Flip The Script

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For much of early civilization, at least a quarter of all human males on the planet were killed every year by war, famine, tribal infighting, and things that bite, sting, inject poison, or stomp. Everywhere you turned, there was something that could easily kill you. Moving too slow or in the wrong direction meant the difference between life and death; there was no time to second-guess yourself. Nobody else could be trusted. To survive, you needed to trust your own judgment above that of all others, no matter what, acting on your own ideas without hesitating, and resisting the influence of risky outside ideas. Anything new and foreign is untested and, therefore, not to be trusted. The human brain is thus wired by evolution to distrust any information from the outside world and to greatly favor that which originates inside us.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 9). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Make people feel like the idea is coming from them and they will place more value on it, believe it more deeply, adopt it more quickly, and remember it more easily.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 14). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The same is true with an idea. Make people feel like the idea is coming from them and they will place more value on it, believe it more deeply, adopt it more quickly, and remember it more easily.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 14). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Humans operate, and have always operated, within a rigid power framework that I call the dominance hierarchy, where the few who exist at the top get more of the best of everything, and those at the bottom get the scraps.

But we never truly mastered this new dominance hierarchy. Even today, improving your social ranking rarely happens easily, quickly, or even at all because your ranking is one of the most difficult things to change unless you have been trained to do so.

early humans relied on visual cues to determine social status and tribal affiliation. As tribes got bigger and the social layer cake expanded, we had to start responding to external cues of power such as uniforms, tattoos, clothing, family crests, and titles. It soon became second nature for us to recognize and act on these indicators of position and power.

Today, a mix of subtle visual and verbal cues help you instantly recognize the social status of people around you. The way you dress, the precise words you use in conversation, the tone of your voice, and your behavior in specific situations will all telegraph your status within a group or society at large.

When you learn to recognize and control these words and symbols, you can change your position in the social layer cake at will. You can enter a completely unfamiliar social group in just a few seconds and create enormous influence in the process.

If you want to understand the power of status alignment, a good place to start is at the opposite, or status mis-alignment.

That frustrated feeling you experience on the phone with a customer service representative who can’t help you is the same feeling someone else gets about you when they feel you’re not on their level and you don’t understand their issues.

You cannot get the full attention of a decision maker to listen to your idea if they think you’re on a different level of the dominance hierarchy than they are.

When you’re going to press someone toward an important decision, you first need to be sure he or she feels they are in the right place at the right time with the right person. To accomplish this, you must create Status Alignment.

Eight people for one deal. Why stack up all this headcount and expense? Because when the deal is underway, it’s essential to get my team members to match up correctly with the other side’s team. I need my analyst to talk to their analyst, my lawyer to talk to their lawyer, and my finance person to talk to their finance person, leaving me to talk directly to their CEO or decision maker—as equals. These are the correct matchups. It has to be this way because “bad matchups” create an out-of-whack dominance hierarchy where the wrong people are covering one another, assuring the deal will go sideways and eventually blow up.

Influence, and particularly Inception, is most effective when the person you are speaking to feels like he or she is on the same level of the hierarchy as you. This is where Inception is strongest and works the best. Before you can implant an idea in someone else’s mind, you need to create a feeling of Status Alignment.

When you bump into someone who grew up in your hometown, they don’t need to say much for you to feel an instant sense of connection. “Remember when Eskimo Joe’s burned down back in ’97?”

The best way to find a Status Tip-Off is to interview three people who are the same level as the person you are trying to influence. What would they say to each other, to catch up on each other’s business, peer-to-peer?

Memorize your Tip-Off and find an opportunity to deliver it to a decision maker. Then sit back and watch doors start to spring open for you—

Over the years my team and I have learned to use the three key elements that make up a successful Tip-Off: 
Use Specific Industry Lingo 
Describe a Recent Action You Have Taken 
Mention a Real Situation Everyone in the Industry Cares About

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 35). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (pp. 34-35). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 29). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 27). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 26). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 25). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 20). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (pp. 19-20). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 19). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 18). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 
Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 17). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The goal of every sales presentation is to reduce the Certainty Gap in the buyer’s mind—improving the chance of getting to yes.

