How to get more meetings, win more pitches & close more deals

00:00You're talking to the one person in the world, maybe three people in the world. The other one is at Goldman Sachs. The other one is at McKinsey. But you're talking to one person in the world who's less than $5 million to have a conversation with for a few minutes who has solved your problem a thousand times. You're listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast, where we host in-depth interviews with business leaders, authors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs with a singular focus around business growth. At the end of each podcast, we want you to walk away inspired, to think bigger, and to have actionable takeaways you can apply to improve your business.

00:34Each episode is like a masterclass on a key topic, so make sure to browse the episodes to find the topics that are most relevant to your biggest business challenges today. This podcast is brought to you by Web Profits, a digital growth consultancy that helps challenge your brands drive growth in a complex and fragmented digital landscape. You can find out more about Web Profits at webprofits.io. Now, let's get into it. This is Alex Kleanthus, and today we're talking with Oren Klaff, who's one of the world's

01:05leading experts on sales, on raising capital, and negotiation. He's the best-selling author of Pitch Anything and Flip the Script, and he's the director of capital markets at Intersection Capital. Today, we'll be talking about how to get more meetings, how to win more pitches, and how to close more deals. And just quickly, before we get started, make sure to go ahead and hit that subscribe button so that you get the latest episodes as soon as they're released. Let's get into it. Hello, and welcome, Oren. Hey, thank you. That's a very warm welcome. Yeah. And this is pretty exciting because I first actually heard about you 10 years ago, I guess,

01:36or maybe eight or nine years ago, just because of the book, Pitch Anything, which was kind of had this counterintuitive approach to sales that comes from someone with extreme experience, with significant experience, right? Yeah. So it's so counterintuitive. No one wanted to publish it. Really? No. Really? Wow. So that was a sales process in itself, right? And I'm sure you had to use some of the principles there to pitch it.

02:07So I go, Simon & Schuster, you know, didn't want it. You know, a bunch of the big publishers didn't want it. The publisher I'm currently with didn't want it. So finally, I went to McGraw-Hill, right? And I walk in there, and they have this senior editor who is really like this august, I want to be kind, you know, 60s-years-old editor in New York. Their office is in Manhattan. they have the entire building it says McGraw Hill on it you're in the conference room overlooking

02:40Manhattan they have all their little interns you know they have nine people around the table my agent and I walk in right and it's obviously who's the senior editor who makes the choices who's running the meeting right uh and her name was Ann uh I can't remember her last name so I turn my attention to the lowliest analyst uh you know intern in the room I go Ann it's lovely to meet you. It's been good to talk to you on the phone, but listen, here's how this meeting is going to go. Right. And so I yell at her and she goes, I'm not Anne. I'm like, okay, well,

03:12if you're not Anne, who are you? Why are you in this room? Right. And then the lady speaks up and she goes, what is happening? And the intern goes, he's doing it. He's doing it to us. Right. And I go, well, what do you want? Like, you expect me to come here and beg for the book deal? Of course, I'm going to do the stuff that's in the book about the book in order to get the book. And they're like, yeah, you're in. Yeah. That's such a great story. And, you know, it's fascinating that some of these counterintuitive approaches to traditional

03:45ideas, they don't seem to cut through a lot of times, right? Because it's not safe, right? And I think, you know, so what's interesting about, you know, some of your approaches is that the fact that they are not safe is probably part of the reason that they actually have impact that they actually stand out, you know? Well, the other side of not safe, two sides to that pancake is it raises the stakes. All right. And I'll tell you a little, but, but, but I have a little rant before I get into that. I'll tell you something else that's counterintuitive.

04:16If you speak to actual authors of the books you read and I get them on podcasts, right. And there's something in their book and I go do it. Okay. You know, branding, you know, sales. All right, Here's a situation like run your run your shit. Right. And they're well, you know, strategy and thesis and big think. I'm like, wait a second. You're all entire book and you drag me your podcast. You can actually do it. So, Alex, anything in there, you ask me, flash roll, winter is coming. Plain vanilla. We'll just invent a company, invent the product and we'll run through actual tactics and techniques live.

04:52Right. So the different counterintuitive is people write books and then you can't actually do this stuff. And then they go on a podcast. So we're going to do stuff. But listen, listen, I have this big, let's see, this giant G-Wagon. It's called a G550 Square. It's 200 of them in the world. So there's like a regular, you know, Mercedes G-Wagon. This one is like supersized. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but they're massive. I haven't seen it. I'm going to look right after this podcast. I'm going to look at it. Look it up while we're talking. It's 22 inches taller than a full-size Range Rover. It's massive. So anyway, I pack my family in it,

05:24And we're driving over the Coronado Bridge here in San Diego. Right. And that goes like, and you're looking down at battleships. Like they look like Lego toys. You're, you're in the sky. Apollo and Zeus are there. Hey, would you like a coffee? Like handing their hand comes out in the cloud. You are in the clouds. And I'm in this giant G wagon that we have. I don't know why we have it, but whatever. And the foot wall is like this high on this giant bridge, at least. Right. And I, and so I slow down, you know, people are honking. And like, by the way, you know, I drive fast.

05:54I race. I race motorcycles. You know, we turn the camera around. You know, there's some race cars right there, 10 feet in front of me. But I slow this truck down to 20 miles an hour. Right? Because I'm high in the air. I'm in a big truck. The foot wall is low. And I have my family in it. The stakes are high. You raise the stakes and things seem scary. So the trick is in sales. And I think this is what we should talk about. You know, business development. and you get out there, it's raising the stakes, right?

