Oren Klaff, Author & Managing Director at Intersection Capital | Pitch Anything

Welcome to the Success Story Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. With a further ado, another episode of the Success Story Podcast. Alright, thanks again for joining us. Today, I am very excited to be sitting down with Orren Klaaf, who is the best-selling author of Pitch Anything and Flip the Script. Now Orren Klaaf is one of the world's leading experts on sales, raising capital, and negotiation. His first book, Pitch Anything, is a number one best seller with more than 1 million copies sold in print worldwide. He is written for Harvard Business Review, Inc. Advertising Age, Entrepreneur, and has been featured in hundreds of periodicals podcast blogs. He is an investment partner in a 200 million private equity investment fund, and in his spare time is a motorcycle enthusiast, and thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you coming on. That's the boilerplate intro, but just a personal intro. I discovered Pitch Anything. I was a big fan when I was just sort of expanding my sales knowledge, and it's an honor to sort of give you an opportunity to tell your story, to discuss your career, and unpack, because I think that the one thing that got me about Pitch Anything, the sales strategy, the way the position, the way the clothes, that was all great, but it was, I think, your story that was very exciting and very well told and narrated by yourself, so I'm very, very happy to sit down and sort of unpack that for everyone else. So thank you. Yeah, good to be here. So let's just start it off. I think to walk through where you came from in your career, what led you to where you're at right now, which is obviously sort of morphed from, I guess, just your experience in raising funds and all these things that you've sort of learnt and written about across your career. Just walk me through where you started and where you're at now. Sure. I mean, where does anybody come from? Pain, misery, suffering, anxiety, and frustration? That's, and I think if you track people's career, how did you get to where you are? Oh, I was 18 and I jumped in the backseat of a Camaro and we had a baby and then I had to get a job and then he, well, you know, so that's a backstory. For me, it's very interesting. I had a company that was doing very well, but we didn't know anything about finance. We knew accounting, we knew sales, doing really well software company and sort of before there was venture capital, and we grew, and we grew, and we grew, and then the accounting guys made an account error. You know, they have money in one account and another account. And a lot of it, we saw in credit cards because it was, you know, there wasn't online ordering. It was actual software that people bought. And the bank came and they said, my God, we have a company of young people sitting around at desks with laptops. There's no furniture. There's no, you know, there's no furniture. There's no posted pictures on the wall. It's kind of like a proper office. It's just pop up tables and laptops are the things we're used to seeing. And so what they did is they said, we want a million dollar escrow account on all your credit card charts. And so they just, as charges came in, they just took the money and escrowed it. Still can happen today. And so we're suddenly short of a million dollars that we use to operate the company and, you know, by cars and travel and that's trialed by fire. And it's fine as far as that company ended up having to sell it and shrink it. It wasn't. And the real reason was, you know, a lot of people said, hey, we want to invest in a company. We want to help you refill this million dollar gap. Give us a financial model, give us a projection. You know, let us know what your forward 12 month projection is. What have been the trailing 12? What do you see the key metrics? What are the assumptions on growth that you're making? Who's your competition? And all the finance questions. I know anything about finance quite a long time ago. And so that, so I lost that company in many ways. I mean, we went up selling in and it was good, but it could have been a big company. And I create a wound in myself around finance, right? The ability to go and ask for money and get the money you need for your company just became this thing. I felt like I had to solve. And so that lead you into the world of pitch because the way you raise money or get money for your company is you go and you pitch and it's a little different from sales, right? It is selling. You're selling equity. You're selling a piece of the company. You're selling yourself. You're making a presentation of value and you're asking something in return. So it is sales, right? But the things that are different about raising money and really straight sales are this. The stakes are very high. You go in and you have five or 10 minutes to make your pitch. You know, maybe something I mean about less than hour. But really, you got 10, maybe 15 minutes to make your pitch. And sorry, Scott, I lost you. I was seeing you guys. Your video on guys, guys videos, not no good. I'm just talking into I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Anyway, you go in and you're such it's so high stakes. Everything has to be done precisely in the right way, in the right order with the right amount of detail to fill the gaps in the minds of the buyers, the investors of exist. They know what they want. They're professional buyers. They're looking for certain things. And the narrative has to be perfect. Okay. Different from the yourself paper, you sell cards, you