The Oren Klaff Project

Latest Episodes:

Handling Power Plays - Put a Stop to Arrogant Behavior from Prospects Jul 17, 2019

Show notes

Eliminate Arrogance

If you don’t eliminate arrogance early on during a deal, it will only continue to escalate. People who are allowed to think that their time is more important than your time will be very difficult to close later on. It is essential that you call these people out on their arrogant behavior the instant you see it. Do it in a nice way but be clear you aren’t going to tolerate it.

Using Power Plays

As I’ve mentioned on a previous episode, when someone shows up late to a meeting I usually say, “Oh, you’re here for the 10:07am call? I didn’t know about that one.” It works perfectly and sets the right tone for the rest of the meeting. On this episode, Jason Hanson reveals some of the power plays he developed while he was working for the CIA.

What if You Can’t Rock the Boat?

Not everyone can cancel a meeting because someone was late or call out the buyer on his arrogant behavior. Sometimes you have to be more tactful. For instance, maybe you’re a small firm and you are meeting with one of your three clients, the CTO for IBM. Even in these situations, you aren’t powerless. There are still subtle power plays you can make to establish yourself as an equal in the relationship. Listen to the full episode for more.

Confident and Non-Needy - How the CIA Uses Research to Close Big Accounts Jul 15, 2019

Show notes

Making the Approach

My new book, Flip the Script, is about how to approach someone important who doesn’t know you and get them interested in working together. I reveal a number of specific scripts you can use to achieve this. What all of my scripts have in common is that they have to be delivered in a very specific way. You have to approach the prospect with complete confidence and non-neediness.

Just Like the CIA

Ex-CIA agent Jason Hanson told me the exact same thing about the way he used to approach prospects when he was trying to recruit them to spy for the United States. He says non-needy confidence is so important that CIA agents are trained to literally make an introduction and then turn and walk away without even waiting to see how the person responds. This signals that you really don’t care what the person thinks about you.

Get Confident Through Research

For Jason, this level of extreme confidence usually comes from research. He conducts extensive background checks on every prospect before he ever attempts to make contact with them. But how can you do this in the business world? On this episode, Jason reveals his best tips and tricks for researching prospects and gaining extreme confidence and non-neediness in your next business negotiation.

Extreme Preparation - How the CIA Gets Ready for a Meeting Jul 12, 2019

Show notes

How Do You Prepare?

When you have to get ready for a big meeting with an important prospect, what do you do? I used to do a lot of preparation before every meeting but lately I haven’t had time to do as much research before sitting down with someone. I wondered if this has been hurting my win/loss ratio. To find out what next-level preparation looks like, I talked to Jason Hanson, an ex-CIA agent and the author of the new book Agent of Influence. Jason told me how the CIA gets ready for an important meeting.

CIA-Level Preparation

Of course, CIA agents always memorize multiple entrance routes and exit routes into and out of a building before they attend an important meeting. They also run something called a surveillance detection route (SDR), which is a very long sequence of stops designed to make it easy to tell whether or not there is anyone following you. Additionally, they conduct extensive background checks on everyone who they might come in contact with.

Next-Level Readiness in Business

It turns out CIA agents use tactics very similar to the ones I present in my new book, Flip the Script. Jason recommends conducting detailed research on your prospect so you can casually use insider language when you first meet them. But he also stresses the importance of authenticity and not coming across like you are using a pre-written script. How do you walk this line? That’s the topic of today’s episode. Tune in to find out.

Practicing Your Pitch - How to Get ‘Reps’ and Nail Your Presentation Jul 11, 2019

Show notes

The Importance of ‘Reps’

I’m currently reviewing a book by an ex Hollywood agent and there’s a story in there where he goes to meet with Jon Bonjovi and he’s playing something on his guitar. This agent asks what he’s playing, expecting Bonjovi to say it’s a new song he’s working on. But actually Bonjovi said, “I’m just working on my scales.” The best in the world make it look easy but they never stop practicing the fundamentals. When it comes to speaking, you absolutely need to get ‘reps’ in before you try to deliver your talk.

Where Most People Go Wrong

It’s easy to fall into the trap of just reading through your speech on paper or going back through your slides over and over and practicing the speech in your head. The problem with this, Jim explains, is that it generates a feeling of confidence and success without actually forcing you to do any of the things that make speaking so hard. Another thing people often do is write out the entire speech word-for-word and spend a bunch of time trying to memorize it.