06:25But having a skill level. What happened is people raise the stakes. Like, you know, what's raising the stakes? Saying to a customer, why are you asking me for a discount? This makes no sense, right? You want your vendors not to make any money. You deserve free product. Like what, so why wouldn't you say that to a buyer, right? Well, because it raises the stakes. And then they say, hey, you're being rude to me. I'm going to work, you know, my other vendors are nice. and I don't like root vendors. But when people say to me, hey, can we get a 30% discount?

06:56I'm sorry, I confused you. Right? I feel terrible. But I feel like this meeting just ended. So raising the stakes, but I have the skills to raise it. So really things feel edgy, but if other people get them to work, maybe you can get the skills to raise the stakes and it just focuses decision-making when the stakes go higher. And ultimately, this is what I feel the problem is today. When you used to fly somewhere to Chicago, right, from California,

07:30go to a meeting, everybody get in that meeting, the stakes were high because you spent money, you traveled. There's a lot going on. And they just came in and said, hey, we rescheduled. Could you do 3 o'clock? I'm like, whoa, no, sir. No, sir. Not right. And yeah, I knew you'd be 21 years old, an intern. No, sir, we are not rescheduling. I have to get to my grandma's funeral. Fuck you, right? We're having this meeting because the stakes are high. You get on a Zoom and they go, hey, I'm sorry, you know, big Mr. Big couldn't make it. Can we reschedule for never? Oh yeah, anything you want, you know, because the stakes are low.

08:03So raising the stakes to signaling that I am not an information booth on the freeway of you trying to get a discount on whatever it is you're trying to buy. My time, and then I think, you know, now we're somewhere. Signaling in Zoom and in today's world in which connections are so quick and easy, my time, this call is as valuable, if not more valuable, than your time. that's the signaling that raises the stakes.

08:37You are talking to the number one expert in the world who solves the shitty problem that you created for yourself. I don't have that problem. Our accounting system runs perfectly. We're not having an IRS audit. We're not getting crypto security scammed. Like we don't have these problems. You have the problem. Not only do you have it, you have it as bad as anybody can get it. In fact, if you get this problem any worse, me and anybody credible is not even going to be willing to work on it okay because you're just

09:08going to be you'd be like hey come visit us on hell island no thank you i don't want to go to hell island that's where you are right and it doesn't sound enticing so so now we're talking about uh correctly raising the stakes and letting people and the stakes are you have a problem it's not going away if you don't solve it it's going to get worse you're talking to the one person in the world, maybe three people in the world. The other one is at Goldman Sachs. The other one is a McKinsey, but you're talking to one person in the world who's less than $5 million to have a

09:38conversation with for a few minutes who has solved your problem a thousand times. Alex, you know, I solved this problem. I hit the, that was easy button. And I thought I like, I do it while I'm sleeping. Like, okay. We saw it's a complicated problem, but we solve it all the time. So let me contribute some of my time and my day to helping you out. Okay. But efficient, let's be efficient. And now we have a call. And for the listeners, he just pulled out a bunch of tactics, pulled them all together into that one little example, right? This book, Flip the Script,

10:12you know, so I got it a couple months back, maybe three, four months back. And I was just going through it because I got Pitch Anything, I got Flip the Script. One of the only books that I bought the audio book, the physical book, the Kindle book. I took notes. I have purchased it for people. It is for enterprise level sales and for enterprise level, I guess, engagement is one of the most refreshing approaches since pitch anything, surprisingly. So I'm going to try my best to

10:45touch on it at a very high level and just to give the listeners, I guess, a quick overview so they get, you know, kind of some of the substance. But I highly recommend everyone to purchase this book, right? This book for enterprise sales and for how to structure a deal simplifies it in a really sophisticated way, right? And I'm sure that the conversation with Oren right now, he's going to be showing examples of how he positions himself. He just did it a second ago, right? with, he just flipped it like on the person, right?

11:19So. And I think to jump in on you, like the big thing to notice is status, all right? Status is drives a lot of the, your ability. Everyone wants to close, right? That's the fun part. Teach me some closing lines. Teach me pickup lines. Teach me, you know, ways to close, right? But the way, let me teach you my best clothes. Guys, we're out of time. What should we be doing together? I have to jet.

11:52That's the clothes. Now, that's very powerful. What should we be doing together, right? But the reason you can use that clothes is when you open high status and you open as an expert and you have tons of actual and perceived value, then you have something to take away and the reason i wanted to go there is because i had on my podcast uh anthony scaramucci who was the uh white house communications director for 11 days

12:25he's on cnn you know he maybe he looks a little bit goofy online to you but he is the you know he worked for goldman sachs manages a four billion dollar fund um graduated harvard business school has a degree in finance like he's a you know and he was at the Y he's a real dude so I get on the podcast and I can just he just flashed and I can see he's doing his own stuff he probably doesn't know my name the PR director just you know booked us and I'm like this guy's gonna be a problem because he's just gonna phone it in and you can see that I don't like phoned in interviews right

12:58uh so he's just gonna phone it in he's probably not even looking at the camera and it's just gonna be this smooth you know hey I was White House director like Trump and but blah blah blah right? So he comes on and I go, ladies and gentlemen, I'm so excited to have here today. And it's just, it's unbelievable that I was able to get such a guest to this podcast. It's really unthinkable. Somebody I've been wanting to talk to for many, many years. I'd like to introduce you to Kathy West from ARK Investments. And he goes, what? I'm not Kathy. I'm like, what? You're not,

13:35Who are you? What are you doing? So status works both ways. When somebody comes in, super high status, right? They're going to, when somebody feels powerful over you, they don't listen well. They don't see you as a person. They see you transactionally. And they take risks with you that they wouldn't take with a peer or somebody more powerful than them. So when people believe that they are higher status than you or more powerful than you, again, this is so important. They take risks. They wouldn't take otherwise.

