Good for saving the day in breaking the ice with that cute stranger, trying to meet someone intimidating or famous, selling to people in a public place.
You were busy working on your power words and power gestures and practicing how to get everyone’s eyes locked on you when you enter a room, without it looking theatrical or having everybody think you’re a tool. But what do you do when you have their attention?
I did the New York City Marathon back in 2010 and there must have been 2 million people on the streets. The spectator support was overwhelming. If you put your name on a piece of duct tape, you would hear it shouted at you at least a thousand times. People were handing out food: bananas, popsicles, jelly beans, raisins, pizza. It was awesome.
Fast-forward to a year ago. The St. Anthony’s Triathlon was happening in St. Petersburg, and the run course went right past my house. I’m friends with a lot of triathletes, including Mark Bowstead from New Zealand and Alicia Kaye, and since I wanted to encourage them, and because I was going to have four thousand competitors running past my house, I decided to put up some OxiClean signage along with signs that read GO BO! and GO ALICIA!
After a few minutes, I had an inspiration. I remembered how great the food from the spectators had been when I was doing the New York City Marathon. I also thought about soccer. If you ever played soccer as a kid, your coaches and parents probably gave you orange slices at halftime. Remember how refreshing they were? I doubt there’s anybody who doesn’t like oranges; they’re the universal fruit. Because I’ve done a few triathlons, I knew how much the runners would be suffering by the time they got to the turn in my street. They’d be overheated, exhausted, and running short on energy. I ran inside my house, got all the oranges I had in the fridge, and started slicing them up.
I didn’t have enough to feed four thousand people, but it was amazing how many slices I got. I put them all on ice along with some cantaloupe and took the whole batch out to the front. My mum and her husband, Alan, were in town from England, and they watched. My neighbors, the Shamrocks, looked on while we tried to hand the runners orange and cantaloupe slices as they went by. But strangely, maybe one in twenty actually took them.
At first, I thought that maybe it was because they didn’t know if the fruit had been handled in a sanitary way, which I could understand. You wouldn’t want to grab an orange slice and then three hours later be retching your guts out because of E. coli. So I put the orange slices on cocktail toothpicks and plastic forks, and still, hardly anyone accepted our free, cold oranges.
Then it hit me. This wasn’t New York. These men and women weren’t running through busy Manhattan streets where people handing out food was all part of the experience. They had been swimming, biking, and running all over the Tampa Bay area, and suddenly here was this grinning pillock in his khakis and blue shirt, handing out fruit. I wasn’t an official aid station. I must have seemed downright mad.
I knew then that it was the force field at work. If I was going to help these runners with my cold, juicy oranges, I was going to have to break through.
When you walk into a retail store and a clerk greets you and asks you, “Hi, can I help you find something?” how often do you say, “No, thanks” without even thinking? About 90 percent of the time, I’ll bet. You don’t want to be helped. Even if you do want to be helped, you want to be helped on your terms. “Can I help you?” is actually a really bad question, because it activates what I call the force field.
The force field is the attitude many people maintain that keeps other people at a distance. It’s our natural sales resistance and suspicion of ulterior motives, real or imagined. It’s our protection against being sold to, coerced, or having something done to us against our will. It’s what keeps us from talking to the person next to us on the plane and has us with our heads down, staring at our smartphones, for hours rather than engage with the people around us. Engaging is scary, our brains tell us, but behind the force field, I’m safe. So we put out that “leave me alone” vibe, and people leave us alone.
Some people have their guard up all the time, even in the middle of a triathlon. I could see it as clear as day: the runners saw me in my OxiClean gear and reacted unconsciously: He’s giving away free oranges, he probably wants my email address or phone number, he wants me to buy OxiClean. So they kept their distance. Of course, I didn’t want anything like that; I just wanted to help, no strings attached. Somehow, I had to get through their force field and earn their trust.
First, I fell back on my county fair pitchman skills. I started shouting, “Free oranges, if you want an orange, slice of orange!” My mum did the same, but nobody cared. Then, because repetition and alliteration are critical in a good street pitch, I changed to “Nice cold, ice cold oranges! Vitamin C, ice cold oranges, get the refreshment!” A few people looked and took slices, but eight out of ten were still passing us by without a glance. My amazing pitching skills were falling flat. Then I thought, I’m literally at a distance from these athletes. I need to close the distance. To get the take, I needed to make their problem—pain, heat, fatigue—my problem, too, if only a little bit. So I grabbed an orange slice on a toothpick, stepped into the street and started running backwards with the runners.
