Flip the Script

by Oren Klaff

  With these five simple statements, only about ninety words, I’d shown that we were already looking at our plan more negatively than they ever would. In other words, I had already done their work for them, ripping the numbers apart with a “stress test” and making worst-case assumptions. This negativity is not how you would talk to an entrepreneur or a marketing guy, but it’s certainly how an analyst would talk to another analyst.

  And it worked. Instead of rolling their eyes and starting to destroy our numbers, the New Icon analysts were leaning in, wanting to see what was behind a company that had volunteered to beat themselves up, to stress-test their own numbers with the Part 325 test, the most dreaded financial test out there. It was all very intriguing.

  The classic signs of Status Alignment were now visible: more attentive body language, surprised and intrigued facial expressions, nodding of heads, setting aside of phones, dilated pupils, parted lips with hints of smiles. Next, it was time for a Flash Roll to show them we were clearheaded and well organized and could discuss critical technical details in a matter of seconds—unlike most presenters, who take hours to do this.

  “Today in the U.S.,” I continued, “health care is thirty percent of our eighteen-trillion-dollar economy. That’s pills, potions, services, surgery, and chronic care. It’s a massive market. Yet today only one technology is making high-margin dollars in every health-care segment: genetic testing. A genetic test is valuable to all consumers for three reasons: First, it predicts your chance of getting a serious disease, including cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Second, it shows you how to prevent a disease that you are at risk of getting. Third, it will help you treat any disease condition you may already have. But how?

  “A genetic test panel will indicate how you metabolize certain drugs, which is critical information for treating any disease or adverse health condition. Today, doctors and patients need genetic tests to make any major health-care decision. We sell a genetic test panel to large corporations and governments for about $450. Why is price point important? Because it’s ten times less than anyone else. We have cut the price of genetic tests by 90 percent. What is our test specifically? A test that measures your DNA for 22,000 genetic markers, giving you information on more than 200 disease risks, drug responses, and health conditions. And the accuracy we’re getting is in the .001 error range, using high-density micro-arrays, thermo compacting nano-robotics, and the new generation of pooled-library multiplexing with a proprietary enzyme-catalyzed DNA polymerization process.”

  I hadn’t “sold” anyone yet, but I had accomplished something crucial: All the analysts relaxed in their chairs. Some had been holding up pens, ready to raise their arms a little higher, to interrupt with challenging questions. They put down those pens. They no longer needed to ask disruptive questions because my prewritten Status Tip-off and Flash Roll had caused them to feel reassured, thinking to themselves, “This is awesome—for once, I’m in the hands of a professional presenter who knows what he’s doing. I’m just going to sit back, listen, and enjoy the presentation.”

  Next, I would give them the three pieces of pre-wired information their brains were craving.

  THE 3 W’S

  During a presentation, you need to convey not one but three ideas to the buyer; these are the 3 W’s: Why should I care? What’s in it for me? Why you? And if you don’t want them to tune you out, you need to demand as little mental energy from them as possible while you explain these things. I’ve developed three Pre-Wired Ideas to do just that. These ideas activate the risk, reward, and fairness receptors in your listener’s brain to deliver the key pieces of information a buyer needs with a sudden whoosh of insight.

  Why Should I Care?

  It’s a simple matter to answer the first question using a Pre-Wired Idea called Winter Is Coming. This targets the threat receptor. An example of how this works is clearly seen in the story of Microsoft’s big comeback. When Satya Nadella took over as Microsoft’s CEO in 2014, the company relied almost exclusively on its Windows operating system for revenue. The stock price had been pretty much flat for the previous ten years and the company was seen as a has-been giant of the tech world, on its way out.

  Nadella had to tell the company, all 131,000 employees, that things were about to get a whole lot worse for them if they weren’t able to make the jump to cloud-based computing, and fast. He made it clear the Windows operating system was not going to keep paying the bills forever.

  Winter.

  Is.

  Coming.

  For tech giants in today’s economy, things have changed. Operating systems don’t make money. Instead, Search makes money. PCs are dead and everything is mobile. People don’t buy software; they rent it. Everything is on the cloud. If you cannot shift to cloud computing, you freeze and die. That’s what “winter” looks like for a tech giant.

  Nadella took major, dramatic steps to avoid Microsoft’s fast-approaching winter. First, he took an $8 billion loss to completely shut down their smartphone division. He moved Word and Excel programs to the cloud, risking another $8 billion. He spent huge portions of cash reserves building cloud computing data centers all over the world. By 2018 Microsoft’s stock price had nearly tripled, and by November of that year, the company that had recently been written off as a has-been made international front-page news by passing Apple as the most valuable company on the planet.

