pay attention to.
To make this process easier to remember, I use the acronym
STRONG:
Set the frame
Tell the story
Reveal the intrigue
Offer the prize
Nail the hookpoint
Get the deal” (17)

“When frames come together, the first thing they do is collide.
And this isn’t a friendly competition—it’s a death match. Frames don’t merge. They don’t blend. And they don’t intermingle. They collide, and the stronger frame absorbs the weaker.
Only one frame will dominate after the exchange, and the other frames will be subordinate to the winner. This is what happens below the surface of every business meeting you attend, every sales call you make, and every person-to-person business communication you have.” (22)

“If you have to explain your authority, power, position, leverage, and advantage, you do not hold the stronger frame.” (27)

“ Frames mainly involve basic desires. These are the domain of the croc brain. It would be fair to say that strong frames activate basic desires.” (28)

“I think of these things before I take a meeting: What are the basic primal attitudes and emotions that will be at play? Then I make simple decisions about the kind of frame I want to go in with.” (28)

“For many years, I used just four frames that would cover every business situation. For example, if I know the person I’m meeting is a hard-charging, type A personality, I will go in with a power-busting frame. If that person is an analytical, dollars-and-cents type, I will choose an intrigue frame. If I’m outnumbered and outgunned and the deck is stacked against me, time frames and prize frames are essential.” (28)

“Going into most business situations, there are three major types of opposing frames that you will encounter:

1. Power frame
2. Time frame
3. Analyst frame
   You have three major response frame types that you can use to meet these oncoming frames, win the initial collision, and control the agenda:
4. Power-busting frame
5. Time constraining frame
6. Intrigue frame
7. Prize frame” (29)

“Observing power rituals in business situations-such as acting deferential, engaging in meaningless small talk, or letting yourself be told what to do-reinforces the alpha status of your target and confirms your subordinate position. Do not do this!” (30)

“If a guy is going to dominate you, let him dominate you on the price of something like a hand drawing in this case, something that doesn’t matter. If you find yourself in a similar situation (the day will come when this happens to you, too), then pick something abstract and start an intense price negotiation over it-and it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. The power of the person’s frame is rendered trivial, and the focus is back to you and what you want to do with the meeting.” (33)

“To instigate a power frame collision, use a mildly shocking but not unfriendly act to cause it. Use defiance and light humor. This captures attention and elevates your status by creating something called “local star power.”” (33)

“You place a folder on the conference table that is labeled “Conk dential-John Smith.” When the target reaches for the file, you wab it and say, “Uh-uh, not yet, You have to wait for this,”If you deal in creative work and you brought visuals, let the target sneak a peck and then, when you see him curiously looking, turn it over, take it away, and deliver a soft reprimand that says, not until I say you’re ready.” (34)

“Another way to control the frame is to respond to a comment with a small but forceful act of defiance.
TARGET: “Thanks for coming over. I only have 15 minutes this afternoon.”
YOU: “That’s okay, I only have 12.” You smile. But you are serious, too.” (34)

“He might be feeling a little buzz from what you’ve just done but is not offended because you were not rude or mean. When you are defiant and funny at the same time, he is pleasantly challenged by you and instinctively knows that he is in the presence of a pro. This is the moment when he realizes that this is a game, that the game is now on, and that you are both about to have a lot of fun playing it.” (35)

“This is a subtle framing technique known as prizing. What you do is reframe everything your audience does and says as if they are trying to win you over.” (39)

“To solidify the prize frame, you make the buyer qualify himself to you. “Can you tell me more about yourself? I’m picky about who I work with.” At a primal, croc brain level, you have just issued a challenge: Why do I want to do business with you?” (40)

“When you are reacting to the other person, that person owns the frame. When the other person is reacting to what you do and say, you own the frame.” (49)

“When attention is lacking, set your own time constraint, and bounce out of there:
“Hey, looks like time’s up. I’ve got to wrap this up and get to my next meeting.” If they are interested in you, they will agree to a follow-up.” (50)

“When you encounter a time frame like this, quickly break it with a stronger prize frame of your own. Qualify your target on the spot.
You: “No. I don’t work like that. There’s no sense in rescheduling unless we like each other and trust each other. I need to know, are you good to work with, can you keep appointments, and stick to a schedule?”” (50)