Zap! The force field came down; I could feel it. It was like night and day. Everyone started taking oranges from me. Suddenly, I became somebody who wasn’t on the sidelines but expending some energy just like they were. Some of the athletes recognized me, the OxiClean guy, running with them and holding out something cold and full of sugar, and they couldn’t turn it down. After they ate it, some said they didn’t know what to do with the rind, and I said, “Don’t worry, OxiClean will clean it up!” After I gave out one slice, I would run back, get another slice, run back out, and another runner would take it. Then I started running next to two runners holding two slices, one in each hand.
Just like that, the take-up went from 10 percent to 90 percent of runners that came by. The pitch was still the same; I was chanting, “Nice cold, ice cold oranges, Vitamin C, no pain, no gain, pain is temporary, pride is forever, have an orange, get you on your way, Vitamin C for the runners!” But running with them, empathizing with them—that was magic. As a sometime triathlete, I know what it feels like to be at that mark when everything hurts, and I knew how much a little burst of sugar would help. We went from giving away no oranges to all my oranges being gone in thirty minutes.
My mum thought this was super exciting, and next thing, I’ve got my mother running backwards with oranges shouting, “Nice, cold, ice cold!” Then my neighbors across the street, Steve and Rita, saw all this happening and loved the hoopla, so they went inside and started cutting up oranges and apples. Then the Shamrocks got into the act! They grabbed some fruit, butchered all my lines, and started running next to me. So now I had my mom, my stepfather, Mr. and Mrs. Shamrock, and my neighbors across the street all going, “Ice cold, nice cold, Vitamin C, California navel oranges!” See, that’s good pitching: they’re not just oranges, they’re ice-cold California navel oranges. Alliteration and detail are your friends.
Before I knew what was happening, the whole neighborhood was into it, with my neighbors rolling out coolers packed with ice and fruit, running down the street after these triathletes, shouting and trying to hand them apple and melon slices. It was touching and funny and the enthusiasm was completely contagious.
This was an experiment in the difference between just standing there, letting people maintain their distance and protective force field, and pitching. There’s an enormous difference between just standing around and being passive, which allows people’s natural sales resistance and protective instinct to remain intact, and taking something to them on a physical and emotional level. You have to make a personal connection, to take things beyond the purely transactional. That’s the Pitch Power I call…
It may seem strange to look at it this way, but I was making a spiritual connection with these athletes. I was running with them and empathizing with them. I had closed the distance. When you just stand around trying to hand people things, it doesn’t work because you’re also in your own safe space. You’re keeping yourself at a distance, so why shouldn’t the other person do the same thing? To connect, you don’t just breach the other person’s force field; you have to breach your own, too.
That day, there was an emotional connection because I had left my safe cocoon and was feeling their pain just a tiny bit. There was a physical connection because I was running along with them. Then I had people saying, “Are you the OxiClean guy?” That was the kicker right there. They’re like, OMG, it’s the OxiClean guy and he’s running and giving me oranges!
Another overlooked part of this is that reaching out like this is fun. Going out and connecting with these runners, seeing my mother doing it, seeing my neighbors getting into the act, seeing the surprise and gratitude on the runners’ faces—it was fun. And when you’re having fun, so will the person you’re pitching. Retail fails when people sit in a store and wait for the customers to come to them. That’s why when I go to trade shows in Europe, I’ll pass booths and you’ll have these Israeli girls running up to you every five seconds with some pitch or bit of swag. They have to stand there for hours anyway, so why not work harder, have fun, engage the customer—and, by the way, get better results?
My triathlon experience took me right back to the crux of what the pitch is about, which is engagement on every level. I got super satisfied customers, and I knew it because the way the course runs, the competitors had to run back by my house heading for the finish line. They ran by, waving and shouting, “Hey!” Before, they were just four thousand men and women I didn’t know. Now I had four thousand new friends.
This Pitch Power hinges on two basic truths:
Truth #1: It doesn’t matter if what you’re giving away is free if you’re not enjoying yourself while you’re giving it away. Think about Las Vegas. When you walk down the Strip, there are guys standing around giving out pamphlets, some of them actually not for the services of agile and enthusiastic young professional ladies. But nine times out of ten, people won’t take the pamphlet. It’s not heavy, and it doesn’t cost anything, but we just don’t want to deal with it because it’s threatening our no-selling perimeter and activating the force field.
