The Oren Klaff Project

Latest Episodes:

Handling Tough Audiences - Winning Over Your Harshest Critics Jun 18, 2019

Show notes

Tough Audiences Don’t Really Exist

Once you get to a size larger than 200 people, every audience is basically the same. Blaming a flop on the crowd is an amateur move. If your remarks didn’t go over well and you were speaking to a decently sized room, the only reasonable conclusion is that it was your fault. You’ll need to try something different next time.

The one exception is when you get put in front of a room that is completely wrong for your topic or who aren’t even in your industry and don’t understand any of your lingo. In these cases, you will need to have some emergency strategies in your back pocket.

Overcome Objections in Advance

If I know my listener is going to have some specific objections to what I’m about to say, I like to address those in advance and just get rid of them. Jim pointed out that Eminem uses the same strategy in the movie Eight Mile. During this episode, I reveal a precise word-for-word script you can use to crush audience objections before they even come up.

Get Everyone Off their Phones

I was recently speaking to a room full of millionaires and when I walked up to the podium half the room was on their phone. I couldn’t just start talking without everyone’s full attention so I used a dominance technique to force everyone in the audience to pick a side. Don’t get thrown off by the word dominance, it doesn’t mean “dominate”, and it’s not aggressive in any way at all. Every room has a dominance hierarchy, so a dominance technique just means, “restructure the social hierarchy.” It was extremely effective and everyone put away their phones. I’ll show you how it works on this episode.

Don’t Let Your Audience Down

There are a couple simple ways to ensure you never let your audience down. First, get as much information about your listeners before you give the speech as possible. I’ll share my proven strategies for doing this on today’s episode. I’ll also talk about how to take listeners on a roller coaster so they feel pleasantly emotionally manipulated.

Entrepreneurs 3 Top Questions - Most Common Mistakes Made by Start-Up Founders Jun 14, 2019

Show notes

A Special Episode for Entrepreneurs

Every day, I get emails from entrepreneurs and sales people all over the world asking for my advice on various issues. I used to answer each one with a long and detailed response, but now I just don’t have time. Also, many of the questions are very similar, so I found myself typing the same things over and over again.

This is why I’ve decided to start doing a Q&A from time to time on the podcast. This is the first Q&A episode and it’s dedicated to some of the most common questions I’ve been receiving from entrepreneurs recently. To make sure my answers stayed fresh and off-the-cuff, I recorded the episode in my truck, with my producer reading me the questions while I drove around.

My Best Experience as an Entrepreneur

First, I talk about something that happened to me in my early 20s, when I was just starting my first company. It was an experience that really solidified my love of entrepreneurship and startup culture and I’ve never spoken about it anywhere before. In this episode, I explain what happened and why it had such a big impact on me.

The Most Rewarding Aspect of Entrepreneurship

Why are so many people drawn to entrepreneurship, even though the odds of “making it” and founding a successful company are so low? I believe that the high rate of failure is actually a good thing. When everyone expects you not to make it, you’ve got permission to fail. It takes the pressure off for everything you do to work out perfectly.

Most Common Entrepreneur Mistake

The last question I answer is about the biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs making. The great thing about entrepreneurs is that they’re visionary and they want to change the world. But this usually leads them to focus too heavily on their idea and the potential for helping people. Investors and buyers want to know about the DEAL itself. In this episode, I explain how to change your pitch to give the listener more of what they really want to hear.

Red Flags that Stop Sales - 7 Ways to Lose a Deal After the Buyer Says “Yes” Jun 12, 2019

Show notes

No Sale is Safe

Just because someone has agreed to buy from you doesn’t mean the sale is “in the bag”. I’ve had CEOs agree to purchase $250,000 consulting packages from us and then lost the sale later on because their CFO or someone from the Board of Directors didn’t like the deal. Those kinds of losses really hurt.

Today I spoke with Cullen, whose job is to advise businesses and CEOs on large purchases, hires, and consulting contracts before they sign on the dotted line. Before that, Cullen was in sales. So he has been involved in thousands of large deals from both sides of the table. I brought him on the show today to talk about what he looks for in a deal before he will approve it and what red flags cause him to stop and pump the brakes.

Show You Can Handle the Heat

The first thing Cullen does is apply a bit of pressure to the sales rep to see if they can handle it. He wants to gain an understanding of how they perform when the stakes start to go up. “I can usually tell within a few seconds if someone can take the pressure” he told me. How can you be sure to pass these kinds of tests? We cover that in depth on this episode.