“Nothing will freeze your pitch faster than allowing your audience to grind numbers or study details during the pitch.” (52)

“It is important to realize that human beings are unable to have hot cognitions and cold cognitions simultaneously.” (52)

“you must force your audience to be analytical on its own time. You do this by separating the technical and detailed material from your presentation.” (52)

“You answer the question directly and with the highest-level information possible. Then you redirect their attention back to your pitch.” (53)

“In financial deals, I respond with something like this:
“The revenue is $80 million, expenses are $62 million, the net is $18 million. These and other facts you can verify later, but right now, what we need to focus on is this: Are we a good fit?
Should we be doing business together? This is what I came here to work on.”” (53)

“Keep the target focused on the business relationship at all times.
Analysis comes later. This is the best and most reliable way to deal with a target who suddenly becomes bored and tries to entertain himself with the details of your deal.” (53)

“No one takes a meeting to hear about something they already know and understand.” (54)

“At the start of the meeting, you have the audience’s attention.
It’s a rare moment, but not for the reason you may think. Audience members are, with full concentration and at the most basic and primal level, trying to figure out the answer to this question:
“How similar is your idea to something I already know about or to a problem I have already solved?”
If audience members discover that the answer is close to what they had earlier guessed, they will mentally check out on you.” (54)

“Your intrigue story needs the following elements:

1. It must be brief, and the subject must be relevant to your pitch.
2. You need to be at the center of the story.
3. There should be risk, danger, and uncertainty.
4. There should be time pressure—a clock is ticking somewhere, and there are ominous consequences if action is not taken quickly.
5. There should be tension-you are trying to do something but are being blocked by some force.
6. There should be serious consequences-failure will not be pretty.” (56)

“Whenever we chase someone or value someone else more than ourselves, we assume the subordinate position and put ourselves at a disadvantage.” (62)

“Prizing is the sum of the actions you take to get to your target to understand that he is a commodity and you are the prize.” (63)

“The prize frame works best when you change your attitude about money—fully realizing that money is almost useless to any buyer/investor until it purchases what you have.” (66)

“We must give up the concept of ABC, or “Always Be Closing,” a phrase popularized by the sales gurus of the 1980s. Instead, you must embrace the idea that money is a commodity, that it is available in a thousand places, and that it’s all the same no matter where it comes from. Knowing this, it is more likely you will embrace ABL- “Always Be Leaving.”” (67)

“Imagine that-Investors reframed as a commodity, a vending machine for money. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense because there are many places to source money, but there is only one you. Your deal is unique among all others. If you think of yourself and your deal in this way and build frames around this idea, you will be pleased at how it will change the social dynamics in your meetings with investors.” (67)

“If you want to get started with this, in a simple, low-risk way, here is a phrase I often use to set the prize frame firmly in place: “I’m glad I could find the time to meet with you today. And I do have another meeting right after this. Let’s get started.”” (67)

“You don’t earn status by being polite, by obeying the established power rituals of business, or by engaging in friendly small talk before a meeting starts. What these behaviors might earn you is a reputation for being “nice.” They do nothing for your social position- except reduce it.” (69)

“Unless you are a celebrity, a tycoon, or the guy who just landed your company the largest deal it has ever done, in most cases you enter a new business setting with a low social position. The harder you try to fit into this social scene, the lower your perceived social value becomes.” (69-70)

“When it comes down to finding the alpha, nobody takes the time to draft a balance sheet of who owns the most assets, who commands the most wealth, and who is the most popular. It’s a subconscious and instant recognition of status.” (70)

“You can alter the way people think about you by creating situational status.” (70)

“It doesn’t matter how well you argue, the way your points are crafted, or how elegant your flow and logic. If you do not have high status, you will not command the attention necessary to make your pitch heard. You will not persuade, and you will not easily get a deal done.” (76-77)

“In general, public spaces are the most deadly beta traps and should be avoided.” (81)

“If you need to pitch someone attending a conference, rent a hospitality suite or a hotel conference space or borrow someone’s office conference room—pitch anywhere but on the floor of the convention hall.
A person standing in a trade show booth may as well erect a neon sign above his or her head that reads, “I Am Needy!” Like a caged pet-shop puppy or a late-night infomercial host, you try to draw them into your 8- by 10-foot cube and hope to wow them with your pitch. It’s sad.” (82)