The big reason nobody takes the pamphlets is that those guys never smile or say anything. They just slap those damned pamphlets—whack! whack! whack!—and it sounds like gunshots. That doesn’t work. If you want people to take that pamphlet, read it, and maybe use that 10 percent–off coupon from that restaurant, open your mouth. It doesn’t matter if you don’t speak English; chatter or sing in your native language. Open up. Smile. Show your pearly whites. Smiling is a natural human impulse; when we see a smile, we tend to smile back. Plus, research shows that smiling, even a fake smile, actually alters brain activity, reduces stress, and improves mood. So smile!
I love the guys who hold those four-foot arrow-shaped signs on street corners and busy roads. You’ve seen them. The signs are usually shaped like arrows and typically advertise a housing development or new business, and the best sign guys are amazing pitchmen. The sign guy isn’t getting paid any more to dance, but he has to stand there for eight hours, so why not have some fun doing it? So he starts working that sign. You love the guy; you want to stop and give him a tip just because he’s putting on a show on the sidewalk. He twirls it. He throws it in the air. He whips it behind his back like LeBron James on a breakaway. He’s got his music, he’s got his groove on, and he’s getting a workout.
People look down at someone holding a sign on the corner of an intersection, but they actually admire the guy who’s spinning it and laying down all the moves. Why? Because he’s bringing it. He’s in a shitty job and yet he’s making the most of it. He’s rising above his situation. We love that. He’s like the cheerleader of sign work. He’s pitching and attracting attention, not waiting for attention to come to him. The best pitchmen and pitchwomen are attractive.
That’s pitching. That’s reaching across the distance and breaking through somebody’s protective bubble—and when somebody is a hundred feet away, in a metal and glass car going forty-five miles an hour, that’s a hard bubble to break. If you’ve ever driven in California, you see the same thing. When you come down a freeway off-ramp and you’re waiting at the stoplight at the bottom, you’ll often see a street vendor on the concrete median selling flowers, oranges, or nuts. It’s a way to make some extra cash. But ninety-nine out of a hundred of those guys just stand there and wait for somebody to open their car window. Most commuters won’t do it because of the force field. The vendors I’ve seen who kill it, who sell every orange or bunch of carnations they have, are the ones who bring a guitar and sing Mexican folk songs. Or they stand there smiling and sing silly stuff about oranges. They might be tired, cold, and sick of breathing exhaust fumes, but they’re having fun, and they’re connecting. They’re making it feel like you’ve got to have those oranges—so people buy them. It works every single time.
Truth #2: The best way to breach the force field is to make physical contact. The force field is about physical protection, about keeping our “personal space” clear of anyone we fear might try to take away our control to make our own choices. It’s not impossible, but it is very difficult to get through someone’s personal bubble without engaging with them physically in some way.
With the triathletes outside my house, I knew how to do that because I’ve been where they were. I know how much it sucks to do a 1500-meter swim, a 40-kilometer bike ride, and a 10-kilometer run. It’s hot, and if you’re an amateur, you’ve been going for who knows how long. In the first half of the run, you’re running away from the finish line, and that’s the darkest point of the race. You also don’t want water because people are handing out water all over the course. You don’t want Gatorade. Oranges are cold and chewy and full of natural sugar, and I knew the runners would love them.
Running with them made all the difference because I did 99 percent of the work to close that physical gap, and at the same time I was closing the spiritual gap by suffering along with them just a little bit. Once they decided to reach for that orange, even though there was a fork or a cocktail stick stuck in it, the physical connection clicked. We connected on a physical level, similar to the way I connect with people live when I hand out product. You get them to hold the product and they start nodding. It becomes real.
This Pitch Power makes some people uncomfortable. But that’s good. We’ve become complacent about getting out into the world and reaching out to people, because we think we can do it from the safety of a laptop keyboard or smartphone screen. But that’s not true. Facebook friends aren’t real friends. Communicating with someone by way of posts and tweets and emoji is nothing like seeing their body language, making them smile, or sharing a laugh with an entire crowd. A kind of collective hug becomes possible when people are in the same space together that isn’t possible when we’re at a distance.