sell, you know, B2B services in a county, the buyers are much more forgiving and finance like you have to be perfect. How you do it? The way the order of things are in the amount of detail you give and the strength of the narrative matters more than any other sales environment. And so I learned how to raise money and became a superpower or skill. In fact, now I show other help other people raise money and run an investment bank. But the things that you learn in raising money became absolutely clear make a difference in sales. So if you could do things as precisely as well as cleanly in such a good narrative format in a regular sales environment, not finance, you could also do extremely well. Conversion could go up the sales cycle go down, you get no pricing pressure, the all kinds of benefits from doing it correctly. So then the question became in my mind, what is the right way to pitch anything? And as I became known for thinking, you know, for for talking on the subject and thinking about it, you then then met, you know, I did a couple radio shows. I met Howard Stern people and they said, you're great. But I didn't want to drive to their location and finally somebody introduced me to a couple book publishers and McGraw Hill and said, hey, you're not a known publisher, but we'll give you a book contract and then pitch anything came out and just word of mouth that you found it. Everybody else said, so the million copies were one of the most well known business books in any book arena today. So that's the whole story. I think I can remember it. No, it's a great story. And I think the reason why it's so revered as a business book is because the traditional sales don't speak about psychology, the way that you put it in the book. They just speak, they speak about the process and they speak about the things that everybody speaks about and trains over and even look at different sales process. It doesn't bring in the psychology. How did you figure out the psychology of sales? Is that is not your undergrad? It's not your degree. It's not your your sales guy finance guy entrepreneur and you figure that psychology. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, I think it just boils down. In some point, I just thought about cats and dogs, the difference of difference in the cat and the dog, right? A dog you can train him to do things, right? And he's trainable. And so you can get the dog over time to sit and roll and go to the bathroom outside and eat at a certain time and not wake you up and everything like that, right? And then I thought about cats. Cats are not trainable. Nothing you can do, right? Can't train them to wake up at a certain time. I mean, maybe there's a cat trainer out there, but in general, like you can't train a cat, right? And so litter box, you cannot train the cat to go to the litter box does not accept training and dog will take training. The cat, you can only attract the cat to something. The litter box has to be the most attractive place in the whole apartment in the whole house and the whole block for them to go to the restroom that you can only attract. So then I started to understand the difference. And money, you can only attract. You can't sell the money because money is not trying to solve a problem, right? They're not going, hey, we have two billion dollars that we have to get out of here in order to solve a problem, right? The money is attracted. And so when you then apply that same principle to sales, you can't, you can't push what you have. You can't train the buyer to buy your stuff. You can only attract them to. So then you ask the question, what are the laws or the principles of the ideas of attraction? And now you can get start to get some answers, right? And then you, you know, you saw in the book and the ones I came up with is that people want what they can't have. That's a attraction principle. People want what they can't have. People chase that which moves away from them. And people only value that which they pay for. Now I had something. When you think about every sale, every picture you have in terms of that framework, people want what they can't have. People chase that which moves away from them and people only value that which they pay for. And now you look at your sales presentations, they how does that match up with the principles of attraction? You say, not very well, right? Because most people come in and say, here's our solution. This is what we have. This is what we know how to do. These are the problems we saw. Here's the value we offer. Here's the logos of companies we've done this before. These are all the people that say we're great. Here's how our pricing framework works. And here's our offer. And basically, you're saying you can have it. And the buyer says great. Looks really interesting. You know, it looks like you could solve our problems and hit the pause button, put you on a shelf and say, now have an option, right? Let me look around. You know, we're going to get some pricing, do some comparison. We'll call you back if we have any other additional questions. You have no control lost all control because you've told them you can have my product at this price. People only want things they can't have. This is at odds with the law of attraction. And so the goal now of a sales presentation is not to say, this is what I have. And you can have it at this price. The goal is to say, this is what I have. This is what I'm an expert in. I've solved your kind of problem a thousand times before. It's easy for me to fix all the problems, all the pain, all the frustration, all the issues you have. Push up a button. You