FLIP THE SCRIPT

Oren Klaff, sales and negotiating expert and bestselling author of Pitch Anything, reveals new playbook on persuasion in business.

No one likes being pressured into making a purchase. Over decades of being marketed, pitched, sold (and lied) to, we've all grown resistant to sales persuasion. The moment we feel pressured to buy, we pull away. And if we're told what to think, our defenses go up. These days, it's just not enough to make a great pitch. That's why Oren Klaff says it's time to throw out the old playbook on persuasion.

Instead, in Flip the Script, he devises a new approach based on a simple insight: everyone trusts their own ideas. Instead of pushing your idea on your buyer, if you can guide them to discover it on their own, they will believe it, trust it, and get excited about it. Then they'll buy in and feel good about the chance to work with you. Klaff breaks down this insight into a series of actionable steps, for instance:

- Achieve Status Alignment: Make sure that your potential buyer or investor recognizes you as a peer on the dominance hierarchy by using a status tip-off, a strategically placed remark that identifies you as an insider who can relate to your client's concerns.
- Close the Certainty Gap: Allay your buyer's fears about going into business with you by delivering a flash roll, a practiced display of technical mastery that proves your expertise in the domain.
- Present Your Idea as Plain Vanilla: You can go overboard trying to present your product as a cutting-edge, first-of-its-kind solution. The more you emphasize the familiar, reliable elements of your product, showing that it's just "plan vanilla", the easier you make it for your buyer to say yes.

Oren Klaff is Director of Capital Markets for the investment bank Intersection Capital, where he raises tens of millions of dollars from investors and institutions. Intersection Capital has grown to $250 million of assets under management by using Klaff's pioneering approaches to raising capital and incorporating neuroscience into its capital markets programs. He is a specialist in financial modeling and the co-developer of Velocity, a capital markets product that has raised more than $100 million of private equity and venture capital.