  What had motivated Microsoft and its 131,000 employees to pull this off? The tangible fear of being caught in a slow-moving but completely nuclear winter; the risk of total annihilation from the marketplace and the primal fear of being thrown into history’s trash bin of has-been technology. This is the Pre-Wired Idea: Those who do not perceive, prepare, adjust, and adapt to changes in the environment are wiped out. Microsoft was able to adapt and prepare for its winter, yet this company is one of the few that did. When major changes approach slowly, most businesses are caught off-guard.

  This is the Winter Is Coming narrative, and you can tell this story in any industry on any day of the week. Tell your listeners that everything they rely on to thrive today will soon be gone—and it’s happening faster than they think. Provide thoughtful examples showing why the way they run their business won’t work much longer. There’s an early winter coming, and if they don’t do anything to prepare, adjust, and adapt, they’ll get wiped out. In the meantime, others who do prepare will outlive them, step into their turf, and thrive—by taking their place in the industry, as well as their customers.

  How to say this, exactly? For one, I would never tell a prospect that I have a better product than the one they are currently using, or that I have a new and better idea. I would just say that the industry as we know it is transforming, and I know how to operate successfully in this new playing field. As I like to say, the person who knows what will happen next and in the future is always the most important person in the room.

  What’s in It for Me?

  The easiest way to fully activate the “what’s in it for me” reward receptor is to use the idea of 2X: that something important to them will double in size, productivity, efficiency, competitiveness, output, or just plain happiness and satisfaction. Here’s how it works.

  First, take a moment to consider how often you buy a new cell phone. Manufacturers release new models at least once a year. But do you personally upgrade your phone that often? Most don’t, because the models that just came out are only slightly better than the one you bought last year. The average consumer waits a few years to buy a new cell phone, until they feel switching to a newer model will truly be a substantial upgrade. The same is true with cars. You don’t trade in your car as soon as the new model comes out every year, because the new model is at best 10 percent better than last year’s model. It’s an improvement but just isn’t worth the high cost of switching.

  So how much of an improvement does a new product have to be over the old one for most buyers to feel like it’s
worth the cost of switching? My team and I have observed that people don’t feel ready for a new car until the latest model is at least twice as good as the one they’re currently driving, miles and all. If you’re into smartphone cameras, you’ll probably wait until the new phones hold a lot more photos and deliver something like twice the photo quality in terms of resolution, sharpness, and accuracy.

  Double is a magic number. Anything less than that is often not enough to activate and immediately satisfy your buyer’s reward receptor. You need to make it obvious your buyer is going to get at least twice the results in some area with your idea, product, or service—hence 2X. Conversely, show them that they will reach the same result but cut their expenses in half.

  We’ve found that even an 80 percent improvement, while impressive, doesn’t really push people to snap to attention, hold still, and listen carefully. People are so busy with their lives that switching over to your new great way of doing things is a bit of a hassle. So you need to find some areas where your deal is providing double the value, twice the speed, or half the cost of what they have now. It can even be something subjective, such as “You’ll feel twice as good about yourself” or “Cut the hassle in half,” as long as it follows the 2X formula.

  Why You?

  The last thing the buyer needs to know about your deal is “why you?” How can they be sure you are still going to be around after the deal is closed to handle any problems? In my world, investors want to know that the CEO of the company is not going to give up and quit when things get hard—and things always get hard. It’s not enough to say you are credible, hardworking, and trustworthy. What proof do you offer of this? What evidence can you provide to show that you’ll stick with it, work hard, stay focused, and follow through?

  Evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby have confirmed in their research that we all come pre-wired with a fairness receptor—in essence, a cheater-detection system. We are constantly on the lookout for cheaters and we love to see them punished—we literally crave the experience of fairness. But how do you show someone that you won’t try to game the system or quit the job early?

  Here’s the answer we discovered: The only way for a buyer to be 100 percent sure that you aren’t a lightweight who is going to bail when things start to get difficult is to see how heavily you are invested in a successful outcome. Your personal investment proves you have as much to lose as they do. It shows this is not a one-sided deal, and you both have skin in the game. The easiest way to help your audience to arrive at this feeling is to activate the fairness receptor using a Skin in the Game script, a quick story that shows how you are financially, physically, or contractually committed to this opportunity—maybe even more than you are asking them to be. In other words, you’ve made real sacrifices and paid the price to be here. It’s not simply that you’ll feel bad or look bad if something goes wrong; it’s that you’ll lose something important to you. The deal you’re presenting is set up so that your money, time, and professional reputation are all on the line. There has to be some evidence that you won’t stop when you’re tired—you stop when you’re done.

  When you get good at providing this Pre-Wired Idea of Skin in the Game, it’s an easy matter to combine these three concepts into a single script that includes all the elements necessary to activate the threat, reward, and fairness receptors in your buyer’s mind. In summary:

  The Winter Is Coming script answers “Why should I care?”

  The 2X script answers “What’s in it for me?”

  The Skin in the Game script answers “Why you?”