have the problem. I don't have that problem. We fix this problem the time. And as much as I like you, I want to get accounts. This is a sales presentation. We're also pretty busy. And I'm not even sure you can have it, the service, the product, whatever it is. I need to know more before I can commit the time and energy, even to write this up and figure out how to deliver what we have for you. Are you a good customer? You look like it, but there's also some red flags I want to clear. You came to the meeting late. I saw on your website, you know, you guys have a little bit of crazy talk on there. You know, maybe it hasn't been updated a while, but you know, before I get involved with you and really invest in you, I want to know some things about you. So, so I can allow you to buy what it is we have. That's a framework that really creates amazing sales, lowers the sales cycle, increases the margin, keeps you in the highest status position and keeps you in control. So now, you know, everything I know about selling or ever wanted to know. Now, I love the way you you've switched the the mindset when you go into the sales conversation, but a lot of people, I think, have an issue trusting, like it's trusting the process, right? A lot of people have an issue trusting the process. So, I guess, do you have advice for someone who's selling who doesn't want to blow the deal? Like that's the constant thing that's stuck in everyone's head and that's why people default to the other way, the traditional way, the not good way of selling. Yeah, I haven't thought about this before, but you know, be great. I know you have a very sophisticated listener base, you know, maybe maybe they could memorize this line and try and it's sort of when you have the customer who's trying to take control, the sense is, you know, hey, Scott, just when you think you know the answer, I changed the question. So, and by that, I mean the predictable nature of your behavior as a salesperson is the thing that works against you. People come to meetings, not to hear the features and the benefits and the price, you get that on the internet, get that on a Zoom call, right? People come to a meeting to meet new, interesting, colorful people with real insight about their business who's an expert in their kind of problem, who they can work with to really get a solution to the problem they have, okay? And so that person has to be you. They spend time with that person. When that person offers insight and novel solutions to what the buyer already knows. So if you are just diligently giving a buyer what it is you have, the features, the benefits, the solution for your customers are, the it is putting the buyer in total control. And so when you feel like you don't want to put any pressure on the buyer or blow up your sale, you're doing the exact opposite. By not pressuring the buyer in any way and just following the, you know, stamp a sale plan, you're actually jeopardizing the sale, right? The buyer will chase you and be interested and start to invest time when he knows you're an expert, you have a great product, you're the best in the world, right? And that you're not just allowing him to buy and be in total control. When you take that control away, it raises the stakes and makes the buyer interested. You cannot end a sales presentation by insane. So what do you think? Would you be interested in this? Do you have any questions? The buyer gets control. He doesn't have any questions right now, similar to the material. You don't mind sending a proposal. We'll take a look at it. I got a show to the committee. You know, I meet with the Sasquatch and the Loch Ness monster, you know, every 30th of the month. They tell me what I'm allowed to budget. I got to check budgeting. I'll get back to you. If we have any more questions, and then they're going to go look for another version of what it is, you sell cheaper, better from China. Yeah. So without, so to answer your question, when you don't go for control, because you're scared of it, you're actually harming yourself more than you ever could by going for control. The issue is control by not attempting to take control at all, you end up being controlled by the buyer. So I love that. Thank you. Because I think a lot of people have to hear that again and again and again and beat it into their heads because I fully agree that if you can't control that, you can't offer anything besides the points that are listed on a website. You're taking this that further, obviously, and I'm putting it very simply, like very simply, but if you're just offering the points on the website, what good are you? You're a walking grocer and that's not going to help anybody, right? That's not helping the customer. If you actually care about the customer, you're actually doing them to service. So let's talk about, and at any point, I don't know where the good kickoff point to flip the script is. So you tell me, but control flip the script sounds like a control thing. I know you spoke a lot about control and pitch anything about framing about, and I don't know is that is control something that you always have to fight for or does it come naturally? How do you, there's so many techniques and strategies? How do you know when you have to think about control and when it's just the way you conduct yourself? And then we can go into flip the script. The reason it's a scary word is you can't control people. It's not possible, right? So now you have an orange laugh, Scotch Larry talking about control, right? And so you're confused and understand, you should be. So because you cannot tell people what to