You need a Flash Roll with a clear beginning, middle, and end. What you want to create is an action sequence delivered in highly technical language, which does something special to establish you as an expert. There are no creative thoughts in a Flash Roll. There are no statements such as “then I noticed” or “and that made me start to wonder” or “I started to think.” You are not explaining your philosophy, you are not throwing out a few ideas for discussion, or passionately talking about your business or product. In fact, a Flash Roll is told dispassionately, with no emotional content or display. It must be completely stripped of all editorial, emotional, and extraneous details; it is literally just a list of technical actions that can be taken to solve a very difficult problem. Without ego or pride or even charisma, it should explain exactly what you did to solve a specific problem and then what the outcome was. And, of course, what makes the Flash Roll fun to perform is that you are going to purposely use dense, technical jargon that most people will tell you to avoid using. For about ninety seconds you’re flipping the script.

An important and helpful step is to memorize your Flash Roll so you can deliver it at double your usual rate of speech.

When you’re delivering a well-written Flash Roll at this pace, the buyer has the sense that you’re simply describing something you’ve done or dealt with a hundred times before.

To write your Flash Roll, describe the problem being faced, your assessment of it, your proposed solution, and the economics (how long it would take and what the results would be, or were the last time you did it). Freely use technical terms, writing exactly the way you talk to the technical people in your business when you’re one-on-one with them.

The manner in which you deliver the Flash Roll is of the utmost importance. You absolutely cannot be seeking validation or opinion of the buyer. You are the expert, not he. This Flash Roll assessment shouldn’t come across as something you are proud of. Instead, it should seem like it’s mundane and uninteresting to you—not a big deal at all; like if I asked you about it in a few hours you might forget you even said it.

To end the Flash Roll, you can just shrug and say something like, “Anyway, based on what I’m seeing here, that’s what I would do.” Then leave it all behind and move on to the next part of the presentation.

The goal, of course, is not to deliver this kind of information for understanding and comprehension, but to demonstrate your technical mastery in such a way that you create certainty about your authority and expertise.

It’s critical to do this correctly because the buyer wants the comfort and confidence that you are an absolute expert, that you can get down in the weeds if needed, and the Flash Roll shows them that you can do it, without question.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 59). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 58). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 57). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 56). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 55). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (pp. 54-55). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 47). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Information doesn’t just magically move from the outside world into your brain. There’s a process. You have to perceive something in your environment using your senses (input the data), make sense of what you are seeing (process the data), and remember it for later (save the data). And before your brain can perceive, process, and save a new idea, you need to have the right type of idea receptor waiting for that information, or it will pass through you, completely unremembered or quickly disregarded.

If your brain doesn’t have receptors for information, the information is meaningless. Where do idea receptors come from? They must be built, and this process takes time.

Over the course of thousands of generations, evolution has taught us to be constantly on the lookout for these specific types of information: APPROACHING DOOM: We automatically pay close attention to weather patterns, food shortages, political unrest, new types of weapons technology, and never-before-seen predators. It’s absolutely critical to be the first to know about any kind of doomsday scenario. This is different from the threat of a lion leaping out of the bush (a deadly threat that only has one response: Run!). Approaching doom refers to a threat that can take you by surprise because it moves too slowly for you to see it coming. A stock market crash. A new kind of predator. A food shortage. The first person to detect slow-moving but catastrophic threats survives; others suffer and die. The rule? Humans always give their attention to new information about big environmental threats. A BIG PAYOFF: We are always looking for a huge reward for just a small amount of effort. Since there are always costs for adopting any kind of new behavior, we aren’t going to switch to something new for a puny little reward. A reward has to be nice and big before it’s really worth it for us to switch to a new behavior. The rule? Humans move quickly toward large paydays that are easy to measure and value. A FAIR DEAL: No one likes to be taken advantage of, and we are very sensitive to integrity, equality, and fairness. To make any kind of deal work, both parties should feel like they’re getting a fair shake. The rule? Other humans always want to be sure you have skin in the game and offer a fair deal before they say yes.