Are we safer from people who might disagree with us? Sure. Is it more convenient to roll out of bed and “like” something on Facebook than to get dressed, go out in the cold morning air, and say to people, “Sir, how do you mop your floors?” Of course. But we’re poorer for it. If you distance yourself or kid yourself that you can connect with people from a piece of backlit glass, you’ll never learn to pitch and never reap all the benefits.
But still… scary. We like our physical space. So it’s a good thing that actually touching someone physically is not the only way to breach their force field. Now to be fair, it’s still the best way. Physical contact or a physical exchange—taking an orange slice, handling a product, passing a sample around an audience—are still your most effective tools for creating that immediate sense of intimacy. I’m not talking about feeling people up, but the act of subtle touch. If you have an opportunity to engage someone in a physical manner, engage them. I do it all the time: “Feel that, smell that, taste this. You want a free taste? Have a taste. We’ve got free samples today.” You’re giving someone a little cup and now you’ve involved a sense that wasn’t previously involved.
But engaging someone physically is not appropriate in every situation, and not every audience is receptive to it. So you’re in luck, because there are five—count ’em, five—other ways to break that barrier.
1. Make them laugh. On the triathlon course, I wasn’t just screaming at the top of my voice about ice-cold oranges. I also offered the runners a free hose-down as they went by, and if you’ve ever run a 10k on a warm day, you know how good that cool water feels. But more than that, I was having a dig at some people all in fun. For instance, every athlete has a number, so you pick someone’s number, or something that makes them stand out. and you cheer them on or make a mild joke. I remember one lady with a pink hat, wearing number 118. When she ran by I started chanting, “Pink Hat, go, Pink Hat, 1-1-8!” She knew she was wearing a pink hat, she was hurting, and she was happy that someone was cheering her on. It made everyone smile. I did the same when Alicia Kaye ran by, because even though she’s a pro, I knew she was hurting, too. By the way, she took second among the women that day, which was awesome.
Everybody loves to smile. Make a big hoopla about what you’ve got. Find something about the person you’re pitching to and poke a little light fun at them or what they’re doing. For instance, say you’re interviewing for a highly competitive job and you know the interviewer sitting across from you has already seen about a hundred candidates and is sick of the whole thing. You sit down, and before she can utter a word, you say with a wink and a grin, “I know you’re sick of this, so I accept. I’ll take the job. See? I just made your day easier.” Nine times out of ten, I’ll bet you get a smile or a laugh. Instant connection. The tenth? Well, you probably don’t want to work for such a humorless sod anyway.
And never forget the value of self-deprecation. The best way to get that smile on someone’s face and keep the laugh going is to make fun of yourself. That’s what stand-up comedians do. That’s why a lot of super intense salespeople get it wrong. So you go to a car lot. You get the guy we all dread: the always-on guy who knows everything about the car and expects you to be as excited about it as he is. You probably don’t like him because he makes you feel pressured. But the guy who’s funny, who makes you enjoy the process, who doesn’t take the whole thing too seriously? Nine times out of ten he doesn’t know precisely how many foot-pounds of torque the car puts out, but he’s probably the one you’re going to buy from.
2. Care. Show genuine concern about what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for. Don’t just say you care; show it. This even works on television. On TV, you have no idea who’s watching and no way to interact with them directly, so you have to make a strong impression that breaks the force field. For example, when I go on HSN, I make a concerted effort to tease the hosts in a way that shows I know and care about them. For instance, Robin Wall has been working there for twenty years, and she’s one of a handful of people there who have climbed the ladder from hand model to show host. So every time I go on I compliment her about it, even though it makes her uncomfortable. When I come on, before we even get started, but live on camera, I always stop the pitch and tell Robin, “Robin, I’m so proud of you. Look at you.”
She’ll say, “Stop it,” but I’ll ignore her, turn to the customers at home, and say, “Did you know that Robin was a model and I’ve known her for twenty years?” Meanwhile, Robin is blushing and fidgeting behind me. Then I turn to her and gush, “Robin, I’m your biggest fan.” It’s banter, it’s a ritual, it’s innocent flirtation—and it works. It breaks the ice, and it works because people can see that I genuinely like Robin. If I didn’t like her, everyone would know it. People aren’t stupid. But it’s real, and we’re having fun, so the viewer is having fun.