do, you cannot force anybody to do something, you cannot corner anybody into a position, you can't ask, by the way, this is sales on gladiator, you know, how do we corner somebody? How do we force them? See it all the time when people say, hey, right, you having a good time? You know, everybody here ready to learn something? Yeah, motherfucker, I came to the conference, you know, it's nine in the morning, I had a cup of coffee, nothing can go wrong. Something, those are rhetorical questions. It's a setup. Right? Hey, Mr. Jones, you know, if I could get you the air conditioning unit, you know, the could air conditioning your whole building and lower your price and we could take away your old unit and wouldn't cost you anything. Is that something you'd be interested in? Yeah, asshole. Of course, I'd be interested in it, but that's not how the world works, right? You know, so, so when you, now, the buyer's not going to probably call you a motherfucker, right? But he will think it. Okay. Depends, depends on the buyer, but yeah. I'll do it for you. Oh, but, but the rhetorical questions or asking, doing sort of explore toward discovery calls. The discovery calls are very popular today with young people. I don't know how you are. You're like 23 years old. But, you know, these 22, 23 year old millennials have sort of glommed on to this idea of the discovery call. I think they've been so smart and clever. And so, you know, how long have you felt this pain? Where do you see yourself in five years? Scott, you know, if you could solve this problem, what would that mean for you? You know, how long have you been dealing with this? What would be the ideal solution in your mind? Hey, hey, listen to asshole, right? I came to a cell call for you to solve my problems. Not for me to solve my problems. I've already tried to solve them. You know, the buyer, I've tried to solve my problem that I failed. I ordered some stuff online. It didn't work. I hired a local consultant. That failed. I hired my niece, you know, just got an MBA to set up the website and she screwed it up. Now we have holes in our data systems. So I've failed at this. Okay. I cannot teach you anything. Just look at my problem, right? Understand the basics of it. And give me your insight on where a solution can come from. I don't want to spend half an hour telling you, I have a very common problem. My firewall doesn't work, right? You tell me what you know about firewalls, but this is not a, I don't want to spend 15, 20 minutes sharing with you all of my problems. You should be able to recognize my problems and be familiar with it. So the, the, by doing a discovery call, by being nice, by being looking for a report, by doing all the things that you sort of see other sales people do, you are not only are losing control, but you're, you are not controlling the sale in a way that's frustrating for the buyer. The buyer wants to see you controlling it. Okay. He wants you to ask very specific questions. Hey, it looks like your firewall is, you know, causing a couple data security hacks. They're coming over the TCP IP 11. It looks like you've got, you know, 17 breaches in the last 60 days, you know, five of those involved the real data loss. You know, we see this pretty often. This happens in, you know, 58 to 80 person organizations as they start to crest through eight petabytes of data. Is that about, I don't like, I'm not even in this business, right? But is that about right? You know, they want to see you starting to control the set of ideas and the conversation controlling the frame around which the conversation is happening. So pitch anything was about frame control. How to focus the buyer on certain things that matter and get their focus away from things that don't matter. How to control, you know, how to frame time, how to frame power, how to frame scarcity. And these are the things that can be done and it gives them ideas on how to do it. Flip the script gives the scripts to control the presentation and the conversation and the sales process with the buyer. You have, so, so the real outcome is flip the script. It lets you create a sandbox. And that's where the control is. It lets you create a sandbox that the buyer can then play in and do anything he wants. Have autonomy. That's what could, that's a problem with control, right? When you're really trying to control somebody, so Scott, what do you think? Is this something you'd be interested in? If I can get you the price that you were looking for, you know, is this something we could sign up for today? Tell what, I have a special discount. It expires in then a week. I'll talk to my manager and if he'll approve you, I can get this for just $900 a month. Is that something we can go forward with? Right? That is aggressive and it's controlling. The reason you don't like that is because it takes away your autonomy. In autonomy, you can have Maslow's hierarchy and needs, what he forgot to put on it is autonomy, food, water, shelter, love, safety, above all of that stuff is autonomy. I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees. Every human has that built into their DNA, right? autonomy and self-governance is the highest emotional, highest survival need. So when you as a salesperson start to take away autonomy, self-governance, self-decision making ability, then you're losing the sale. So you work so hard as a salesperson to all be nice and prepare a presentation, give the features and benefits, then towards the end of the sale, search and take the buyers autonomy away when they're tired, they want to leave, they really don't want to see face anymore. And now