“Once the surgeon stepped into the realm of the golf pro, his status fell, and the golf pro’s rose, and this change in social elevation remains in effect for as long as the surgeon is in the golf pro’s domain.” (85)

“Think about this for a moment: Your social value is fluid and changes with the environment you are in—or the environment you create. 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, This is easier to do than you might think.” (85-86)

“The first impression we make on another person is based on that person’s automatic cakulation of our social value, As a survival mech-anism, the other person’s brain is making it a priority to understand where you fit in the social structure. The person makes a hasty judgment using three measurable criteria; your wealth, your power, and your popularity.” (86)

“What this example demonstrates is that a well-chosen, well-timed friendly but disruptive act will dethrone the king in a single stroke. In that brief, shocking moment when no one is quite sure what you’ve just done, that is when your frame takes over and when high status transfers to you.” (90)

“In general, just ignore conversation threads that don’t support your deal, and magnify ones that do.” (90)

“• Momentum is key. Create high status immediately. Do not hesitate. Choose a frame, and force a collision at the most opportune moment—and do it early. 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. Be popular. Enjoy your work. There is nothing as attractive as someone who is enjoying what he or she does. It attracts the group to you and allows you to build stronger frames and hold them longer.” (92)

“Global status is fixed. It’s only situational status that you can grab and control.” (93)

“1. Politely ignore power rituals and avoid beta traps.

2. Be unaffected by your customer’s global status (meaning the customer’s status inside and outside the business environment).
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, where your knowledge and information are unassailable by your audience.
5. Apply a prize frame by positioning yourself as the reward for making the decision to do business with you.
6. Confirm your alpha status by making your customer, who now temporarily occupies a beta position, make a statement that qualifies your higher status.” (93)

“I may say something like, “Remind me again why in the world I want to do business with you?”
This usually elicits a few guffaws—and a serious response amid the laughter: “Because we’re the largest bank in California, Oren.” To which I say, “Yeah, that’s good, I’ll keep that in mind.” It needs to be playful and interesting, with just a little edge to it.” (94)

“Ask another qualifying question: “Have you ever done a deal this large before?” This is the best way I’ve found to get an audience to qualify my dominant frame.” (94)

“Pause and consider this for a moment: The most important scientific discovery of the twentieth century (DNA) can be pitched in five minutes. Yet nearly every pitch that I’ve seen—and I see hundreds every year-takes at least 45 minutes and usually an hour, a ridiculous amount of time! No company in America should let its executives pitch for an hour.” (95)

“As soon as the pitch or presentation begins, one critical thing must happen: The target must feel at ease. In the vast majority of cases, they don’t because they don’t know how long they’re going to be stuck listening to you, and you’re a stranger.” (96)

“To put them at ease, I have a simple solution: It’s called the time-constraint pattern. This is what you say, exactly, to let the target know he isn’t trapped in the typical hour-long-meeting: “Guys, let’s get started, I’ve only got about 20 minutes to give you the big idea, which will leave us some time to talk it over before I have to get out of here.”” (96)

“What’s important here is not your mastery over the details but your mastery over attention and time.” (96)

“Make the pitch in four sections:

1. Introduce yourself and the big idea: 5 minutes.
2. Explain the budget and secret sauce: 10 minutes.
3. Offer the deal: 2 minutes.
4. Stack frames for a hot cognition: 3 minutes.” (97)

The key to success here is making it about your track record. Things you built.
Projects that actually worked out. Successes. Spend less than two minutes on it and definitely not more.” (97)

“Research has shown that your impression of someone is generally based on the average of the available information about them, not the sum. So telling people one great thing about yourself will leave them with a better impression of you than telling them one great thing and one pretty good one.” (98)

“You need to introduce a “Why now?” frame. It’s vitally important that the target knows that your idea is new, emerging from current market opportunities and that it’s not some relic left over from bygone days.”” (99)

“The target needs to know that you are pitching a new idea that came to life from a pattern of forces that you recognized, seized, and are now taking advantage of. And the target needs to know that you have more knowledge about these things than anyone else.” (99)

“Three-Market-Forces Pattern: Trendcasting
When you describe your idea, project, or product, first give it context by framing it against these three market forces or trending patterns that you believe are important.