3. Recruit co-conspirators. You know the saying “There are no atheists in foxholes?” There are also no atheists in audiences when the speaker says the words “audience participation.” Everyone starts praying, “Don’t pick me, don’t pick me” But when you pick someone to help you, they become a proxy for the entire audience. If you’re pitching to a group, delivering a speech, or giving a performance, this is a great force field breaker. I used to do it when I pitched vegetable slicers in street markets. I would find a sweet-looking woman and just work on her: “Does anyone like onions? Do you like onions? Are these onions good? Open your bag, love, and let’s see if you’ve got any onions.” By now, she’s giggling and everybody else is laughing with her. It’s magic.
Once, I saw a guy selling a juicer in a street market and had a big tip watching him. At some point in my own pitches, I would always pass things into the crowd for people to hold and examine, and on this occasion this guy did the same thing, passing around fruit that could be juiced—oranges, lemons, limes—and asking people to squeeze the juice out of them.
Then he threw the crowd a curveball. He found this sweet little old woman, passed her an apple, and asked her to squeeze the juice out of it. Well, of course you can’t squeeze juice from an apple, but the entire audience was howling as this lady squeezed and squeezed and nothing happened. Nobody was making fun; everybody was in on the joke. But by making her a part of his pitch, he’d made the entire audience part of it. By recruiting one person, he connected with fifty.
Try it. If you want to meet someone attractive in a bar, get her to help you prank your buddy. If you’re pitching a potential client, instead of slides, bring oversized cards and ask someone from the client to hold them while you speak. If you’re working on a customer service rep at the airport to get a first-class upgrade, promise to write a fantastic complimentary email about her to her superior if she hooks you up, and then do it. When you can make your audience your ally, you’ve got it made.
4. Be direct. Guess what? The girl you’re hitting on knows you’re hitting on her. Your supervisor knows you’re in the office to try to get a raise. Don’t be coy. When people think that you think they’re too dumb to get that you’re pitching them, they get angry. So be direct. You’re trying to get the girl’s phone number or you want a raise and a promotion. Your cards are on the table and you can play.
5. Have a secret. People love to be in on a secret. It gets them leaning forward in their chairs and transforms you into someone special. When I’m pitching, I always have a secret. It’s the perfect way to change gears and vary your patter. “Why am I so good? Because I have a British accent. That’s my secret. The reason I’m so good is because I have these blue eyes. They can melt people when I look at them. That’s the secret. My real secret to success is getting up at 4:00 a.m. and working out. I’m in the office at 6:00 a.m. every single day. Before you even think about waking up, I’m already here working for you. That’s the secret to my success.” You can create a secret for any situation.
Try each of these methods to use this Pitch Power and bring down those barriers. When you’re talking to that attractive woman at the club, invite her to join you in trying a special drink the bartender invented. If you’re making your pitch to a group of customers, instead of letting them sit on their butts and watch another PowerPoint deck, make funny photo books about your company and pass one to each of them. If you’re giving a speech and the room is dead, leave the podium and go sit with the audience, then keep talking. They’ll love it.
Other times this Pitch Power can help you win the day and get the girl (or guy):
• Getting better medical care. Doctors and nurses distance themselves from patients because it helps them be more objective, but it can also result in cold, impersonal, crappy care, especially if you’re hospitalized. Remember that they’re human, probably very busy, and almost always stressed out. Be kind and find a way to connect—kids, school, a tattoo, something. They’ll probably listen more closely and you might even get a private room, always a luxury.
• Getting a hotel upgrade. The same principle works here as with docs and nurses: when someone is constantly busy and most people are berating them, stand out by being the person who reaches out and treats them like a human being. Breach the barrier that clerks put up to protect themselves from irate guests and engage—a simple compliment can do it. The more the person across the check-in desk likes you, the better your odds of getting that suite.
• Talking your way out of a ticket. I’ve done this, and it’s not easy. Plus, the Pitch Powers don’t work every time. But it’s worth a shot. Cops keep themselves behind a protective wall, but if you’re honest about why you were speeding or ran the light and even make the officer laugh, you stand a decent chance of getting off with a warning. At the very least, you won’t exacerbate the bad news of a citation by being an asshole, too. Being a cop is tough. This cop is standing out in the cold or heat, worrying about getting shot. Cops get a ton of abuse, so do the opposite of what your gut is telling you to do. Own it, say you’re sorry, admit it, and be cool. You have nothing to lose.