Be Willing to Adjust Your Timeline

Another big issue for Cullen is the timeline of the project. He often asks the sales rep what would happen if he needed to speed up the timeframe or slow it down. What aspects of the proposal could be adjusted to change the delivery schedule? If you can’t talk intelligently about this, you immediately look like an amateur. Cullen and I provide some helpful strategies on this episode that will allow you to answer this question in a smart way.

Demonstrate a Next-Level Understanding

It’s also important to show the buyer that you understand how your product or service will fit into the core focus of their business. You need to demonstrate an overall perspective on the organization instead of just being a hammer that is looking for a nail. We cover a few scripts that work for this and I’ll show you the strategies I use in my own business.

Warming Up an Audience - NEVER Start with a Joke and What to Do Instead Jun 11, 2019

Show notes

The Common Wisdom is Wrong

When you think about how to start a speech, the first things that come to mind for most people are to kick things off with a joke or to begin with a story. But these strategies can actually backfire. Unless your joke is hilarious and relevant to your topic, and unless you are a very talented storyteller, these approaches come across as amateur.

On this episode, cognitive scientist Jim Davies and I explore the science behind why these strategies often fall flat. We also reveal two specific scripts you can use to start any presentation off with a bang: the “harder than it looks” setup and the Apparent Contradiction Frame.

The “Harder than It Looks” Setup

One way to warm up your audience is to introduce your topic as being more difficult than most people think. This causes your listeners to immediately pay attention. First, they are interested to learn what makes it so difficult. Second, they want to find out how to overcome these difficulties.

Jim and I break down the science of how this setup works and we walk through some scripts you can use to apply it to any topic you’d like.

The Apparent Contradiction Frame

Another great warmup is to reveal two pieces of information that both seem true to the audience but are mutually exclusive. This creates conflict in the listener’s mind. By highlighting a contradiction, you entice your audience to pay close attention to your talk in order to resolve the conflict and figure out the truth.

This technique works because the human brain hates contradictions and works hard to resolve them. It’s simple to find conflicting statements for any topic you’re speaking about and I’ll show you how to do it during this episode. Jim and I provide examples and scripts you can use to apply this opening to your own talks.

These are the 12 Things That Always Go Wrong During a Sales Call - And How to Avoid Them Jun 10, 2019

Show notes

The Problem with Phone Sales

Selling over the phone is hard. You never have the prospect’s full attention like you would in person and it’s easy to fall into Beta Traps and find yourself stuck in the low-status position. In this episode, I’ll show you how to avoid many of the most common problems.

Starting the Call Right

Before you begin any sales call you face a major hurdle: you have to successfully get the prospect on the phone at the appointed time. This can be surprisingly difficult, especially if you sell to CEOs or other busy and important people. If you wait around on the line for more than 6 minutes for the prospect to dial in, it sub-communicates that his time is more important than yours. This instantly drops you to the lower status role.

To avoid this, you have to be willing to walk away from the call—and the sale. You have to reschedule the call for a later time as soon as six minutes have passed. And if the prospect is just 2 or 4 minutes late, you have to reframe and establish dominance as soon as you get them on the line. Failing to do this sets you up to lose the sale. In this episode, Carmine and I walk through the steps you need to take and we provide word-for-word scripts you can use in any industry.

The First 10 Seconds

Once you get the prospect on the phone, additional Beta Traps can emerge quickly. What should you do if the prospect takes your call from a coffee shop? Or while they’re driving in their car? How should you handle a poor connection? What can you say if the prospect starts asking you about your competition? Or if they tell you they’ll need to run everything by their boss or business partner?

Any of these issues can kill a deal. Thankfully, there are simple solutions to all of this stuff. Listen as Carmine and I walk through a typical sales call and address everything that can possibly go wrong. We provide detailed solutions that will work for any sales professional, regardless of what you sell.

How to Get Hired on the Spot - Sales and Interview Tactics You’ve Never Heard Before Jun 07, 2019

Show notes

Resumes are Dead

A good resume is not going to get you hired for a top position in today’s marketplace. Neither is a LinkedIn connection. For the best jobs with the best companies, it always comes down to your ability to pitch yourself during the interview.

On today’s episode, I talk with entrepreneur Rick Smith, the founder and CEO of Select Blinds, about what he looks for when he’s hiring people for executive-level positions in his company. He told me he doesn’t even look at the resume. The main thing he looks for is the ability to think on your feet during the interview. “I want to be pitched to,” he said, “I believe a good pitch demonstrates a skillset that I would like to surround myself with here at my company.”

