Mechanisms for Closing Million-Dollar Deals with Oren Klaff of Pitch Anything

Oren Klaff is one of the world’s leading experts on sales, raising capital, and negotiation, and has raised over $2 billion in investments for his companies. He is the best-selling author of Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal, and Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea.

Oren also helps companies worldwide to craft and deliver a pitch that will help them raise funds that will change their company.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Oren Klaff explains why the rules of sales don’t apply to real B2B
• Why and how neediness kills deals
• How to take control of the gap between your pitch and making the deal
• Knowing when to walk away from a deal
• Why you should never disagree on price about any deal
• Oren shares a story about how values can help decide when to take or walk away from a deal
• Comparing status alignment vs. building rapport
• Oren shares his favorite status alignment story and why it stands out for him
• Some mechanisms to flip the script when you make a deal
• Oren’s writing for the book Flip the Script
• Oren explains why he prioritizes everything over his work
• The most challenging and proudest moments in Oren Klaff’s journey

In this episode…

If you’re looking to raise millions in capital or you’re wanting to close B2B deals worth millions and you’re struggling to lock down the second or third meetings, Oren Klaff says it’s most probably because you’re going about it the wrong way. He says that when your pitch is only about your product’s features, benefits, and the clients you currently serve with nothing else but the price to talk about, what is to say that those you’re pitching to won’t go with your competitors?

According to Oren, no one will get into a deal with you quickly, smoothly, and at a fair price if they think you’re of a lower status. That’s why you have to understand and practice status alignment which is just one of the mechanisms you need to tick of when closing million-dollar deals. So what are these mechanisms, and how do you use them in practice?

Tune in to this episode of INspired INsider, as Oren Klaff shares with Dr. Jeremy Weisz how he closes million-dollar deals, the mechanisms at play, and how he uses them to flip the script to get those he is trying to make a deal with come after him. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

• Pitch Anything
• PitchMastery
• Oren Klaff on LinkedIn
• Chris Snyder on LinkedIn
• John Corcoran on LinkedIn
• Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal by Oren Klaff 
• Flip the Script: Getting People to Think Your Idea Is Their Idea by Oren Klaff

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Episode Transcript

Jeremy Weisz 0:22
Today’s interview is with Oren Klaff. He’s raised over $2 billion in investments for his companies, or is the best selling author of Pitch Anything and Flip the Script: Getting people to think your idea is their idea. It’s, you know, as I listen to two to four books per week or so on Audible, this is one of my all time favorites, and I don’t say that lightly. So definitely check out flip the script. You know, companies all over the world call him to help craft and deliver a pitch that will help them raise funds that will change their company. And so you can go to pitchmastery.com, pitchanything.com to learn more, and check out what Oren has done and he breaks down his process step by step. Big shout out to a few people before the interview, Amy Freeze, who helped put this together and coordinate this with Oren and myself and Guy who does a lot of work with Oren as well check out their website you know pitchanything.com and pitchmastery.com. Also, big shout out to Chris Snyder, Chris Snyder, you know is kind of the inspiration behind this interview because we were talking about He attended one of Oren’s events and just was raving about it and Chris Snyder runs Snyder Showdown Podcast and owns the banks.com actually, so check that out. Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of INspiredINsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders like the founders you’ve heard of and some you’ve never heard of. You know, when I had Ron Popeil on a lot of people have never heard of Ron Popeil. He’s the king of infomercials are the best pitch men. He sold billions of dollars of product. And he’s famous for saying But wait, there’s more. But I love hearing his stories where he would tell talk about how he would wake up at four in the morning. He stopped buying produce, setting up his table in the streets of Chicago selling the veggie Matic. Now I love those stories. Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator talks about some of the most stressful situations when negotiating for people’s lives in his book Never Split The Difference, which is one of my favorites of all time. I’m gonna introduce Oren Klaff in a second who he also has one of my favorite books of all time. Also p90x founder, Tony Horton talks about how he made money. You know, before he sold hundreds of millions of dollars of p90x he made money as a street mind. So and I love hearing the kind of the challenge stories and you put his head on the street and you drink food and rent money by doing street mine street For me, I love those stories so check out those many more inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25 which I co-founded with my business partner John Corcoran and Rise25 we’ll b2b businesses connect to their dream 100 clients and referral partners and help you run your podcast so it generates ROI and, you know, podcasting for me Yes, like it’s it’s one of the been the best thing I’ve done for my business in my life because of the relationships. I’ve gone to people’s weddings. I’ve gone on family vacations, but it’s a lot more personal for me. Actually. My it was inspired by my grandfather who is a Holocaust survivor and him and his brother were in concentration camps in Nazi Germany and they were the only members of their family to survive. And you know, the reason his words and legacy live on is because the Holocaust foundation did an interview with him. And I put that interview on my about page you can watch it on inspiredinsider.com on the about page and you know, I can be on inspired and motivated and have appreciation and gratitude by watching that interview multiple times a year. So yes, I think podcasting is the best thing you can do for your business but it leaves a legacy for you and your guests so if you have questions about it, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected], we’ve been doing it for over 10 years, we’ve got Berkshire Hathaway company and many more. So without further ado, I’m