14:06They see you transactionally and only as a surface level and aren't interested in you. All right? And so sometimes you've got to lower somebody's status, which is tricky, but, you know, just showed you there how to do it. And I've done that many times with celebrities. Like every celebrity I meet, I have to do the exact same thing. I can give you other examples. But I can give you another example of lowering somebody's status to your level. The first part in terms of the process of the flip the script process, let's call it, is status alignment, right?

14:37So this is basically just to ensure that the person who you're trying to engage with sees you at least at the same level, right? And so this is the conversation so far. And so what we just spoke about was that there's basically increasing how you're perceived or, you know, just lowering them, right? So if you could provide an example of both, that'd be great, right? because I think this is the hardest part for people to, I think, comprehend is like, how do I establish status when maybe I don't think I have the status, you know? So most people sabotage their own status.

15:08Hey, Alex, so great to be on the podcast. Oh my God, I'm really excited to do it. I'm a little bit nervous, you know, to be on. I did, you know, a ton of prep. Can you hear me okay? Like, do I look okay? It's just, you know, I had my mom ironed my shirt, you know, because I really wanted to look good. Anyway, am I talking too much? So, all right. no reason to do all that and and i'm exaggerating but more like hey i'm really excited to be here um we prepare we have a presentation we'd like to show you i think you're going to love it uh want to let you know at our company customer services number one you can call us on the

15:41weekend i give you my grandmother's fax number whatever you need to reach me anytime day or night we do whatever it takes to keep the customer happy i think you're going to love this presentation I'm going to show it to you and then I'll ask you to have any questions. And then, you know, anyway, I really think you're going to like this presentation. Okay. So that's a mistake. I'll give you an example that's done in a very sophisticated level, probably very similar to the, you know, the Anthony Scaramucci example I just gave you, by the way,

16:14at the end of that podcast with Anthony Scaramucci, he goes, Oh my God, I want to drive down and meet you and let's do something together. So we started with, I don't know who this person is. My PR agent made me take this, and I'm going to phone it in with White House, blah, blah, blah, to how do I'll drive to you and let's work together. That's status alignment. I'll give you another quick example here because I know we have other things to get to, but I was speaking at a large event, and the speaker before me was Emmitt Smith.

16:48Emmitt Smith is the Dallas Cowboys MVP, maybe the most well-known football player in America from that era. The Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl winning dynasty, MVP multiple times of the league, of the Super Bowl, and 100 millionaire. And then went on in resurgence, one Dancing with the Stars. So it's just me and Emmitt Smith in the green room waiting to go speak. and the organizer, and he has an entourage,

17:21but the entourage has to split off because the deal is it's just he and I in the green room. Eventually, so the conference organizer goes, hey, hey, Oren, I want to introduce you to, I go, wait, oh my God, I never thought I would ever get to meet Randall Cunningham, who's another football player, but it's not Emmett. And he goes, I ain't Randall Cunningham. Like, there's not a person in America that doesn't go, oh, Emmett, oh my God, I remember you from the Super Bowl. Can I get your autograph? Except for Oren Claff. because I would love to do that. I'd love him to sign my rump, right?

17:53In permanent marker, of course. I want to hug him and lick his face. I love football. But if I do that, he's going to be like, yeah, whatever. So finally, I was on him. Finally, he goes, I'm sorry, what's your name? Right? What do you do? So Emmett Smith asked Orrin Klaff, what does he do? What's his career? What are his goals in life? Does he have any kids? When I got the status aligned, When he thought he was a superstar and I was a peon speaker from, you know, fanboy, 46-year-old white dude, you know, dreaming of one day meeting Emmett Smith, I had no value.

18:28When I didn't care about any of that and I didn't even know who he was, right, and we were just got peer-to-peer, then we had status alignment. So you cannot go into the customer and get a meeting with the CEO and put them on a pedestal and make them feel more powerful than you. As we said, that's status alignment for sure. And so, okay, let's say that it is the CEO, right? And let's say that there is a presentation that's super important, right? Now, the stakes are high, and now you either have a decision to increase your own status or to put them a bit lower down in their status, we'll call it, right?

19:05You're going to have to take them lower. You have to take them lower. I'm going to give the tool to do it. Is that the only way, is it? You can't increase yourself to that level. Yeah, because they come in. They're not listening to you. It's transactional, right? They're not listening to you. You can say, hey, I just have mined rare earth minerals from an asteroid. I built my own suit. I flew up to it. I got the rare earth minerals here. And I have a goose that shits out golden coins, right? And there's going to – sorry, what were you saying again? Okay. So how do you do it tactfully then? Because it seems risky for some clients.

19:37It's a $10 million deal. Yeah. You don't have to do it. Don't worry, Clifway. Here's the issue. What can you do? We're a great company. We try really hard. Microsoft is our client. You know, they don't care. And it's very hard to raise your – you've got to pull them down a little bit. The tactful, reasonable way to do it is I love you guys. I'm very excited about this meeting. Really prepared hard for it. I am thankful for the time with senior leadership. And I see you're confused.

20:08You're like, wait a second. This is exactly what you said not to do. But it's a setup. So that's a setup. Excited to be here. Very mindful time with leadership. Prepared really hard. I've got a presentation for you. I hope you love it. one thing that I aim to do in this meeting is I see some things that you guys are saying and trying to do, but I also see some things on the website that are confusing. That are actually the opposite of what I would expect you guys to do and say, given what I'm hearing from you in this scope of work.