The Walt Disney Principle

Rick reveals a simple trick that he uses during every single interview. He says he got it from Walt Disney, who is rumored to have used this same trick for every person he hired. The idea is to measure whether the candidate is someone who cares deeply and will take pride in their position with the company.

Pitching Yourself for a Job

The heart of any job interview comes down to the candidate’s pitch. It’s about your ability to sell yourself as a good fit and a positive addition to the company’s culture. During this episode, I give two examples of scripts you can use in any job interview to stand out from the other applicants.

Rick agreed that if anyone said these words to him during a job interview he would hire them on the spot. The scripts are provided word-for-word on today’s episode, along with a break-down of exactly how they work and why. If you hire people for your company or if you are looking for a new position or thinking about going on the job market, you won’t want to miss this episode.

How to Deal with Bad Customers - Creating a Relationship Out of Thin Air Jun 06, 2019

Show notes

Remembering Brenden Daily

This episode is a special tribute to Brenden Daily, an ex-NFL player who worked with our team before he passed away unexpectedly two years ago. The qualities I saw Brenden demonstrate every day were an inspiration to all of us here at Pitch Anything and he is sorely missed.

From watching Brenden I learned that the qualities that get you into the NFL don’t have much to do with the game of football. Instead, it’s all about how much force you can generate with your hips in approximately 1/10 of a second. The only way to get drafted is to combine perseverance, integrity, and purpose with a willingness to work tirelessly and without attachment to the outcome. Entrepreneurs need exactly the same qualities.

How to Create an Instant Relationship

If all of your customers were your long-time friends, they would treat you with complete fairness and conscientiousness. They would never miss a meeting or stand you up for a phone call. They would buy. But your customers aren’t your friends. They don’t know you at all. This is why they sometimes treat you with disregard.

The solution is to create the illusion in your listener’s mind that the two of you have a relationship. They way they will treat you with more respect and will be less likely to act unfairly toward you. I reveal exactly how to short-circuit the relationship process on this episode.

Dealing with Bad Customers

Once you know how to create the feeling of a high quality relationship out of thin air, the next step is learning how to use that relationship to make the customer feel bad for treating you unfairly. To do this, talk to the customer about how the two of you need to feel so comfortable with each other that you aren’t afraid to get mad and tell each other how you really feel. Then you can tell them what part of their behavior doesn’t work for you.

I’ve got a word-for-word script showing you exactly how to do this on today’s podcast episode.

Don’t Be A Pig - You Need to Know When to Quit Negotiating Jun 05, 2019

Show notes

The Problem With Over-Negotiating

When I was first starting out in this business I learned an important lesson about dealmaking from my friend and mentor, Russell. I was working on a big deal in which we were going to make about $1.3M and I realized there was more demand for the deal than I had originally thought. Great! We could make $2.2M instead. I was so excited.

But then Russell told me something I’ll never forget. “Don’t be a pig,” he said. “This is a fair deal and these are fair terms. Sell it out and let’s move on to the next one.” I learned a lot from that, and it’s still a part of my approach today.

In My Deals, Everybody Wins

Pushing people too hard is a mistake. Yes, you may make a few more dollars in the short term, but you’ll quickly develop a reputation for being hard to work with. Once word gets out in your industry that you aren’t a team player, it’s almost impossible to live it down. Especially today with customer reviews and social media.

The solution is to adopt an attitude that everybody needs to be a winner at the end of every deal you do. Yes, you want to make money. But you also want the other parties in the deal to make a reasonable margin and be able to stay in business. I discuss how to do this without getting taken advantage of on today’s episode of the podcast.

How Do You Want to Spend Your Time?

Here’s the other reason not to negotiate too hard: how much of your time do you really want to spend grinding other people down for a higher margins? I was at a car dealership recently and I used a rather strange negotiation tactic. The salesperson told me the price and I said, “I’ll take it.” I didn’t negotiate at all. I paid the money, drove it off the lot, and spent the rest of the weekend with my family.

Be a person whose time is too precious to spend fighting over a few dollars. That’s a type of prize framing that I use all the time. I don’t want to pay outrageous prices for things, but if the price is fair I’m not going to waste my time trying to get a slightly better deal.

Negotiate until you reach a fair price, shake hands, and move on.

Story Pitch vs Data Pitch

The final topic in this episode is the difference between a story pitch and a data pitch. I see people get this confused all the time. There are two main ways to pitch any deal and if you choose the wrong one you’ll never be able to convince others to invest in you. You also don’t want to mix these together.