you're going for control, take their autonomy away, that creates a failure state. So flip the script, let you create a sandbox where you set all the parameters and then you back away and you give total autonomy to the buyer at the time that he wants it. And that's why when we close, like you say, hey, ornclap, so the million copies of pitch anything, number one, most interviewed sales, trainer, sales guy, pitch guy, finance guy, you know, on the internet. And what's your best clothes? And my best clothes is this. So that's anything else we should do here. I think we're wrapping up, you know, if you don't have anything else, we're probably going to pack up our stuff and leave. That's my clothes, because you can't close at the end, there's nothing you can do at the end of sale to push somebody into making a purchase. Now, if you do most of the time, it just falls apart, like it'll fall apart of contract and fall apart of finance, follow it. So yeah, maybe you can get a signature, you can get a yes, but in a deal, and remember, I don't sell TVs, you know, I raised $10 million dollars or sell $1 million dollar contracts or $5,000 or $1,000 other things. You know, maybe you could sell a TV that way, I don't know, an iPhone, maybe a car, you know, but when you really get into enterprise sales or services, the end of the sale is not when you consider to control someone to put somebody in the deal, even if you get it, it will fall apart. So what you can do is set the whole thing up. Big idea, problem, the solution, why do it now? The value proposition, what you get, how it works, the social proof for the reputation, you know, who else we work with, what we think the solution is, and then you could say, but I need to get more, you know, I need to know more about you, as I said before, before we sort of agree to work with you. Right? And so when you set it up in that way, you set up the sandbox where they are pitching you to become the, you know, how to work with you as opposed to you pitching the idea that they should, you know, sign an agreement will give you a yes. So there's three things that makes a lot of sense to me. There's three things that you mentioned outside of everything, the positioning, the value prop, like all these things, all these classical sales things that people will recognize, that a lot of people won't recognize. So when I pull the book, it says status alignment, certainty gap, and presenting your ideas is plain vanilla. Well, the presenting idea of plain vanilla sort of does speak for itself, but even that is something that probably a lot of people, it doesn't really, it's not that they think of when they're pitching a product or a solution. So the sandbox is setting all the points so that you know that by the time you're, you're closing your laptop, you're walking out of the room, you've already set that sandbox, but it's a controlled sandbox and they're going to be buying from you, they're going to be almost soliciting the buy from you because they want that, they want that. So that's like the the sandbox that you let them play in. But what are the other points that you mentioned? Yeah, by the way, we want an example of that. We had a guy come in, you know, I met him here at the office of the weekend. It's a big deal, you know, multi-couple million dollars and made a little presentation to him. We started leaving because I had to get back to my family, you know, and again, it was the weekend. And I said, hey, John, so, you know, what are we doing here? What's the plan for getting the agreement signed up? You know, because we're leaving. And he said, oh, the agreement, yeah, I signed that when I walked in. I just wanted to meet with you a little bit. It's on the conference room table. So that is the idea of inception, you know, that flip the script covers is you put all the ideas in the buyer's mind and then with no control, no force, no pressure, no aggression, those ideas assemble themselves into the notion I have to work with Scott. I have to work with Warren. I have to work with Joe Bagadona, whoever you are. So, so, you know, going back to your thing, I think, yeah, we'll touch on those couple of points quickly. Status alignment, if somebody does not believe that you are a peer to them in their industry, it will always be very difficult to close a deal. The low status position, the, the occupying the lower point in the dominance hierarchy of business and society means someone will be looking down at you and not working across from you. When people look down at you, they feel like they have a power, right? When somebody has power over you, whether it's perceived or real, a couple of things really happen. They see you physically at a very surface level, right? They don't see your depth and your capability and your character and your insight. And that's where the value and the sale comes from, your transparency, your honesty, your value, your integrity, your experiences, who you are as a person. They discount all of that, right? I mean, think about it. When you, not to be mean, but when you go valet your car, you know, hey, motherfucker, here's the keys. Don't think it, right? I got a picture of you. And then you're not interested. Are you going to college? You know, why are you working here? What's your, you know, what are your goals in life? You know, none of you just see that person as a valet and then you just lose everything else. But they're a million, they're a million levels deep as a person. But in that particular interaction, that's not going through your mind. Because of power because you have your power, right? You feel powerful