Pitch Anything Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

"Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff is a guide to mastering the art of pitching and selling your ideas effectively. Drawing on neuroscience and psychology, Klaff introduces the STRONG Method, a framework for structuring and delivering compelling pitches. He emphasizes the importance of framing, creating tension, and maintaining control of the conversation to engage your audience and keep their attention. With real-world examples and actionable strategies, the book equips readers with the tools to pitch confidently and close deals in any professional setting.

About the Author

Oren Klaff is the Director of Capital Market at investment bank intersection Capital, where he handles the capital raising platform, business and product development. He is one of the developers and overseers for the intersection Capital’s flagship product Velocity.

He raised over $400 million of investor capital from high net worth individuals and financial institutions from 2003-2008.

He serves as a member and principal of the Geyser Holding’s investment committee, where he has been responsible for sales, marketing, branding, product development, and business development. He has previously worked as a venture analyst and partner at mid-sized investment funds.

Topics

Communication Skills Marketing & Sales

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Key Insights

Pitching ideas is necessary for every profession. Whether you’re a doctor, a stockbroker, or an artist.

But, pitching is not always easy. Sometimes the idea you pitch and how the other party interprets it is very different.

“When your target is trying to win your attention and respect, you are the prize.”- Oren Klaff

In “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff, you will examine the evolution of the brain, discover the three parts that resulted, and learn to successfully tailor your pitches to feed this human makeup.

Tailor Your Pitch To The Croc Brain

The evolution of the brain can be summed up in three different stages. Each stage resulted in a different part:

The Croc Brain - developed for survival.

The Midbrain - more developed than the croc and helps us to understand social interactions and cues.

Neocortex Brain - the most developed that allows us to analyze and understand complex ideas.

When pitching an idea to someone, you use your neocortex brain in order to form ideas and articulate them to the other person.

But, you must understand that the person receiving your pitch does not interpret them with their neocortex brain. They are initially receiving the pitch with their croc brain, which picks up exciting details about the idea but ignores most everything else.

“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.” -Oren Klaff

If the pitch is too complex and complicated for the croc brain to understand, the other person will not go for it. It could be interpreted by them as a threat.

This is why you must always present your idea to someone with their croc brain in mind. That means you must make it clear, short, and concise. It should be focused on the big picture, rather than the small details that your neocortex brain has concocted up.

The pitch must also be positive so that the person’s croc brain will send it on to higher levels of their brain. It will not want to send anything negative further up the ladder.

The Importance of Creating Desire and Tension

Pitching to your audience requires their full attention. And, a great way to make sure that you have their full attention is to have both desire and tension incorporated into your pitch.

When you offer your audience a reward, they will feel desire. And, tension happens when your audience thinks they may lose something. In the brain, what’s happening at this moment is that the chemical dopamine is present because of the desire and norepinephrine is there because of the tension.

Dopamine is present when reward and desire are incorporated in a pitch. An example of a reward in a pitch is the opportunity for the person to solve a puzzle. This is a pleasurable experience for a person and it gives the person a novelty surprise when listening to your idea.

An easy way to add norepinephrine...