195. Flip The Script & Perfect Your Pitch (Oren Klaff)

Oren Klaff of Intersection Capital joins Nick to discuss Flip The Script & Perfect Your Pitch. In this episode, we cover:

Backstory/path to finance
What led to the founding of Intersection?
What’s your mandate and focus at Intersection? Tell us about the Velocity product.
Your bestselling book Pitch Anything, provides a detailed methodology on effectively presenting, persuading and winning a deal during the pitch. Can you go over some key takeaways from the book for listeners?
In the book you talk about the “S.T.R.O.N.G Method.” Can you briefly summarize the most important components of this approach and give some examples on how it works?
Your newest book “Flip the Script: Getting People to Think your Idea is Their Idea” is about to launch on August 13th.. why’d you write the book?
I liked the title of your first chapter… Inception. Many will remember the blockbuster movie. What’s the “We are evolved distrust information from the outside world”… how does this impact the approach?
Is there a framework of structure that folks should follow to successfully flip the script?
What’s the biggest mistake folks make when trying to sell?
Whats’ the most practical, simple, pragmatic advice you can give… let’s say a founder trying to raise venture capital… that they can take away from this convo and implement immediately. Do you have a set of questions and structure for every sales discussion going in or do understand the concepts and then treat every conversation organically? Any tips on getting the meetings w/ prospects?
Let’s say someone has optimized their close rate… do you have tips on securing more qualified meetings?
If you write another book… what topic is next?

Guest Links:

Key Takeaways:

When you’re raising capital, while there are some nuances, ultimately you are selling – with your product being equity or debt of a company. The lessons you learn when you’re raising capital, can be applied across any kind of sales situation.
Today, the focus at Intersection Capital is primarily around DTC and the e-commerce space.
In deal making, especially in venture, private equity or deploying capital, there’s no perfect information. It is all about negotiation and most importantly, timing.
When someone is investing in an early stage company, they’re essentially “giving money for words.” Oren says, it is an imperfect relationship between the two parties, therefore as an entrepreneur your frame on the value of what you are exchanging needs to be stronger than that of the investor.
An incredibly powerful “frame” that Oren talks about in his book “Pitch Anything” is the intrigue frame – dropping the belief system that there’s more to learn for the buyer or the investor the longer that they stay involved.
Oren’s new book “Flip The Script” is intended to give readers the methodology of teaching buyers how to buy from you and teaching investors how to invest in you, to ultimately disqualify anyone that does not follow the instructions of how you’re willing to do business.
Today buyers buy, they aren’t sold. This is why it’s important to drive a process where the buyer voluntarily creates their desire to do business with you because those ideas are strong and price insensitive.
In your pitch it is essential to present the big idea, get people to really understand the problem that you’re attacking, why what you do is hard, who else does it and ultimately what’s your unique solution?
Another essential element of the pitch is not only presenting the team and their credentials but most importantly why this team is the right team to solve the problem.
Oren shares his perspective on the pitch as being a performance. He compares it to performers such as, actors or comedians, they strive to tell a story with confidence and authenticity, which is exactly what entrepreneurs should adopt.
Flip The Script is largely about how to take a buyer through the process of buying from you, where you’re controlling the process, however they feel comfortable and like they have autonomy to move forward, moves backwards, leave or go into the deal at any time.
Additional takeaways from the book include: Positioning yourself as the prize – have your target compete for you. Creating a sense of urgency & scarcity along with a clear deadline while pitching.