Oren Klaff 4:28
gonna start anytime. Okay, I’m gonna run down to Starbucks. You keep going. You

Jeremy Weisz 4:34
know, the funny thing is I watched an interview Oren and you call the guy a unabomber. And it’s all I’m like, I’m scared to interview this guy like you told them. I don’t even think I let you in my office dress like that. I don’t know if you remember that. It’s the first time I think I’ve I’ve laughed on an interview show.

Oren Klaff 4:51
You know, and and sometimes you laugh sometimes you cry like you mentioned, you know, Chris Voss and Tony Horton and Ron Popeil. I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, but fuck those guys. So but i’ll tell you why. Right? Nice guys nice families and everything that they are, though that category of guy Chris is a funny guy, Tony’s a wonderful guy. Ron’s a fucking lunatic, but that that category of guy is stretching their experience that they had in hugging or selling or infomercial or selling juice mixers, you know, or FBI hostage negotiations. They’re extending it too far to business. Right? So they’re saying, you know, not to be mean to Chris, right. But his thing is to say, you know, his, his his signature phrase is to ask him to you’re negotiating with how should I do that? How can I do that? How should I do that? Right? I go to into a little background on me, I help companies raise money. So I go to venture capital, I go to private equity. I go to banks, right and working About $5 million $10 million $30 million $50 million. Right? And so if I’m talking to Bank of America or ta partners or you know, a private equity group about a $30 million financing, and they propose a term, you know, liquidate to liquidated preferences in term sheet, right? And I’m like that, and I say, How am I supposed to do that? They will say, Excuse me, what? What did you say? I said, Well, how am I supposed to do that? And they’re gonna say that, okay, that’s not our fucking problem. Are you still in this meeting? Are you listening to us? Like, that is not how finance works. It’s not how business works, maybe how hostage negotiation works, right? There may be a different cache line and how you sell juicers and vegetables, but there is a very finite route to pitching a real deal with people who know what they’re doing. And so there is this this sort of genre of people who had tremendous success. I mean, Tony probably has more money than I do. It’s got a bigger plane, you know, a better house, bigger house, more maids. You know, more islands. He owns whatever, okay? But in the domain, that probably people listening to this podcast, right are b2b sales and b2b finance and raising capital, there is a very narrow window that you can approach a client or a buyer or an investor or a bank. And within that frame, there are very specific things you can do. And almost everything that sells juicers and almost everything that frees hostages, which is important. I don’t mean to be mean to those guys and almost everything does to sell, you know, fitness subscriptions, knows everything that’s needed to sell. You know, do marketing doesn’t work. In fact, the box that I’m talking about b2b sales and finance is upside down land. The things that work in marketing, the things that work in commercials, the things that work in in sales, the thing will work in consumer sales backwards. They don’t attract people to you, they push People away. Because in these environments, you can only attract people. And that’s probably where I would start in the world of b2b. The set of rules is basically people want what they can’t have. People chase that which moves away from them. And people only value that which they pay for. And that covers investing tips. If you think about your pitch or your sale, and you start to frame it within the scope of those ideas, you’ll you’ll things will improve. So those environments are very sensitive to knowing the domain, knowing what order to put things in, what content the buyer needs to be able to check the boxes and buy and how much detail to give in the pitch. And once you know those things in that environment, then you can get control over the buyer. So people want or they can people chase that which moves away from them and people only balance That, which they pay for. And then we can start to unpack why b2b buyers actually buy why investors and companies and startups and growing companies actually invest and how banks put out money. But it’s very different from from these other environments, you can stretch too far from sales into real b2b.

Jeremy Weisz 9:20
You know, or thanks for sharing that with you know, again, I was mentioning, you know, flip the script, I think every single person, whether they have a business or not should get that book and I have on my whiteboard, three terms, which is status alignment, plain vanila, and motivational buyers just so it reminds me on a daily basis, those three things but you mentioned something about pushing people away. There’s a story in flip the script where you’re selling really high end car parts, and you went into more of like a rural area and they weren’t pushing people away enough. So what’s the balance of pushing people away and I won’t ruin the punchline of the of the book, but actually being authentic to who you are.

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