20:39So my goal is to square, you know, square that hole and try and figure out what is actually going on here. Hmm. Okay. So you're calling something out. Calling every single company will be doing something weird. Disney is doing all this weird LGBTQ equal sign apostrophe, you know, backwards three, which is fine. Right. But, you know, Disney is a, is that Disney used to be like, Hey,

21:10we're going to come over and the kids are going to watch Disney movies. Great. Right. They got to be careful that, that, that, So every company, even Disney, is doing weird things. So pull something weird and say, just we're seeing these things. Most companies will have something on their website that is anathema to how they're behaving. So it's just really easy. I saw some of the website. It says you're the founder-friendly company. But then I see you guys retrading every single deal and grinding. So I'm trying to figure out if either one is fine.

21:41It's confusing who you really are. And as part of this conversation, I'd like to get that cleared up. But of course, we're going to present to you what we think you should do next and why you should work with us and why we're the best. So that is supplicating as a setup and then pulling them down a peg. I'll give you an easier way to test this out that is incredibly powerful. It works best on Zoom calls or phone calls, but meetings as well. right um so in my experience i work with billionaires i work with ceos and i work with

22:17leadership they always come to a call late three minutes five minutes eight minutes if it goes past eight minutes we you know buy um and reset i give them five minutes usually i give them five minutes okay so they come late right and i always go alex hey welcome to the 1005 call simple and it's amazing you have to do this and so every senior manager knows the value of time a hundred percent of the time they'll go oh oh i'm so sorry you know and they'll say things like

22:49i'm sorry you know we have a ship that's at the port of los angeles and we're trying to unload medical supplies critical for children and i had to sign off to get the medical supplies approved by the government i'm so sorry and so they will start out apologizing to you rightly so right They didn't say, hey, I'm going to be a few minutes late. So, hey, welcome to the 1005 call. Are you ready? We can get that call started now if you want. Very nice, fun, easy way. Does anybody need fluids in, out? If not, let's get that call started.

23:20Yeah, that's good. Nice and easy. And that's a really good little tip. And it's really just to put them off balance, right? That's what you're trying to do. Just put them a little bit off balance. What? Hey, what's going on here? this is not how I've spoken to usually what there's something here, maybe, you know, it's that, isn't it? No one will be offended by that. By the way, if somebody is offended by that, I mean, I probably have done that 3000 times. If somebody is offended by that huge warning sign, right? Everybody knows the value of time. You came to the call on time.

23:52You set it up. You were professional. If they don't say, yeah, that's pretty funny that there's a, and that's the other thing about these kinds of frame control things is if people act weird, right? Everything you and I are going to talk about is about taking the normal, owning the center line, owning normal. What's normal? Showing up on time, having values, putting stuff on your website that you say what you mean, you do what you say, that syncs up with

24:23how you actually behave. Whenever you take that moral center, right? They're constantly fighting. your jokes are actually funny okay like they're constantly fighting to pull themselves back into the high status center and so you take that position um happy to be flexible i see you're here for the 1005 meeting we can get that meeting started um anybody need fluids in or out if not guys let's roll yeah okay so sorry love you don't love that right so so that so that's great and by

24:55way that's just jujitsu class day one you don't have to flip somebody over your back spin around flying rear naked choke all it is tapping them on the shoulder and turn them a little bit sideways jujitsu day one yeah there's no risk in that yeah definitely started and it's fun by the way and like like everything you'll see about what i do is not intended to control people it's just intended to own the center line, which is fun, interesting, unique, high integrity, have value, an expert,

25:29high status, and busy. When you own that, then people are constantly trying to meet your standard. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. That's great. And so this is part of status alignment. There's a lot more in the book around kind of the terminology, the words, the shared stories, their problems in like their industry. So there's quite a lot that can be added to this. This is a fantastic way just to start a meeting well, you know, start a meeting so that they listen, right? Talk about that for a second. If people don't think you know their industry,

26:04it's very hard for them to trust you with a conversation. So some alignment that I have some profile and understanding of your industry. And I'm just, you know, then now we've got status alignment and we've got a basis for a trusted conversation. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's really interesting because, you know, I think what status alignment thinking forces people to do, professionals to do is to do the research

26:38before they start talking to someone. I think there's so much shortcutting of like, hey, you know, like it's me, me, me, me, me. It's not about them. It's not about trying to come to them and to meet them. It's all about, hey, like if I do a thousand of these outreaches and I get a hundred responses and I get 10 things and I do two of those, then all of a sudden I'm going to get a sale. And it just doesn't, like that maybe worked 10 years ago, maybe. But these days it's a lot more competitive. Everything's on Zoom. It's getting a lot more competitive even just to cut through. So I think like a lot of these are really good ways to cut through.

27:11But I am, so I'm going to move it to the next point, right? And this part will keep high level because it can get technical, but the flash roll. Now I've said the flash roll, I'll just start it, right? The flash roll, I'm sure that, of course, for the listeners, right? You've always been told to not talk technical jargon to prospects, right? To not say, hey, to not have acronyms and to not go too technical now. Like in this book, Flip the Script, again, like I'm extremely impressed by this book.

