This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Pitch Anything" by Oren Klaff. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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Have you ever been persuaded to buy or agree to something that you didn’t actually need or want? What do you think made you do it?
The psychology of selling is complex—it’s not exactly clear-cut what it is that spurred you to make the unintended purchase in the end. According to Oren Klaff, the author of Pitch Anything, oftentimes the purchase decision is made purely on the basis of the perceived status of the salesman.
In this article, we’ll discuss the role of perceived status in the prospective buyer’s purchasing decision.
Status and Your Pitch
Your status is your value as a person in the eyes of others. It is how others measure your worth in terms of wealth, power, and popularity. It affects how people instinctively treat you, and it can make or break your pitch.
No matter how elegant your logic, how solid your arguments, or how well-crafted your points, if you do not have high status, you will not command the attention and respect necessary to make your pitch heard.
Let’s take a closer look at the psychology of selling and how the perceived status of the salesman influences the buyer’s decision.
Two Types of Status
There are two kinds of status.
- Global status is determined by your professional position, your wealth, and your reputation. It is your permanent status, and how you are perceived in society in general. There is nothing you can do to change your global status moment-to-moment. You can’t suddenly be a CEO when you walk into a meeting.
- Situational status is your status during your current business or social encounter. Situational status is fluid: It can change from meeting to meeting. A person with lower global status can have higher situational status temporarily. A tennis pro has a lower global status than a brain surgeon, but during a tennis lesson, the tennis pro is the alpha, holding the dominant role: giving the commands, setting the tone, and driving the events of the meeting. The brain surgeon is in a reactive position—the position of the beta.
Status Matters
If you hold the higher status position, you’ll command attention effortlessly and will more easily get your pitch heard. You’ll find it easier to persuade others and drive them to a “yes.”
- You command attention even when not speaking.
- Your statements and claims are regarded as true and are not challenged.
- You set the emotional mood in the room.
- You are trusted and followed without question.
In fact, in an illustration of the tendency of people to follow the lead of those they perceive as high-status, researchers have run studies in which a well-dressed man jaywalks across a busy street into traffic. Nearby pedestrians will very often follow, unthinkingly. They do not, however, follow a sloppily-dressed person in the same situation. They automatically trust the judgment of the person they perceive as high-status, but not the other person.
Grabbing the position of higher status at your pitch starts by recognizing and avoiding “beta traps,” and continues by grabbing “local star power” by asserting your knowledge and skills.
Beta Traps: Reinforcing Your Target’s Alpha Status
Your target’s higher status is reinforced with “beta traps”: business procedures and social rituals that confirm her status as alpha and yours as beta. Beta traps are small ways in which your target sets the rules of engagement for your presentation. There are three ways beta traps activate our croc brain to recognize her as the dominant force in the room:
- Beta traps control your actions. When we enter the lobby and are told to sign here, sit there, and wear this badge, our croc brains get the message: we are following the rules, not making them. Our croc brains know that the person who sets the rules is the one in command.
- Beta traps make you feel like an outsider. Sitting in a conference room as your audience trickles in, chatting and laughing with each other, arriving to watch you as if you were the entertainment for the afternoon, reinforces the idea that you are an outsider, not a member of the group. Our croc brains fear isolation: being an outsider makes us anxious and inferior.
- Beta traps prime you to seek social acceptance. We are expected to engage in small talk and establish a rapport with our target. This makes us seem “nice” but lowers our status—nice, polite people are seen as needy and pliable. Our croc brains crave acceptance, and situations where small talk is expected make us feel obligated to win social approval.
Be aware of the beta traps you encounter, and avoid whichever you can. This is not to say you should enter a building and break all of their rules: not sign the log book and refuse to wait in the lobby. You want to appear professional, not difficult.
However, be aware of the beta traps you encounter so that you can sidestep them when possible. For example, maybe don’t sit in the lobby when they direct you to—stand, leaning against a wall instead.
However, don’t try to avoid the rules of their turf by meeting in an off-site space such as a coffee shop. If your target suggests this, avoid it if at all possible. In public spaces you are very visibly not in control. You’ll be pitching among eavesdropping strangers and will not be able to fend off interruptions like visitors stopping by to chat with your target.
The same goes for trade shows and conventions. They are filled with distractions and noise. If you need to pitch to someone at one of these events, rent a conference room or borrow someone’s office.
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Like what you just read? Read the rest of the world's best book summary and analysis of Oren Klaff's "Pitch Anything" at Shortform .
Here's what you'll find in our full Pitch Anything summary :
- An approach to the art of pitching that appeals to prospects' primitive instincts
- How to establish your frame as the dominant one
- The four parts of a successful pitch