  When I found myself standing in front of Grant Goodman and his team, I was ready to tell the story of Gennacode. This meant I was ready to activate the risk, reward, and fairness receptors in a room full of ice-cold financial analysts. But I knew before I had even started that by the time I was finished, these skeptics would have everything they needed in order to say yes to our deal.

  It was time to unleash the Pre-Wired Ideas.

  THE FEELING OF “I GET IT”

  Jenny is the captain of her high school cheerleading squad. She’s tall, blond, energetic, and athletic. Always the center of attention, she is dating the star of the football team. She’s often cruel to other girls, especially ones who aren’t into sports, like the girls involved with band, drama, or computers.

  Even though I gave you only around fifty words of description about Jenny, you might feel like you have a decent understanding of her character and how she would act in various situations. This isn’t an accident. It’s because Jenny fits a stock character archetype you’ve encountered over and over again in movies, books, and television shows.

  You’ve been exposed to this “cheerleader” stereotype so many times that your brain has actually built an idea receptor for it. When you started reading the description of Jenny, your brain activated this receptor, leading to an immediate feeling of “I get it.” This is what happens when your receptors are hit, leading to a pre-wired conclusion, which is exactly what I needed to do now so that Grant Goodman and his tribe would “get it.”

  PITCHING GENNACODE

  “Chronic diseases are the leading cause of death and disability in the United States,” I said evenly, leading with the facts. “A hundred and thirty-three million Americans have at least one chronic disease. In recent years, these numbers are going up, not down. Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, cancer, arthritis, asthma, stroke . . .”

  Everybody looked around the room, uncomfortable with my formidable list of medical deplorables. I had them where I wanted them. Winter was coming, and they felt the stiff breeze on the back of their necks.

  “Which one is coming for you?” I asked, looking around the room like the grim reaper seeking out his next soul. “You there.” I pointed at a quiet-looking analyst in the middle of the pack. “I bet you have the best insurance possible, right? Your insurance will cover any treatment money can buy, right?” The nervous analyst nodded. “So, what treatment will you buy if Alzheimer’s sets in? Because today, there isn’t one.” The room remained silent; everybody looked at the analyst with the potential incurable disease and looked away, as if they would turn to salt if they kept staring.

  “We’re living longer than evolution designed us to,” I continued. “If you’re in this room, mathematically, your life expectancy is eighty-four. But think about it this way: Nature had already planned to wipe you out around age thirty-two. Those extra fifty-two years are an open invitation to chronic disease. And you’re not the only one who is outliving your own health limitations. There are 350 million other Americans in exactly the same boat—living too long. Unless we get advanced prediction technologies in place—and start preventing conditions before they occur—the cost of treating these diseases is going to be a third of the entire economy. That’s way too much.”

  I was painting a bleak picture of how bad the future might be if we failed to take action now. That was my Winter Is Coming script. Next, without missing a beat, I jumped right into my 2X script. I looked over at my partner, Professor Rosenberg, and pointed to him, wagging my finger like the grim reaper.

  “Professor Rosenberg, how old are you?”

  “Seventy-one,” he replied.

  “And how are you feeling?” I asked him. “I mean, apart from some aches and pains, degrading eyesight, weight gain, hearing problems, heart palpitations, and minor memory loss. . . . Any major diseases creeping up?”

  “No, nothing serious,” he replied, smiling, but a little hesitantly.

  “But how can you know? I mean, these good people sitting here,” I said, pointing to the analysts, “they are seriously thinking about giving you twenty-two million dollars and then, well, maybe after they do you have a stroke the next day, or you’re diagnosed with type two diabetes, or . . . something, anything on that list of fast killer diseases. How can we assure them you’ve got another five or ten years of good ene
rgy and mental health?”

  Rosenberg didn’t blink; he just stared at the audience, looking as ancient as he seemed to these whiz kids.

  “I’ve got twice the chance of living to ninety as anyone in this room,” he said.

  “No offense, professor,” I said skeptically, “but how are we supposed to believe that? Are you a magician? Do you have a crystal ball? Did you make a deal with the devil?” Next, I pointed at the healthiest-looking kid in the room. About thirty-two years old, muscular, he looked like a real athlete. “What about Chang?” I asked. “Look at him, and now look at yourself. Be realistic, professor—how are you going to outlast a guy who takes care of himself like that?”

  The professor smiled. This was his cue. “Until I see his genetic test, I wouldn’t bet on him. The numbers say he could be wiped off the map by the time he’s fifty. Since we’re talking numbers, I’m already twenty-one years past fifty. Nature programmed me to die long ago, but I’m still here. I’ve got a PhD in molecular biology and all the equipment a biologist could ever want at my university lab, so I’ve been treating my genetic weaknesses for decades. And now I’ve got this, which is going to let me easily hit the age of a hundred and twenty.” He held up a Gennacode test.