1. Economic forces. Briefly describe what has changed financially in the market for your big idea. For example, are customers wealthier, is credit more available, is financial optimism higher? Increases or decreases in interest rates, inflation, and the value of the dollar are considered as prime examples of forces that have significant impact on business opportunities.
2. Social forces. Highlight what emerging changes in people’s behavior patterns exist for your big idea. An obvious example in the market for automobiles, concern over the environment—a social force-is driving demand for electric vehicles.
3. Technology forces. Technological change can flatten existing business models and even entire industries because demand shifts from one product to another. In electronics, for example, change is rapid and constant, but in furniture manufacturing, change is more gradual.” (99-100)

“Describe the genesis of your idea, how it evolved, and the opportunity you saw as it was emerging. The backstory of the idea is always interesting to the target. Once this story is told, everything you say in your pitch will be legitimized by it.” (100)

“Movement is a critical element in the “Why now?” frame. Your target needs to understand the forces that are pushing your deal and to understand that your success is inevitable and imminent as a consequence of these greater forces.” (102)

“Targets simply do not like old deals. They want to see movement, and they don’t like deals that have been sitting around, ignored by other investors or partners.” (104)

“The idea introduction pattern:
“For [target customers]
Who are dissatstifed with [the current offerings in the market].
My idea/product is a [new idea or product category]
That provides [key problem/solution features.
Unlike [the competing product).
My idea/product is [describe key features].”
Here’s an example of a quick introduction for a big idea called the “Energy Tech 1000.”” (105)

“The rudimentary model of how attention works goes like this: We notice things that have movement through space and time because they are likely to be important. But there’s a catch— a lot of the time things that move are also things we have to run away from. Starting from this premise, in the pitch we want to create attention without threat. This is why I have come to believe in—and rely on—the idea introduction pattern, because, of all the ways to introduce an idea, it does the least to trigger threat avoidance in the croc brain.” (107)

“Let’s review the actions to take in phase 1 of the pitch:

• First, you put the target at ease by telling him in advance that the pitch is going to be short, just about 20 minutes, and that you’re not going to be hanging around too long afterward. This keeps the target’s croc brain focused on the here and now and feeling safe.
• Then, you give your background in terms of a track record of successes, not a long list of places and institutions where you simply “punched the clock.” There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the more you talk about your background, the more average it becomes because the target is hardwired to average information about you, not add it up.
• Next, you show that your idea is not a static flash of genius.
  Rather, there are market forces driving the idea, and you are taking advantage of a brief market window that has opened.
  (And you’ve admitted that there will be competition, showing that you’re not naive about business realities.)
• Because the brain pays attention to things that are in motion, you paint a picture of the idea moving out of an old market into a new one. Doing it this way, you don’t trigger change blindness, which would make your deal easy to neglect.
• Last, you bring the big idea into play using the idea introduction pattern. Now the target knows exactly what it is, who it’s for, who you compete with, and what your idea does better than the competition’s. This simple pattern makes sure that your idea is easy to grasp and focuses on what is real. This strategy works so well because it avoids triggering a threat response.” (108-109)

“You can underwhelm the target with too little information just as easily as you can overwhelm him with too much information.” (110)

“If you’re describing relationships between people, you can provide plenty of detail. The brain is really good at understanding complex human relationships.” (111)

“Realization 1: It doesn’t matter how much information you give, a lot or a little, but instead how good your theory of mind is. In other words, it’s important how well you can tune your information to the other person’s mind.
Realization 2: All the important stuff must fit into the audience’s limits of attention, which for most people is about 20 minutes.” (111)

“Attention will be given when information novelty is high and will drift away when information novelty is low. You already know this. If your stuff looks boring, if it has no visual stimulus, is a bunch of cold, hard facts and involves spaghetti-like complexity— no one is going to offer you much attention.” (112)

“What they’ve worked out is that when a person is feeling both desire and tension, that person is paying serious attention to what’s in front of him or her.” (113)