27:46There's a thing called a flash roll where for 90 seconds you get super technical, right? And then the aim of it is to really just to show technical expertise, right? And so can you just talk about just where this came from at least, like the thinking? because it's the first time I heard, use all the jargons, make it as technical as possible, but keep it short. For sure. If you've ever watched CNBC's Squawk Box, right,

28:17and listened to the CEO of 10,000 employee companies, you know, Shell Oil or, you know, I'm just trying to think, like, you know, they have these big manufacturing, you know, concerns or uh you know 3 000 employees and four billion dollars of revenue they really fall into two camps one are like these strategy guys uh and and uh actually you see you also see them on this show like undercover bots right they like run 7-eleven right and he goes and he like has to

28:48prepare the nachos and he's like well you know where does the nacho go and oh cheese goes on it right wait jalapeno like he doesn't know anything about how to do it and and so in squawk box you have guys like yeah i'm you know based on the um uh the uptick of the inflation and the power purchasing of the dollar it feels like you know we're gonna our supply chain is gonna need to tighten over the next three months right and then there's like big high level strategic all right the the ceos that you really respect are the guys who have done all the jobs coming up to the company

29:21and they can get super tactical briefly and then come up to strategy. What are you guys doing in the business? So like, you know, a guy running an Audi. We really feel like electric, I'm just making this up on the spot, but I think this is a great example. We really feel like gas engines have lived their time. That's what we've committed by 2028 to have all electric vehicles in our thing. We think that's what consumers want. We think that's what the mandate is for what government mandates are going to be.

29:53And we think that's actually going to be good for our business and improve the bottom line. But it's interesting, right? So that's great. Strategy, that's a CEO, right? But what's amazing is when they go, you know, I'm down in the EV lab and really at 1.2 angstroms, you can get those electric vehicle motors to really have the level of power per horsepower per pound that is over a hundred times that you could get with a gasoline engine, right? When we put that on the test track and really monitor the data, I look at the split testing between this and this.

30:24And I've been on the track for a couple of days, actually driving the car. And then we look at the data. And you see this red line. I actually have it on my phone here. You see this red line here? That's where we are hitting the economic level of power performance that is 10 times higher than gas. And that's really where we want to be. And it's a pleasure to drive that vehicle because the response rate at the shocks mimics that of what you could get in a typical luxury car at a third of the price. and you're like this motherfucker right here running the business driving the cars looking at the data talking to engineers right and uh and

30:59you go well he goes yeah you know i was an electrical engineer for a couple years and then i moved up to management and you go this guy can get super deep there's no level of deep that i can take him where he's going to run out of uh awareness of what he's doing This is a problem with salespeople. We believe you want the order. We believe you're going to try hard. We believe your product has a value proposition, right? We believe when we install it, you know, it's going to install and things are going to happen.

31:31What I don't believe is you really understand the product at an implementation level. I don't believe that you live in the details I think you're just a sales guy and then if I want to have any details you have to go well you know I have to get my sales engineer you know or my engineer in or I have to get my CFO in or I have to get the founder in I give another little story that that shows you the harm in not being able to get super technical

32:05for a short period of time. So by the way, this skill set of being broad, value proposition, strategy, thesis, capability, understanding your problem, problem solution, how things are changing, understanding the need for a solution to a broad set of problems, but then being able to go deep, that is magical. It has people trust you, believe in you when they don't think you're just a generalist.

32:36And then the other thing is most people who go deep into the details, engineering, technical specifications, mathematics, financial analysis, they stay there. They can't get out of that hole. They go deep and they stay deep. And then that's why the advice is where you started, don't get into jargon. Don't get into engineering. Keep people out of that. Keep them high level in sales, right? because it's overwhelming but when you can go for 90 seconds into this flash roll and just expose

33:09so the details are not for comprehension you're not teaching anybody anything about the details all you're doing is showing them in the flash roll that you have technical mastery of your subject and the power of this is amazing but so now we're in the office right it's a thing we're doing here And everybody's like, oh, he just flash rolled me. I know he doesn't really know that stuff, right? Yeah. Because everybody's now learning these flash rolls, you know, to signal that they know a subject.

33:41And he's like, wait, did you just flash? Now we don't even know who knows what in what deal around here because these flash rolls. Did you just flash roll me? I just want to give you a quick example. I know you want to move on. So I'm trying to buy this software, this encoding software. I'm pretty technical. this video encoding software to get in a certain format that we need for our presentations, right? And I'm on the website of the company that provides this software. And so I have a couple of questions and I get on the chat with, you know, one of their customer

34:13service people. And I'm asking very technical questions and they're answering in like broad euphemisms. Yes, of course we do that. We've done that for years. Our software does it. And I go, listen, I need to talk to somebody who's technical, right? These answers are not satisfying me. And he goes, so then he chats back, I'm technical. I go, doesn't seem like you are. And then he writes back, I'm the founder, right? And the CTO. I'm like, what, dummy?

34:47Why are you not showing me your technical depth so I can believe in you? So as a salesperson, You have to find a way to show some technical depth in your product and in your industry. You don't have to do it for 5 or 10 or 50, for 90 seconds. Just show me that you can get into the details, come back out, and keep moving on value proposition and strategy. And, you know, just some ideas around that could be cool. So specific industry insight and then a technical application of that execution, right?

35:23So there can be some prep and there can be some scripting and there can be some practice where you have enough to go on, right? And hopefully the person who you're presenting to hasn't read Flip the Script and they're trying to check in on some of those things. But look, I mean, I have not – this is the first time I've heard about something like this, right? So I don't think it's out there yet, right? So now is the time to start to use this, right? Because in the beginning when, you know, it's a novel idea, which we're going to get to in a minute, it can start to be effective, right?

35:54But the big idea, right? It's kind of winter is coming, you know, it's the thing which you're coming to them with, right? So I think, yeah, please. If somebody doesn't believe the world is changing and that change is going to sweep what they're doing away, then they don't have motivation to listen, to change, and to adapt to a new world order. Now, it used to be hard to come up with winter is coming five years ago because nothing was fucking going on.