WHY SHOULD I CARE? (What new threats and dangers are out there?) [winter is coming]
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME? (How can I get a better-than-average reward?) [2x formula]
WHY YOU? (How can I trust you to give me a fair deal?) [Skin in the game]

To make the buyer feel interested enough to explore a new idea but safe enough to move forward, you need to find their novelty sweet spot. Show them how your offer is the New Normal—a Plain Vanilla concept with just one key and valuable difference. To keep things moving along, you should lump together all of the ways your product or idea is new and unique so the buyer isn’t overwhelmed or scared to buy it. Then show how your offer is new and different from the status quo in just one key way.

Klaff, Oren. Flip the Script (p. 235). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Let me flip the script for you: It’s pessimism, not optimism, that is the formula for success in sales.

I’ve found that the solution is pretty simple: Give a buyer permission to start questioning you and your deal, but first teach them exactly what to question about it. Pessimism + Autonomy + Expertise = Inception

Introduce the Buyer’s Formula - "I've done this a thousand times"
Outline Obvious Ways to Fail - "Outline Obvious Ways to Fail"
Highlight Counterintuitive Ways to Fail
List Obvious Actions
Less Obvious “Hacks”
Hand over Autonomy
Redirect to Keep the Buyer “In Bounds”

These are the five personas that make up the Loser’s Formula, listed in order of their appearance in most sales presentations: 
The Ultimate Nice Guy 
The ShamWow Guy 
The Sorcerer 
The Angel 
The Wolf

At the top of a sales call, most people start by putting on the Ultimate Nice Guy persona. In other words, we play it safe. We want above all else to be liked, and we try to achieve this by seeking common ground. Great to talk to you today! Where are you calling from? Really, my uncle used to live in Houston, hot down there in the summer. Plans for the weekend? Fishing! I love fishing, my grandfather used to . . . Then, shifting to work topics, it goes a little like this: What kind of business are you in? Oh, that’s awesome, I love pest control! The Ultimate Nice Guy is the first archetype or mask that salespeople fall into because it is the easiest and safest approach. No one is going to complain about a pleasant, approachable, friendly start to a call. This leads to surface-level conversation: current news, weather, sports, empty exchanges. What’s wrong with a nice guy? At a basic level, nothing, and it’s certainly true people are more likely to do business with us if they like us. Look, I get it—the impulse at the top of the meeting is to impress upon others we are nice and relatable and have common ground with the buyer. But the real problem with the Ultimate Nice Guy persona is that it signals to the buyer how much power he has over us.

People expect to know what it is we’re selling, right? So we start listing the best features of the product, our most famous customers, the five-star ratings, our incredible customer service reputation, and our recent industry awards. This is where we become the ShamWow Guy.

The Sorcerer archetype explains how each of the product’s amazing features will benefit the buyer in many exciting (but unverifiable) ways. He or she spins the features into a set of magical benefits. Depending on individual personality, there may be a little sleight of hand here with the numbers, some showmanship with a demonstration, and possibly the sharing of “secrets.”

The human brain is programmed to respond to the immediate demands of any social situation and modify our behavior accordingly. The demands of any presentation push us naturally into a pattern of behavior, virtually every time the same.

“If I’m not the Ultimate Nice Guy, then what am I?” The answer to this is as easy as it is straightforward: You are the expert. You must become an undisputed expert in the mind of the buyer in the first few minutes, and then continue to add credibility, insight, and competence to this expert status throughout the conversation.

The Status Tip-Off and the Flash Roll are the perfect points of entry to creating this expert status. Your own industry knowledge, principles, and experience will cement that status.

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Flip The Script

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