My friend Juls Bindi learned all about this Pitch Power. She invented a dog carrier called ZuGoPet. It’s the Mercedes-Benz of dog carrying cases. She sold them on Amazon but she wasn’t moving much product. On a trip to LA, I stayed in her spare bedroom and it was stacked to the ceiling with ZuGoPets in boxes. I told her she had to get rid of the inventory and she said, “I know, I know, I’m getting rid of it slowly.” I knew this was a job for Pitchman. The next morning, I gave her a master class in pitching.
Juls is passionate about her product, and it solves lots of problems. But it’s $199. If you just put a pet carrier on a table at that price, people are going to walk by, look at the price tag, and keep walking. I told her, “Right. First things first: you need to bally your tip, or gather a group of buyers around you. The best way to do that is to have a dog with you. People will just come over to pet the dog. Bring Russell (that’s her dog). Russell is going to be ‘Russell the Muscle.’ He’s going to bally your tip for you.”
She looked at me like I was nuts. “Really?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “You’re going to have one dog carrier out and all the colors—pink, black, white—stacked up behind you. Get a light on them so everything else around you looks dark. Get something to stand on so you’re elevated. And don’t wait for people to come to you. Start talking to them: ‘Do you have a dog, I have a dog, come on over. Do you want to pet the dog, do you want to pet the dog?’ Don’t waste your time pitching to people who don’t have dogs or don’t know someone who has a dog.”
Then I told her to tell a story. Did you know the number-two cause of automobile accidents is dogs being in the back of the car unrestrained, distracting their drivers? Neither did I, and neither do dog owners. Then I told her to get into how the bag solved problems. When the dog walks inside, it has a blanket. The bag has mesh panels so the dog can see out. You can hang it between the two seats so if you get rear-ended the dog won’t go flying into the windshield. I said, “Get familiar with your product to the point where you can pick it up and maneuver it blindfolded.”
Next, get fierce agreement. While you’re talking, you’re getting people to agree with what you say about your product. Ask people the name of their dog—let’s say it’s Buster—and you say, “Doesn’t this look like Buster would be comfortable in this?” Yes, they’ll say. “Looks like he’d be pretty safe in it, too.” They’ll nod.
Finally, I told Juls to hand the bags to every person in the crowd and give them a reason to want to hold them. “Hand them out and say, ‘Which color do you want? Feel the quality of this. Feel how light this is.’” People will get the bag and heft it and marvel to each other, “Oh, feel how light this is.” I always laugh at people’s suggestibility. Of course it’s light—it’s a little leather satchel! Now you’re handing people the dog carrier they just heard all about in the color they want. Finally, the ask, “Would anybody like to know the price?” You’re not telling them the price. You’re asking them if they’d like to know the price. They will always say yes.
I went on for forty-five minutes, and she and her assistant were feverishly taking notes. Then I flew home, and the next thing I knew I got a call from Juls, shouting, “You made me a millionaire!” Apparently, she took the bags to a show in Las Vegas and used everything I taught her. I’ll let her finish the story:
“I started ZuGoPet in 2010 with the sole purpose of helping our rescue dogs with anxiety and keeping them safe while they travel,” Juls says. “With a lack of innovative products on the market, I decided to make my own. Then came Sully. I met him in Mexico through a mutual friend, Thom Beers. We hit it off and he loved my product, and when Sully loves a product he’s gung ho and wants to jump in and help.
“When he stayed with me in LA, he let me record the pitch so I could listen to it over and over again and get it right,” she continues. “When I was preparing for SuperZoo, the world’s largest pet show, I swore I was not going to let Sully or myself down. I was going to sell the doggie doo-doo out of these products. I wasn’t nervous at all! I saw Sully standing right there saying, ‘Time to get their hands raised!’
‘Pass out the product… 3… 2… 1… now!’
‘Tell them what they love about the bag!’
‘Ask them their pet’s name!’
‘Ask them to pitch it to the person standing next to them!’
‘Ask them how much they would pay for it!’
“My boyfriend, my designer, and her husband stood back, wide-eyed, watching me take over and sell out,” she concludes. “Following Sully’s steps, it came as second nature. I was officially a pitchwoman, and good at it! Sully’s approach is so obvious once he explains it: put on a show and make them want to pay for it at the end. Not only are they getting an amazing product but they just watched a flawless performance that they will come back to see again.”