Science-Based Practice Strategies

In this episode, Jim explains the science behind the best times to practice a speech. We also talk about how to memorize your talk, whether you can use notecards, and how well you should know the material. I reveal some of the strategies I use to prepare for my own speeches and I also share an idea from my new book, Flip the Script, and show you how to apply it to your speeches.

Writing vs Speaking: The Problem with “Writing” a Pitch or Presentation Jul 03, 2019

Show notes

Reading is Not the Same as Speaking

I spent two years writing my new book, Flip the Script, and it’s a great read. But last week I had to spend 5 days in the studio recording the audio version and I realized that good writing is not the same thing as good speaking. Many of the things that worked well on the page sounded strange when I first read them out loud. In fact, my publisher hired a professional audiobook director to coach me through it because this is a very common issue.

Don’t “Write” Your Pitch

When companies come to me for help with their pitch, I always start by speaking the words out loud. That’s how I develop the content. Then someone from my team transcribes it and our graphics department creates slides and turns the speech into a pitch deck. This process always felt right to me and now I have realized why it’s so effective. There is a fundamental difference between written content and spoken content and if something is going to be delivered out loud it’s never a good idea to write the first draft on paper.

How to Avoid Awkward Speech Writing

I hear a lot of people talking about “storytelling” and delivering a “story pitch”, but I don’t recommend focusing on that unless you are a professional storyteller. The key is to write your pitch in the way that you actually talk. People don’t talk in stories, they talk in terms of situations. Focus on a situation instead of a story and your pitch will sound much more natural. I reveal exactly how to do it, along with some specific examples, on this episode of the podcast.

When Buyers Push Back - The Science of Overcoming Resistance Jul 02, 2019

Show notes

Psychological Reactance

It has a terrible name, but “psychological reactance” is one of the most important concepts for sales people to understand. In popular culture, this is what we refer to as “reverse psychology”. The basic principle is that when you tell someone what to do they often react by doing exactly the opposite of what you are asking.

As Andy explained to me, when someone feels like you are threatening their autonomy or reducing their freedom, they push back in order to prove to you and to themselves that they aren’t being controlled by you. Of course, this is a critical factor in sales, where it often seems like the harder you push a buyer to say “yes”, the harder they resist you.

It’s All About Identity

One important key with psychological reactance is that people will resist much more strongly if they feel like the topic is central to their identity. Whereas if it’s a topic they don’t care about, they might not resist at all. So if you sell used cars to little old ladies who don’t know anything about cars, this might not be an issue for you. But if you’re in B2B sales and your buyers actually work in your industry or even if you’re selling to amateur enthusiasts, you absolutely need to avoid triggering reactance.

How to Avoid Buyer Resistance

On this episode, Andy and I reveal some specific things sales people to do trigger reactance and we discuss what you can do about it. Asking the wrong questions at the wrong time is one of the biggest problems I see. We talk about what those questions are and why you should avoid them during this episode.

Raising the Stakes: How to Make People Care About What You Say Jun 28, 2019

Show notes

Start Big, Start Strong

If your presentation doesn’t start out with a high-stakes Big Idea within the first 15 seconds, you’re going to lose your audience. This means you have to provide some new information that makes your topic more urgent, compelling, and important in the listener’s mind. If you get this wrong your audience is going to be playing on their phones and barely listening to the rest of your talk.

For ANY topic there is a way to raise the stakes. Don’t tell me it’s impossible in your industry because you sell something boring like industrial air compressors. I could make a #2 pencil into a matter of human survival if I had to. It’s about making the problem seem more important to the listener. On this episode, I speak with Jim Davies about the science of raising the stakes.

Don’t Drop the Nuke too Early

One of the biggest problems I see is people let the cat out of the bag in the first two minutes of their talk. They try to raise the stakes but they end up giving away the punch line. You can’t drop the nuke right at the beginning of the movie.

Jim told me that the human mind is a change detector. So if you introduce an idea as being important it will grab our attention for a short while. But unless you keep raising the stakes and making it MORE important, we’re going to get bored. The idea is going to slowly fade from our minds. This means you have to gradually build intensity during your talk.