36:30Okay. But today, you know, every single industry and every single winter is only coming, it's come. So you have the pandemic, you have travel restrictions, you have masking, you have vaccines, you have right left polarization, you have logistics problems, you have a high cost of gas, you have inflation, stagflation. I mean, every single industry is changing. So unless you come in and say, you know, so pick an industry, Alex, and let's let's try and tackle something. Insurance. Insurance. great. So, so the, you know, if you're an insurance company, what's really happening is AI has entered

37:11and insurance companies are adding artificial intelligence and machine learning to the actuarial tables are wiping out their competitors, like not in a five-year cycle, like in 18 months, right? Because they can offer very specific pricing to specific cohorts that are not achievable by the other companies. So any company, any insurance company that hasn't fully implemented AI, you know, to the point of, you know, having 10 to 20 AI engineers internally are going to

37:45fall back from their lead position and potentially just become the BlackBerry, my space of their industry. Everything is changing in insurance based on this AI. Now, there is a new world order, right? This winter is going to wipe out everybody who's not adapting, right? But if you adapt in a specific way, which I'm going to propose to you, you will be sitting in where every company wants to be. And you will, instead of having a thousand competitors,

38:20Everybody implements AI and machine learning correctly in this way, and there'll be three competitors to deal with. And the new world order is better, cleaner, more profitable. But if you don't start taking action now to get there, AI is going to work. And I'll give you an example of this. I believe in 1954, I have to look it up, when television came to the consumer market, it wiped out 80% of the theater business.

38:54Gone in a year. That's like Netflix now, isn't it? Yeah. So these wipeouts really happened. When the iPhone came, BlackBerry wiped out. So, and the right way to use Winter is Coming is to really show in your industry the last three times it's happened. And this is, it's very easy to predict exactly what is still in media, in technology, in insurance.

39:26You can see, I'll give you a really good example is one thing that causes these nuclear winters in the entertainment business is that consumer preferences change. So if you think about those movies, The Hangover, The Hangover 1, you know, made a billion dollars, right? Right. Hangover to, you know, less hangover. But you can't do the hangover today because people don't think that's funny. I don't think it's funny anymore. Maybe I'm getting old. It would still be doing them. You'd have hangover 11. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, sure.

39:56That kind of humor. Sure. It's funny. You look at the old hangover. Ha ha ha. But like, you know, for real billion dollar releases. All right. That consumers no longer something about Mary. right like that slapstick very visceral humor in today's world where we had the pandemic it's not funny all right go back even further right um you know you can jews and gays and catholics and you know italians and poles and you know um uh people with tattoos and people with

40:32with uh um oh i mean that in the 80s right the movies would make fun of um you know people with disabilities i mean go watch bad news bears you can't make that movie today right that that consumer preferences wiped out it's not like you can sneak your way in so a nuclear winter is something that is is happening in the industry that no one so that's a little bit different from changes things are changing when you say things are changing then the buyer thinks yeah but not to us and we have a hack and work around winter's coming is no one can get out of this this sweeping

41:09change i don't care how smart you are you have to leave the old way of doing things behind and adapt to a new way all right uh so so you've got to figure out what is that nuclear winter that is that that you can see entering the industry that is going to wipe your buyer out unless he adapts to the next way of doing things and gets ahead of this wipeout. And you cannot come to me with an industry and say, there's no nuclear winter in our industry, especially today.

41:44Yeah, but I mean, in the old days, maybe if it was furniture, nothing was changing. You sort of had to think really hard. But every industry is in some kind of wipeout mode, right? And so now, if they believe that their way of doing things is going to be made irrelevant by the things that are coming, then, I mean, okay, electric vehicles, right?

42:16So you don't, you know, if you go to a car manufacturer and you go, listen, electric vehicles are coming, they're like, yeah, we know. Right. We're aware of that. We're phasing out gasoline. You're like, okay, good. So anybody who's like, Hey, we're dedicated to the gasoline engine, right. We're not doing any development in EV. It's just going to get wiped out. And it's just a very clear example of that. So you have to bring that to the customer upfront. Yeah. And I think this is because of, yes, sorry.

42:47Well, the only thing I was going to say is like, and it has to be insightful. It can't be like, right. Cause you can really hurt yourself by saying, Hey, you know, electric vehicles are if you you know you go to uh brembo a brake manufacturer you know or somebody who's in the industry you go you know electric vehicles are on the rise you're like hey asshole who let you in here okay it's obviously like come on it needs to be insightful knows that you know what I mean yeah right it can't be you know on usa today colored in crayons so

43:17and um now it can be the thing that everybody knows about but you got to add some insight to like some data and some specificity, right? So, you know, so a good example is solar is now becoming to the point, solar and wind, you know, Texas gets, on some days gets half of its energy from solar and wind. You know, you probably know that you're in this industry, you're fully aware of that. But one thing that's really interesting is that solar has now, that, you know, peak beyond the, it's no longer necessary to mandate communities to implement

43:57solar power. They're doing it on their own and all the regulations are sort of falling off in favor of new stuff because it no longer needs subsidies. Consumers are just doing it on your own. And here's some data on that. So now you have the sweeping issue that people are aware of and you are tightening it up, so your winter is coming is meaningful. So do the research and come up with some solid insight that they're going to be like, I didn't know that. Oh, that's helpful.