I’ll show you exactly what the difference is and you’ll see an example of how to construct each type of pitch. Finally, I’ll point out some common mistakes and how to avoid them.

You Speak, They Listen - How to Keep Any Audience Engaged and Paying Attention Jun 04, 2019

Show notes

Why Is It So Hard to Keep Audiences Engaged?

As I wrote extensively in my book, the human attention span is about 15-20 minutes. My original research has been copied or quoted by just about every business author, so this should be familiar ground. 20 mins. That's the longest amount of time we can reasonably be expected to stay 80%+ focused on a single topic, idea, or activity without some kind of additional stimulation.

When you give a presentation, it seems exciting and fascinating to you because you're the one who is talking. Your adrenaline is pumping and you're moving around the stage. Biologically, you are the most interested person in the room in what you have to say.

For shorter speeches of 5-10 minutes, this is fine. The audience can pick up on your enthusiasm and it will carry you through. But when you have to give a speech or presentation that is longer than 20 or 25 minutes, you'll need to do something to engage and re-focus your audience.

According to the research, there are two main things you'll need to do. First, you have to provide some pacing changes and media changes (e.g., show a video clip, play some audio, or introduce another speaker). You have to break things up. Second, you'll need to provide markers and "sign-posts" that make the organization of your speech extremely obvious.

Techniques for Breaking it Up

Motivational speakers are famous for asking audience members to stand up and high-five each other or give 10 other people a hug. These kinds of activities work great for giving the audience a mini-break and getting their blood moving and endorphins pumping. But if you're giving a serious speech to the board of directors of your company about quarterly revenue growth, the Tony Robbins approach can feel cheesy and out-of-place.

On today's episode of the podcast, I talk to Jim Davies about a number of different strategies you can use to break up your speech and re-engage the audience. The most effective method is the use of video. But while video clips are a great way to break things up, they also present a host of problems if you use them incorrectly. Learn what the science suggests about the proper way to use videos during presentations of different lengths.

Adding Sign-Posts

The other problem for presenters is that the structure of your speech is extremely obvious to you because you wrote it. But if your speech is more than 20-25 minutes long, your audience is going to have a hard time following the points of your talk. This is because humans have a limited ability to hold items in our working memory. When we pass the 25 minute mark, the mechanical functions of the brain start to fatigue and we forget what we heard at the start of the talk.

The solution is to "sign-post" and make the structure of your talk way more obvious than it seems like it needs to be. The farther you go over 25 minutes, the more obvious the sign-posts should be. Learn exactly how to achieve this on today's episode.

My Emails Get a 70% Response Rate - Here's How I Do It Jun 03, 2019

Show notes

The Email Outreach Problem...

Some say that email is dead today, but let's be honest: email is still the easiest, cheapest, and most efficient way to generate a lead and close a sale in just about any industry on the planet. If your email outreach isn't generating sales, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. I have consulted with businesses in every industry and have consistently been able to double or triple their response rates in just a few weeks.

Here's the problem with how most people do email outreach: they make it all about themselves. The typical outreach email reads like this, "Hi, I’m Corey, from XYZ company, and we have a product that can decrease your cost, increase your throughput, make you tanner, make you more in shape, increase your bottom-line revenue, your operating margin, your EBITDA, and make the sun shine more often in your geography. I’d love to show you what we have. We’ve been awarded Microsoft’s ACT developer of the year and the queen of England frequently discusses us on her podcast, and we won the Edwards award 3 years running. Please click here for a demo."

These kinds of emails are all about the sender, which is a huge mistake. I've found that outreach works best when it is focused on the recipient rather than the sender. There are two tactics I use to shift the focus: social relevance and problem-specific relevance.

Social Relevance

First, I explain how to make the recipient feel a sense of familiarity and connection with you just from a glance at your name and subject line. I call this "social relevance". Unless the reader recognizes something about your name or the subject, they will immediately skew your email as marketing. And then the response rates go way down.

The key is to lead with social relevance, and I break down how to do it in this episode.

Problem-Specific Relevance

The second thing that will get people to open your email is if you refer to a specific problem that your reader is currently dealing with. Often, marketers try to keep their emails really general so as to apply to as many people as possible. For example, "want more traffic?" However, this is actually the wrong approach. Everyone wants more traffic. It's so general that it feels like a spam email.

But when you mention that you can solve a highly specific problem that your reader is struggling with, it will grab their attention. In this episode, I reveal exactly how to do this without sounding cheesy.

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