The trick is figuring out how to raise the stakes during the first 15 seconds while still leaving yourself somewhere to go. You do this by posing questions. The answers need to come later on in your speech. Start with the questions. Jim and I break down exactly how to do this in this episode.

A Script for Raising the Stakes

One way to raise the stakes is using the words “either” and “or” at the start of your presentation. Tell your audience that by the end of your talk you are going to either decide to work together or decide not to work together, but it isn’t going to end on a “maybe”. This poses a question and makes the discussion seem much more important.

On today’s episode, Jim and I provide four different scripts you can use to raise the stakes in your own presentations, along with specific examples of how they work.

Speak the Language of Money - Four Factors Investors Need to See in Your Deal Jun 26, 2019

Show notes

Money is Counter-Intuitive

Sales approaches don’t work for raising money. Actually, standard sales and marketing tactics scare professional investors away because people with money don’t want to be “sold” and marketed to. They want to be attracted to you and your deal naturally.

What Money Wants

The first place I see people go wrong is they don’t understand what investors are actually looking for. Most of us think that people with money must be looking to make as much money as possible. When we pitch a deal, we naturally focus on how much money the investor will be able to make if they invest in our deal.

But, actually, investors don’t want to make money, they want to properly balance risk and reward and they want the deal to be the right size for them. Different investors are looking for different things depending on where they are in their careers and you need to be able to give them what they want. On this episode, I explain exactly how to do it.

The Language of Money

When you talk to investors, you have to use certain words to describe your deal. If you aren’t using the proper lingo, investors won’t understand your deal and they won’t invest. Speaking the language of money lets your listeners know that you’re a pro and it makes them feel comfortable giving their money to you. Use the wrong words and you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. On this episode, I explain how the language of money works and I give some specific examples of how to “speak” it.

The Level X Group - Hanging Out with Some of the Top Performers on the Planet Jun 20, 2019

Show notes

Reaching Level X

I have a very hard time collaborating with others and working with coaches because I’m already running at such a high level in my own life and business. I might not be the best at jet skiing or yodeling, but when it comes to writing a pitch, nobody beats me. The problem is that coaches don’t agree with your own plan. Coaches are people who tell you what to work on. But when you reach the highest levels it’s very hard to trust people enough to let them coach you.

Many sales people have this problem where they have taken so many different seminars and worked with so many different sales coaches that now they sort of have a Frankenstein personality. But I’ve noticed that top performers never have this problem. They are always very clear about who they are and they can take a few things away from a seminar without letting it completely change up their approach.

Forming the Group

One of my current side projects is to assemble a group of top performers in a variety of fields to address this issue. I’ve noticed that top performers don’t easily allow others to hold them accountable because they want to be holding themselves accountable. So the idea of the Level X Group is to get these top achievers together and find new ways to hold ourselves accountable and push ourselves forward in life and business.

On this episode, listen as Casey and I conduct the first meeting of Level X and start to establish some of the group’s founding principles.

Secrets for Starting a Call - How I Use Pace and Tone to Get Things Started Right Jun 19, 2019

Show notes

Two Underrated Tools

At the start of a call, you need to do something to grab the prospect’s attention and set yourself apart from all the other sales people out there. I’ve discovered that your tone of voice and the pacing of your speech are two of the best tools you have for this. In this episode I reveal how I use these tools on my own calls.

Don’t Get Self-Deprecation Wrong

One tone I often use at the start of a call is self-deprecation. This works well for making you approachable but it can also undermine your expertise and authority. I’ve found the key is to be self-deprecating about everything that doesn’t apply to your business but nothing that does. Bev and I cover some specific examples and scripts for this during today’s episode.

Use a Provocative Tone

Being provocative is about saying things that are light but not funny. You want to stir up a small controversy to get people talking. I’ve found this works best if you immediately relieve the tension by following provocative statements with a bit of self-deprecating humor. I’ll reveal exactly how I do it today.

Get Serious About Pacing

I only have one rule on pace and it’s very simple: talk faster about less important things and talk slower about the big stuff. It’s fine to breeze through your opening at a face pace but when you get to talking about the price, you need to slow down. To convey seriousness and authority, drop your voice and start talking at half speed when you reach a discussion of price.

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