with that person. So you see them at a very surface level. You don't see any of their value. Number two, as you take risks around that person, you would not take around a peer. Check your phone, you know, ignore messages or you leave the room, you order something to eat, start a side conversation while they're talking. Like if you were talking to the, you know, the president of your local bank branch, who's approving a $20 million loan for you, right? You guys are talking about that loan and it's the final loan decision, right? And a call came in from your girlfriend, your wife, you know, you're, you're whoever, you're, you're a partner of the, you're not answering that call. You're not taking that call. Yeah. So when, when you're trying to sell somebody and they take that call that has meaning, they feel power over you, right? Hey, can you hold on a second? Yeah, mom. Oh, just, um, so, so, um, no, 100%, no, 100%. I get it. I totally, I get it. So, how do you, how do you fix that? How do you fix that? Uh, I mean, the, I think, you know, flip the script goes through that pretty mechanically, but, um, you, you have to create that status alignment, right? And there's, there's lots of ways to do it. I'll give you a really easy way. Uh, so most people started meeting like this. Hey, Scott, thanks for having us in. We really appreciate coming in here. You know, it's a great company. Um, we want to meet with you for a while. I think our product would really make an improvement to your accounting system. And you'll find like, if you go with us, and I know, you know, you can, you can buy any accounting system. Great planes is great. Oracle has a great system. But I think you're really going to like us. And if you, if you end up choosing us, you're going to find customers always right. You can call me on the weekend. You know, I'll give you, um, you know, my phone number and, and we, we are very service oriented. And I'm, I'm just excited to be here today to show you how our system can help you make money. Typical, I've seen that a thousand times. Typical opening. Right. That is the low status. Um, um, you know, position yourself without alignment. You're not here when you say those things. You're a sales guy, right? And you're giving power to the buyer. So how do you fix it? Hey, Scott, I know you're busy this time of year. I'm super busy as well. I don't know if we're lucky or dumb or we have a great product, but whatever the case is, we just don't have enough time in the day. I'm glad we were able to get this meeting on the calendar. I, I know I reserved about an hour for it. We might have to cut it to 40 minutes just so I can keep my day moving along. Yeah. Does, I see your team is here. Does anybody need fluids in or out? If not, let's get started. Okay. That is just a very simple thing that anybody can do to create status alignment. Your time is as valuable as my time. Okay, salespeople have all the time in the world to sit around until they get kicked out of an office are, are low status. Uh, so, so that is a, you know, time scarcity is a very easy way to get status alignment, right? Uh, you know, again, just so when you think you know the answer, I change the question. Right? Hey, send me, so that's at the beginning of the end. Why don't you guys send a verb proposal? No. That's what I love to give you guys a proposal. What do I put in a proposal? Do we have a, you know, do we have a deal? Why am I wasting my time if we're not going to? Listen, I, you know, it takes me two, three hours to put together a proposal. What do I put in it? Look, I'm not going to work harder on your company than you will. Okay. You guys, let's, you need a proposal. Let's run through it. What do we put in there? Well, you know, what, uh, when's delivery? What are the terms? How much financing do you need? You know, when's a start date? What's the suite of services? You know, if we're really doing a proposal, let's go through it. We'll write it up and get this thing rolling. Okay. But no, I'm not going to send over a proposal. You know, I had a woman call up and I mean, we're busy and she said, you know, once you, I heard a little bit about you guys who referred to you, once you tell me, you know, start at the beginning, tell me a little bit about yourself. Right? And I go, no, I'm not going to do that. She goes, what? You know, see a fo of a $5 million company? I'm not going to do that. Like, what do you think we do here? I'm the information booth. You know, like, you didn't go to our website, you didn't read my book, right? Yeah. Listen, most people show up and they go, orange, how do we work with you? Right? Not orange. Who are you? Like, and I understand you don't have to research everybody on LinkedIn. But how hard is it to research on class? Just typing, oh, in Google and everything else will fill itself out. I'm going to have to internet. Come on. Give me a break, lady. Right? I had never been talked to like that ever. I'm like, you have now. Okay. Now, the reality is maybe that becomes a deal, maybe it doesn't, but she is not confused about what level in the status hierarchy of us doing business. I'm at. And in fact, what happened is the CEO of that company jumped in and said, oh, Susan, Susan, like, do you got to understand who orange is? Like, you know, this guy is amazing. And she calmed down and we ended up doing that deal. But that is, and we never had that problem for her again. She ordered the book, fell in love with the book, and everything like that. So status alignment is super important. And those are some things you could do is not allow somebody to put you in the