Oren Klaff is an expert at pitching and closing multi-million dollar investment deals. His closing rate is high because he has mastered the art of frame control. Frame control helps Oren capture and keep the investor's interest during a presentation. The same concepts apply when you are having a value conversation. When you encounter resistance from the customer, frame control can help redirect the conversation and stay focused on discovering value from their perspective. We include a live demonstration of frame control at the half-way mark and again 10 minutes before the end of the episode.
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What Is Frame Control?
- What is the most important thing you can share about pricing?
- Most the pitches that request Oren's help include features, benefits, and economics early in the presentation.
- However, once you start discussing price, the meeting is over.
- It is not a good method for selling products and services.
- What is the “croc brain”?
- Think of the mechanics of how the brain functions.
- How you talk, speak and calculate come from the neocortex (smart part of the brain).
- When you meet someone and start a conversation, the information coming from your neocortex is going to their crocodile (lower) brain, which manages new information.
- The crocodile brain is wondering if the information is something it wants to eat or kill.
- You have to work your way upward, past the crocodile brain, and into the midbrain before you earn the trust necessary to get to the neocortex.
- Features and benefits cannot be understood by the crocodile and midbrain.
- Tailor what you say to the way the brain works.
- Once you have a good pitch, it should work for anyone.
- Rock bands and comedians do not change their shows based on where they are performing.
- What is frame control?
- In any social interaction (which includes sales and business), you cannot have two different perspectives for the same product or service and achieve a deal.
- A frame is simply a perspective.
- Looking out different windows gives different perspectives, resulting in different emotions.
- People have to look at the same deal from the same window.
- Frame control is about getting people to see your highly differentiated service as high value and worth the high price by seeing through the same window.
- Frame control is giving someone a lens to see what you see.
- A buyer's frame is that he usually thinks that his money is the most important in the world and that he is in control.
- Gain frame control through a process called “prizing.”
- The prize to win in the meeting is you because you are the only one who can do what you are selling.
- Communicate that theory clearly by avoiding status-reducing statements and controlling the meeting.
- This method does require you to take a risk.
- No one wants to come to a meeting to talk about themselves; they want to learn things they do not know.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Looking out different windows gives different perspectives, resulting in different emotions.” quote=”Looking out different windows gives different perspectives, resulting in different emotions.”]
How to Be the Alpha
- Should you give a presentation or start by asking questions?
- You should be able to pitch one-on-one with the power of ideas rather than decks.
- Decks are used to get the meeting, but not necessarily at the meeting.
- Getting asked questions can be laborious.
- A cold read lets the buyer know it will not be a boring presentation, but rather you have done your homework, and you are willing to take risks.
- The mind understands when you are taking risks.
- When you as a seller use your intuition and experience to read the customer and tell the customer what you are seeing, it demonstrates a sense that you know what is happening.
- Even if you get it wrong, you will get respect because you are taking a risk.
- Avoid having the conversation that they have had five other times.
- Skip the weather or sports talk, as it chews up time.
- You only have about 20 minutes from a buyer before he starts to tune out.
- Have an agenda and make the most compelling argument while the buyer can pay attention.
- What are the common opposing frames and the proper response?
- Technical and social games tactics are laid out in chapter 4 of Pitch Anything.
- The most common frame is the power frame.
- You can combat it with the moral authority frame.
- It is slightly immoral for a large company to grind on a small company to get a financial advantage.
- Large companies should want their vendors to be around and deliver for a very long time.
- Small companies disappear when they do not have good margins.
- What is a beta trap?
- There are alphas and betas in the animal world.
- In a business meeting, you know which one you are from your internal sense of who is driving the meeting.
- Recognize it when the other guy has trapped you into a low-status, supplicant position.
- The free 6-Minute Pitch course can help you figure out how to get out of beta traps.
- Most presentations start with information, which creates analysis.
- Analysis is done with the cold, unemotional part of the mind.
- If you are trying to open or close with information, you put the buyer's mind in a cold state.
- The goal is to capture the information with stories or narratives that are compelling and create a want in the buyer.
[clickToTweet tweet=”You only have about 20 minutes from a buyer before he starts to tune out.” quote=”You only have about 20 minutes from a buyer before he starts to tune out.”]
Why Now vs. Why Me
- Why is “why now” important in a sales conversation?
- Try to demonstrate how the world is changing, positively and negatively.
- For example, the next generation of business will leave behind the executives who do not have basic computer skills.
- When you demonstrate a new world order, then the customer wants to know what solution you have that fits in the new order.
- Why now has to be characterized and structured into how things are changing in the macro.
- You can approach it technically, economically or socially.
- Why me is largely implied by your interactions.
- What is the role of neediness in a sales conversation?
- Neediness tends to show up at the beginning and end of a meeting.
- The real meeting happens in 20 minutes; everything else is discussion, relationship, and rapport.
- What is one of your best stories about creating value for a customer?
- A customer shared his presentation to raise money for his company.
- It was so bad that Oren asked who told him to do it that way.
- The customer told him it was a board member who had used the method 15 years ago.
- Oren's team was then able to help him fix the presentation to move forward more effectively.
About Oren Klaff
Oren Klaff is the author of Pitch Anything. At his day job, he raises funding in capital markets for Intersection Capital. He is also the co-developer of the Velocity, a proven framework to create a winning financial presentation.
- Oren's Website: pitchanything.com/value
- Oren on Twitter: @pitchanything
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