“brain scans show that dopamine isn’t exactly the chemical of experiencing pleasure.
Instead, it’s the chemical of anticipating a reward.” (114)

“You create novelty by violating the target’s expectations in a pleasing way.” (114)

“Let’s review. When you introduce something novel to the target’s brain, a release of dopamine occurs. This triggers desire. For example:Just like the martini making we talked about earlier, the amount of dopamine in the cocktail has to be just right. Not enough, and there is no interest in your or your ideas; too much, and there is fear or anxiety.” (115)

“It has been argued that people are curious about things they cannot explain but that seem explainable” (116)

“Curiosity is the croc brain becoming interested-feeling like it’s safe to learn more. Curiosity derives from an information gap-the difference between what you know and what you want to know. This is the addictive quality of curiosity— and what you are trying to create for the target: curiosity about the big idea.” (116)

“It’s only when the target feels that he knows enough to fully understand your big idea that the curiosity ends—and he becomes satiated. At that point of satiation, whether you recognize it or not, the pitch is over.” (116)

“Tension is the introduction of some real consequences to the social encounter. It’s the response to a clear and unequivocal realization that something will be gained or lost. It is letting the target know that there are high stakes. Tension indicates consequences and therefore importance.” (117)

“Tension comes from conflict. Some beginning presenters want to rely on their charisma (a pure form of novelty) and try to avoid all conflict in their pitch narrative. They want everyone to play nice.
Only smiles, no grimaces… But in narrative- and frame-based pitching, you can’t be afraid of tension. In fact, you have to create it.” (118)

“Low-Key, Low-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
PUSH: “There’s a real possibility that we might not be right for each other.”
[Pause. Allow the push to sink in. It must be authentic.]
PULL: “But then again, if this did work out, our forces could combine to become something great.”

Medium-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
PUSH: “There’s so much more to a deal than just the idea.
I mean, there’s a venture-capital group in San Francisco that doesn’t even care what the idea is—they don’t even look at it when a deal comes in. The only thing they care about is who the people are behind the deal. That makes sense. I’ve learned that ideas are common, a dime a dozen. What really counts is having someone in charge who has passion and experience and integrity. So if you and I don’t have that view in common, it would never work between us.” (Pause.]
PULL: “But that’s crazy to think. Obviously you value people over smart ideas. I’ve met corporate robots before that only care about numbers—and you are definitely not a robot.”

High-Intensity Push/Pull Pattern.
PUSH: “Based on the couple of reactions I’m getting from you-it seems like this isn’t a good fit. I think that you should only do deals where there is trust and deals you strongly believe in. So let’s just wrap this up for now and agree to get together on the next one.”
Pause. Wait for a response. Start packing up your stuff. Be willing to leave if the target doesn’t stop you.]” (118-119)

“This is a confidence problem. I used to be afraid of creating tension. I was afraid to do anything that might upset the target in any way. Sure, when you and the target are each nodding in happy agreement, it feels great in the moment. You think to yourself, it’s a lovefest. But when it goes on too long with no counterbalance— it’s boring. At the end, the target gets up and says, “That was really nice,” and then walk away. Targets want a challenge of some sort.
They don’t want the easy answers.
If there’s a single reason why some of my most important pitches failed, it’s because I was nice and the audience was nice, and we were all very polite with each other. There was no tension or conflict. Conflict is the basis of interesting human connections.” (122)

“In clear and concise terms, tell the audience exactly what you will be delivering to them, when it will be delivered, and how. If they play a part in this process, explain what their roles and responsibilities will be. Don’t drill down into a lot of detail.” (127)

“Hot cognition 1: the intrigue frame.
Hot cognition 2: the prize frame.
Hot cognition 3: the time frame.
Hot cognition 4: the moral authority frame.” (137)

“Nobody cares about narratives where you witnessed something. They want to see someone forced into action and positively overcoming obstacles.” (138)

“The targets have given you their time because they want to visit a new world to learn about new things and interesting ideas and become involved in the lives of unique, interesting, and talented people.” (139)

“People want to know how you have faced obstacles and overcome them. They want to see you in situations that reveal your character. They want to know that you are someone who rises to whatever level necessary to overcome obstacles and someone who travels in the company of interesting people who are players in whatever game you are playing.” (139)