44:27When you can provide some insight to somebody about their business, you are in. You are an insider. Your deal is basically sold. Unless you screw it up, You know, you just got to go through the numbers, but like, especially like in the car industry, I mean, they're so data driven. They have so much awareness. It's so esoteric. When you can walk into like someone in the car industry and provide them some insight on their piece of the car industry, it blows their mind.

45:00And there are a hundred, you know, it's a little separate issue, but the winter people have to be aware that things are changing so fast and so dramatically, they cannot just keep doing, solving their problems in the way that they have been solving them. And this is like causing their desire to grow, them to take action again, assuming there's status alignment, which we already talked about, right? So that's super, super important.

45:31There's a flash roll. So they trust your technical expertise. And now you throw at them some insight about their industry. Start to see how this process stacks on itself, right? And it's very deliberate. Here's what I love, right? For everybody, if you think that you're going to be able to run your business from an accounting standpoint, the way you have in the past, right? I got sad news for you. But you cannot call the office supplies, you know, your swimming pool office supplies anymore.

46:02You can't buy a laptop for your own personal use for your kid's school, right? And then write it off on the business. The AI, the level of AI that the IRS and the government has, right, they know. Okay, they have 300 million data points. they have the data and they know when you are so if they don't have the actual data that you're cheating on your taxes they have the pattern match and the likelihood and then you get a data request

46:33cheating on your taxes is not what it used to be if you are still doing those bad accounting practices you are going to get crushed by the current audit system that's winter is coming that's a good winter is coming hey guys look at Alex he's like oh man I better fucking not no no no I'm solid I'm solid I'm solid solid solid 100 solid but that that to me is like a just the the perfect example of you know

47:05being able to sell accounting services to you know a business and um you know the point is not to terrify people the point is to bring into high relief actual forces that are truthfully going to really affect them and just let them know because that starts the clock ticking now you have some control because you go listen this is what we do we help people get out of the way of this uh force and move into the next generation but because this force is coming

47:39so fast, almost faster than expected, we're super busy. And so I made a little bit of time to help you understand how to get, solve your problems and get out of way of this change and get positioned for the next five years. But if you don't want to do it, just tell me so I can go help the people who are super motivated to get this done. Framing, look at it, look at the positioning. This is great. All right. So there are some more parts to the big idea.

48:12There's the 2X concept and the skin in the game. That's in the book. But I think the big concept is, well, they're all super important. Here's the problem with salespeople. Yeah. You're trying to make a commission, right? So you sell the order, you book it, they deliver it, the software installs, everything works for 60 days, right? And then it doesn't work. All right. And you have, not that you're a bad person, but you've gone on to Microsoft. Okay. And then this happened to me. I called the company.

48:42I'm like, hey, Joe sold me this. Joe's gone. Well, it's not working. Well, we don't know what he sold you. Right. So Joe needs to have skin. And if he wants to sell, and everybody's been through this and they know what happens. The way to sell is you have skin in the game. Like the easy skin in the game is like, hey, just want to let you hear this all the time. Want to let you know is that I'm on flat rate. like I don't make a, I only make a sales commission if you've been on the software for more than a year. Nice and skin in the game. I want to know that you are not, I'm not going out

49:15in the boat you sold me and you're waving to me from the shore. How's it going? Any leaks out there? Right? Call customer service if there's any leaks. Anyway, got to go have a date. I want to know you're in the boat with me. And if it starts leaking, your destiny and my destiny are entwined and our fates are doomed or, or, you know, our, our fortunes and our fates, uh, to the upside or the downside are, are entwined. And that makes, so when people believe that you have skin in the game,

49:49It lowers their uncertainty about working with you. And when people speak about skinning the game, skinning the game historically, it's always been a financial, I guess, incentive, right? Skinning the game's in the book. I did want to touch on plain vanilla. Sure. The novelty sweet spot because a fantastic example out of the book was, please yeah i worked at a private equity venture capital fund called alcatel ventures guys named

50:25steve kim and sold his company alcatel they asked him to run alcatel ventures you know billionaire 500 millionaire or whatever uh and and so i worked there as an analyst and the thing they said is like hey what we're mindful of is how many risks are we stacking up and they would say listen one of the risks like we don't care about is technical risk. We believe like these smart engineers or these software engineers or these hardware engineers, like they always build what they say they're going to build. Like we, one time over a hundred deals, they'd be like, fuck,

50:57we can't build it. They always figure out how to build it or code it. So that's like not a high risk, right? But so really say, say Oren, you love every deal, but how many risks are we stacking up? And so what I realized in my deals is if I could just boil it down to one risk and everything else in the deal was normal and has been done over and over again. And this is what I try and show all the entrepreneurs and salespeople that I work with.

51:31It's like this is the regular way of doing it, except we've added this one twist. and so why there's so many things that this has accomplished right which is people love things that are new and it attracts them hey we have a new software program oh great at ai and machine learning and you know it's got all this new stuff and it's going to make all this money great i love it and they run over and they check it out and then they go um we love it but but um we're also

52:02super nervous because it's so new. And so there's lots of, you know, consumer stuff that the book talks about, but like, you know, what does something have to be for you to change your painkiller? Like you use Tylenol or Advil, right? Like, I mean, you can't reduce the price. It's whatever, you know, five cents a pill costs nothing. I mean, even if you buy it at a gas station and a little two-pill pack i mean even i'm like i expect to pay eight dollars they're

52:32like yeah it's a dollar 35 for two right so you can't make it cheaper can't make it better like you drink it and like five minutes later your headache's gone your hangover's gone and and so why would and like you know there's no motivation to um switch and so it's very hard to introduce something new to people and so when i try and get them to adapt a new service or come over to me right give me an example we're an investment bank right and so