low status position. Now, now certainty, you know, is it good? I mean, this is why deals don't happen is not that people believe you're lying or your product doesn't work. They just don't have certainty that the things you say that will happen in the future really will happen when you say they'll happen in the way that you say they'll happen. That's why people seek out certainty and to make that decision. Do not can you do it? Are you a good person? Are you hard working? Are you honest? Are you ethical? Do you guys have good clients? Am I certain that the value I want will happen when I need it to happen? Certainty. And I feel like certainty comes back to expertise of all the things. I mean, because you could offer guarantees and money bank guarantees and logos and you know, prior performance and track record and everything like that. That's good at papering over history. But I think people make a judgment and create certainty around your ability to deliver value on how big of an expert you are. If you really understand their problem at the NATS eyebrow, the deepest level, and they feel like you know and have solved their problem before and it's easy for you to solve. That creates a lot of certainty that the promises you're going to make that the promises you make really will happen. So certainty can be developed by showing someone that you're an expert in their usually technical problem or showing them in a technical way that you solve these problems all the time. And then your last question was around plain vanilla. I think you know, a lot of people today are focused around getting attention because our product is new and novel and does things in a way that's never been done before. So that's excitement of apps. The apps tend to be totally new, do things in a totally different way and that's why there's this expression. The app roll fail fast. And so there's a new app that does this. There's a new website that does this. So the awesome thing about news that attracts people to look at whatever it is and try it. Well, there's no risk in trying out your new website or app and it's free and it doesn't cost anything. The problem is when you're doing real business and you're attracting people with the newness of your idea because it attracts them, but when they realize and think about buying it and using it, the novelty also creates avoidance and scares them away. An example I use in the book is, hey, we're all sort of be super interested in a robot doctor who will perform surgery on you. It's cheap, it's accurate, you know, it's AI, you know, you can get a surgery that otherwise would have cost $150,000 for $5,000, right? It's new, it's exciting, it's novel and so that I would track everybody to look at this robot doctor. There's a person who wouldn't look at it, but who would really use it when they start to think about it? So newness attracts people and gets them a look at it, but the novelty of things also creates avoidance makes people run away. So that's why we try to make things look plain vanilla. This is just like every other surgery that's been done. There's like every other appendix removal that's been done in the last 15 years. It's the same surgical procedure, it's the same protocol, it's the same medicine, it's the same, you know, nurses and physician assistants, same hospital, same bed, same drug delivery system, the only, it's just a plain vanilla surgery. The only thing that's different is we have the doctor assisted by an AI system. So just one new thing, but everything else is the same. So now I don't have to get my head around this entire thing being new and risky and the stakes being eye, but we try and frame things as the same as every other one that's ever been done successfully except for this one new thing. So that's sort of the idea of playing vanilla and that's, you know, those are the scripts that are in look described. So I think that the plain vanilla, by the way, the plain vanilla makes tons of sense and I just wanted to not beat them to death, but the first two, the status alignment, the closed certainty gap, so the expertise and then making sure that you're on the same playing field. I'm curious to know that I think I know the answer, I think I know the answer you're going to give me, but I'm still curious to ask, do those, especially status tip off status alignment? Do those play with every single personality or is it just the mindset of I don't care if I'm going to blow this deal? This is who I am. This is the way that I sell. Because if that CFO is in the room alone with you and the CEO didn't jump in, is there a way to, I don't know, dance between different personality types or is that just absolute bullshit you just go in? That's the way it is and that's how, you know, nine to 10 deals are going to close. Listen, I know a lot of these guys like these, you know, ESTJ and SMTP. And I'm not saying, you know, in a FBI hostage negotiation, where lives are at stake. Yeah. Right? That, that, you know, they don't do a personality assessment on the hostage takers on the hostage, you know, and the hostage negotiator goes, he is a STMP, I'm in a ESTJ, the hostages are elemental peas, you know, and they bring in the mom because right? But you're not fucking rescuing hostages. You're selling copiers, right? You're selling accounting software. You're selling, you know, SaaS subscriptions. You're selling financial services. Right? And the reality is, you know, you're not rescuing hostages and it's just too fucking complicated, you know, because early my career, I tried all that stuff, you know, does hypnosis work, does ESTJ work, does personality