“Short and strong narratives that introduce characters who are overcoming real-world obstacles can ignite hot cognitions which, in turn, push the target out of paradigmatic and analytical thinking mode.” (140)

“Here’s a pattern that will give any of your stories a dramatic ar that ends with intrigue:

• Put a man in the jungle.
• Have beasts attack him.
• Will he get to safety?
  Clearly, being stuck in the jungle is a metaphor for being in a difficult situation. The attacking beasts are the conflict and tension.
  These are the problems being faced by the man and the motivation for him to start moving toward safety. Once he is out of the jun-gle, the tension is resolved and the narrative arc is complete, so hold the man just short of safety as long as you want to use the intrigue frame.” (141)

“Things don’t always need to be told in terms of extreme events— but they always should be extreme in terms of the character’s emotional experience. This is what makes a good narrative.” (141)

“When we listen to your narrative, it’s not what happens to you that makes vou interesting. but it’s what you do about the situation you are in.” (141)

““We have your bios and know your reputation. But we have to be cautious about who we bring on board. And I have to sell you to my partner, Joshua—who is going to want to know why I think you would be good partners. Can you give me that—can you tell me why we would enjoy working with you?”

So what have I done in such a statement? I’ve delivered the prize frame, and the basic elements include

1. I have one of the better deals in the market.
2. I am choosy about who I work with.
3. It seems like I could work with you, but really, I need to know more.
4. Please start giving me some materials on yourself.
5. I still need to figure out if we would work well together and be good partners.
6. What did your last business partners say about you?
7. When things go sideways in a deal, how do you handle it?
8. My existing partners are choosy.” (145)

“Here’s the internal pattern, the words you say to yourself to fully activate and deploy the prize frame:
I am the prize.
You are trying to impress me.
You are trying to win my approval.” (146)

“the addition of time pressure to a decision making event reduces decision quality.” (147)

“Here’s the time frame pattern you can use and follow:
“Guys, nobody likes time pressure. I don’t like it, and you don’t like it. No one does. But good deals with strong fundamentals are like an Amtrak train, or more like a deal train. They stop at the station, pick up investors, and have a set departure time. And when it’s time the train has to leave the station.
“You have plenty of time to decide if you like me- and if you want this deal. If you don’t love it, there’s no way you should do it; we all know that.
“But this deal is bigger than me, or you or any one person; th deal is going ahead. There’s a critical path, a real timeline tha everyone has to work with. So we need to decide by the 15th.”” (147)

“”Selling” tempts you to do the three things I dislike the most:
(1) supplicate;
(2) make rational appeals to the neocortex, and.
(3) ask invasive questions. Hot cognitions, on the other hand, do not hit the target like a sales technique.”” (153)

“Reality isn’t waiting to be discovered. It’s waiting to be framed.” (156)

“Neediness is a signal of threat. If you display neediness, it is perceived as just the kind of threat that the crocodile brain wants to avoid. Neediness results in avoidance.” (161)

“Communicate loudly and clearly, that you are needed somewhere else. But this is just a part of a broader, more comprehensive solution to eradicating neediness. Here’s the basic formula:

1. Want nothing.
2. Focus only on things you do well.
3. Announce your intention to leave the social encounter.” (165)

“Eliminate your desires. It’s not necessary to want things.
Sometimes you have to let them come to you.
Be excellent in the presence of others. Show people one thing
that you are very good at.
Withdraw. At a crucial moment, when people are expecting
you to come after them, pull away.” (167)

“My research had shown that the small talk at the beginning of a pitch typically was fruitless. People who make million and billion dollar decisions don’t care where you play golf or whether you had trouble finding a parking spot. I had learned this early on and avoided the deep rapport trap that many pitchmen step into. I would be focused, instead, on a unique theme and storyline. A compelling human drama.” (183)

“Any product that your target consciously or subconsciously believes will 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’ll be stomping on them.”

“Here are the most important terms for you to know and to own personally:
Frame control
Power-busting frame
Frame collisions
Prizing
Beta traps
Seizing status
Local star power
Push/pull
Alpha
Hot cognition
Crocodile brain
Neocortex” (217)

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