Juls did amazing, especially for her first time using this Pitch Power, which is hard. You have your own force field and it can be frightening to breach it. But it’s even worse when you use some of these tricks to close that distance and take down that barrier, and the other person stares at you like you’re a bug on a pin.
Like all the Pitch Powers, this one is only one tool in your arsenal. It’s a powerful one, but you need to be careful to use it when it’s appropriate. In some situations, and with some people, you want to keep your distance and keep them at theirs. For instance, there have been times when I’ve been talking to lawyers, in my personal life and professional life, that I did not want them warming up to me. I knew all the pitching in the world wasn’t going to make a difference, and I didn’t want them to get the misconception that I was trying to manipulate them. Likewise, I’ve been in negotiations where I had to play my cards close to the vest. If you have too much fun, you can relax and say something you shouldn’t. Let the other guy make the mistakes, not you.
Most of the time, making physical contact, humor, or having a secret will work wonders to break that protective bubble and warm people up. But use these tricks to know when you should leave them cold:
• Watch body language. This is the big one. Breaking eye contact, restless hands, forced laughter, people looking at each other—these are all cues that your routine is falling flat. Back off FAST and be serious and direct.
• Note the environment. Is the room set up so that you’re deliberately at a physical distance from the other person? Are you one of many applicants? Is the bar so loud that any funny lines are barely audible? Maybe not the place for barrier breaking.
• Throw out some bait. Finally, try throwing out some test lines to see what happens. If you learn that the other person’s birthday is a few days away, say something like “I noticed your birthday is on Saturday. Got any big plans?” If they look surprised and delighted, you’re golden. If they react like you’re a stalker, apologize for being intrusive and hope they forget it happened.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling cars or making sales calls on a buyer. It doesn’t matter if you’re hitting on someone hot or trying to film a Kickstarter video that will get people to give you $25,000 for your invention. You will hit a wall of sales resistance. If you’re coming into my office to sit across a desk from me and try to sell me shit that I don’t want, you should expect that. However, novice pitching superheroes are always shocked when people don’t even want things they’re giving away for free.
That’s the force field, and the best way to learn to breach it is to practice giving something away for free in public. I’m serious. On a hot day, get a cooler full of frozen orange slices, go out to a busy recreational trail where hundreds of people are walking, running, and cycling, and try to give them away. Anyone who is afraid or thinks they can’t pitch can do exactly what I did. At first, people won’t take what you’re offering. Try what I’ve taught you in this chapter. By the end of the day, you’ll have figured out how to break the ice with people. If you practice anything long enough, you’ll get good at it.
You’ll also conquer that perfectly normal moment of fear, that stage fright that comes when you step out of your force field. Go to a road race, find a quiet corner, and cut up a bunch of oranges. Everyone’s going to be super grateful. So you get a rejection? A runner runs by you. You’re never going to see them again. But you’re going to have so many take-ups and smiles and so much interaction. It’s a genuine human transaction. You’re solving a problem for these people for what? The cost of an orange. If you can’t sell it, practice giving it away for free. Once you’ve perfected giving it away for free and you’re really good at it, then maybe you can graduate to actually asking for money. That’s how you learn to pitch.
SCENARIOS FOR USING THE “BREACH THE FORCE FIELD” PITCH POWER
Q: You tell someone a joke and they look offended. What do you do?
A: Fall on your sword. You’ve just touched a negative emotion, which is powerful stuff. So you reframe the joke and say, “I’m sorry. I’m just rather nervous right now and I thought I could defuse it by telling a joke. Obviously, that wasn’t a good idea. Can we start over again?”
Q: You see someone attractive in a public place but he or she has a wingman (or woman). Do you move on, ignore the friend, or turn him/her into your ally?
A: Ally, always. Now, if you’re with a friend and you can get him or her to charm the wingman, that’s ideal. But if you’re not, turn the wing-person into your advocate. Be charming and warm and genuine to both of them, so that when you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, the friend turns to the object of your affections and says, “He’s a catch! Go for it!” instead of “Quick, let’s leave before he gets back!”
Q: You’re giving out orange slices (or something) when the police tell you to stop. Do you leave with your tail between your legs or pretend to leave and set up shop elsewhere?
A: A pitchman never quits. Find a new place to pitch—and work the police episode into your new pitch! “The cops tried to stop me because what I’m giving away is so great it should be illegal.” That sort of thing.