53:06people go how are you different i go we're not different with every single investment bank does the same thing you can go to a starbucks in newport beach and eight in the morning and meet 25 investment bankers stopping in to get a a cafe americano right and you go what do you do and it was not exactly what i what we all investment bankers do exactly the same thing plain vanilla the one thing that i think you'll be um that we do better than anybody else is we don't do

53:41mass market mailings. Send out, in essence, a jump ball. Buyers of companies or investors hate deals that look like a jump ball. There's just going to be a massive, everybody coming in and everybody, an auction and their money. It's only about the money because real investors want to come in and know if they're working on the deal, if they're looking at authentically, like their name means something, their brand means something,

54:13their ability to close means something. They just don't want to go in the mosh pit with every Tom, Dick, and Harry. They want respect for who they are. So we rifle shot. We call those guys up and go, John, hey, listen, I have a deal I think you're going to love. It's not being shopped. We're letting a couple people look at it early. I'd love for you to come in, talk to the entrepreneur, and see if it's something you'd be interested in, but it's not going broadly to the market. And so that's what we do. And if you like that, then you'd love the way we do things. If you just want to send out 500 teasers to everybody in the market, well, you know, then you can get all these guys in Newport Beach to do that for you, but we won't do it.

54:52So one twist. So if you think about it, well, what was Uber? Oh, it's a fucking taxi cab, but you get to see, is it actually coming to you and how long will it be there? What was Airbnb, right? It was a B&B, but you could book it online and get a sense of, you know, see some photos of it and get some ratings on it, right? So it was to get an overnight stay. But all of the stuff existed. When you look at WeWork, what was WeWork, right? WeWork, they already had co-working.

55:23It was green co-working. That's it. if you look at all these big companies, they're the exact same thing, stuff that was already out there with one interesting twist. So I would encourage you, if you could, to try and put what you have in plain vanilla terms and say, but we have this innovation. And now somebody can evaluate just your innovation as a risky part and not everything. And I like your story, the story in the book about the hotel. And if it's too disruptive,

55:55if it's too novel, there's going to be some like a significant immediate interest, but then it's too risky. Right. And so I thought that was a fantastic story because I think there's so many people trying to be like completely different, but they don't realize that it's completely risky then for the person now who's buying it. So I think that's a really great twist on the process. Yeah. And I think, I mean, this is the problem, right? Hey, we're changing the world. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm trying to get new tires on my truck. I don't want to change the world. I want truck tires. We're sending socks to every kid in

56:32Nicaragua. That is a very narrow subset of people who want to mine asteroids for rare earth minerals. Most companies want to do it the established way, but improved. So when the winter is coming, the improvement lets them live and survive and thrive on the other side of the nuclear winter. Yeah, which is great. And I've just got just one more question

57:02and there's so many more questions, but I've got one more because I know I'm conscious of time. How do you actually just get the first meetings, right? Because the conversation's all about, you know, status alignment and all this and, you know, presenting a certain way and so on. But how do you actually just get that first meeting? Like, is it taking the winter is coming, some status alignment, and, you know, just doing outreach? Or is there, you know, how would you do it?

57:34Yeah. So we've done hundreds of thousands of outreach emails. And we have a, I mean, we have a whole course on cold email. But I give you the basics, right? one is uh serendipity if there so if there's a feeling like some forces collided to cause this email to happen not this is programmatic i was talking to alex right uh you know he mentioned

58:07your name twice i ignored him because you know we know him in common social and he's got the podcast and everything. But then your name came up in a meeting for the third time. And I'm like, I better send this email in. I looked at the website. It turns out you do exactly what we do. Let's connect for five minutes. Worst case, we put each other's name in the Rolodex. Best case,

58:38we have a lot in common and start working on a project. How about Tuesday, 1030? Wednesday, 3 p.m either work that's it i bet that's 130 words so you're not going in with a big hook or anything like that it's just more social engagement serendipity serendipity social engagement and one other thing i'm not a robot not a robot okay misspellings so i'll tell you

59:08about something i invented this sucks now because now if everybody starts doing it it will erase I many times in origination, I send the whole email in the subject line, 300 words. Have you ever seen that? I have never seen that. You haven't. That's right. Novelty. That's for sure. Novelty. Okay. This is not a robot. I'm a real person. Something serendipitous or chance coincidence caused this email to happen.

59:39There's something very specific to discuss. How about one of these times? I like that. I like that a lot. Super strong. Yeah, great. Oren, thank you so much for such a high-powered, quick, completely value-adding conversation. For the listeners, I mean, I've said it throughout the podcast, but you just have to get the book. it will be the best investment in terms of the sales effectiveness,

01:00:14the ability to structure deals, and any type of engagement is where the stakes are high. But for the listeners, apart from them actually having to purchase the book, which I highly recommend, is there any other, say, site or podcast that they should subscribe to? Go to ornclaff.com. And there's tons of stuff there. And sign up for the list. I put out an email, two emails a week, and they're all this stuff. Right? And then eventually, if you're actually raising money, which is the highest form of sales,

01:00:46then come either to one of my events here at this office or join the online community that I have. And we'll help you raise money. But salespeople can get all of this stuff. they just go on the weekly newsletter that just comes out because we talk about real situations, real tactics every single week. So just go over to orinclaff.com and many good things will happen. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This has been such a great conversation. And the best

01:01:18part about it is just the content in the book. So, but again, thank you for your time because I know how valuable that is. And we'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please give us a five-star rating on iTunes. For more episodes, please visit growthmanifesto.com forward slash podcast. And if you need help driving growth for your company, please get in touch with us at webprofits.io.