assessment work, does, you know, and does, does, uh, NLP work. If you touch somebody on the shoulder and you look up to the left, will they, you know, look at to the right and what it's too, when you get in a room and you're trying to close a million dollar sale and you have a 64 year old CFO that's been doing this for 20 years, staring across the table, you can ESTJ yourself to death is not going to work. You're not experienced enough. You're not in that situation off enough. You're going to be paralyzed. It's too complicated and the stakes aren't high enough to, you know, to do, to, to do, the stuff doesn't work. It's too complicated. So yes, the answer is just status is a very good system for maintaining alignment with the buyer. When somebody believes you're in low status and you're looking down on you, very difficult to sell close to deal. I love it. I have a question for, I guess, just your passion. You're, you pitch deals. Why do you, why do you care about educating? Why is this something that you're passionate about? Yeah, because I'm still, you know, I said at the beginning, I created this, this hole in my heart for, for being able to pitch correctly. And when I see bad, you know, now I went so far down the, the rabbit hole, yeah, how to do this stuff. When I see bad art or bad form, I am just compelled to try and fix it and make it better. And so it's very exciting for me when I get these emails, like, like, not, hey, we sold the TV or an iPhone or a computer. We raised a billion dollars. You know, I went and spoke to a conference for infusion soft. The CEO of infusion soft said the night before or the two nights before we went to pitch Goldman Sachs to raise our $50 million. Somebody showed me pitch anything. We ripped up our old presentation. We redidded the pitch anything way and we went in and we closed Goldman Sachs for $50 million. Very self gratifying to have thousands of those stories come in and so I love doing it. So, so I guess, well, that answers that and it makes a lot of sense. Why, um, or what's next for, I had a question for you and I just totally forgot because I was getting into your story and I don't know what I was going to ask you. Does, when you, when you go into any conversation, this is what I was going to ask you, I remember now, when you go into any conversation, is it hard for you to remove status alignment? Is it hard for you to have normal conversations like with, listen, listen, so this is a great question. We can, let's finish up on this. You know, I, I go to a meeting and the first thing people say, Hey, I want to, don't frame me. Just count. I will have it. I'll buy it. Don't frame. Don't control me. And, and the reality is this, the things in pitch anything and flip the script are counterintuitive. They're not, so we didn't get a chance. So maybe next time, talk about reciprocity, right? We want to be nice, seek out rapport, be kind to other business people, you know, to, to the buyers and get that same reciprocity, right? But in business, you've heard this expression, no good deed goes on punished, right? In business, people are just looking to get the most amount for themselves at the least price. And so the things that we do in life that we're programmed to do with our friends, with our colleagues, with new people we meet, with our neighbors, you know, with people we play sports with, right? Our, our, we're seeking reciprocity, we're, you know, we're the, and that's just being humanistic, right? In the way we deal with people, when you bring that to business, you have to reprogram yourself in a counterintuitive way to be controlling, you know, but still empathetic. So it's hard to do. So no, I don't do it in every conversation because it's not a natural thing to do. I do it when I know I'm getting on a call, going to a meeting, you know, making a presentation, and I need control over this social situation to raise my status from, you know, essentially whale poop up to, you know, expert in their problem in a very short amount of time and ask, and, and, and have the credibility to close a couple million dollars of deal. And that is, it's programmatic, it's counterintuitive, and it takes a lot of work. So no, I can't just let loose in conversations and, you know, make all that work, you really have to think about it. And that's really the strength of these two books that they give you the formula, you know, as you know, that allows you to be programmatic for that 20 minutes or that hour when you need to be switched on. But then you switch off and you're, you know, you can't do it all the time. You're nice, you're, you're nice every day, not, not, not framing, not pitching. I love it. Okay, so to close this off, where do people go to get more of Orrin of the book, what's the links to downloads, the social tags, whatever? Yeah, yeah. I think two things, you just go to Amazon, you get flip the script, you just order it. It's, it's whatever it is on Amazon. And then you go over to pitch anything and put your name in and you'll get tons of extra material that, you know, you'll level feed you with this industrial psychology that really makes a difference. So put your name in at pitch anything.com and order flip the script. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, I Heart Radio, and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes, it takes about 30 seconds as it allows other people to find our podcast and let's our amazing guests reach even more people with their message. And remember, any rating is fine as long as it contains five stars. I'm Scott Clary from the success story podcast signing off.