Four Levers to Make your Most Powerful Sales Pitch!

Bertrand Russell’s Four Desires Driving All Uniquely Human Behaviour.

We people in the persuasion business are often bewildered by the range of reactions to our sales pitches. A little understanding of human nature can go a long way in helping us shape powerful conversations with our prospects.

To understand what drives human behaviour, we can look to one of the finest minds of the last century. Bertrand Russell was awarded the Literature Nobel Prize in 1950, for “significant writings in which he champions…freedom of thought”. His Nobel acceptance speech explores the motives driving human behaviour.? You can read his full speech here.

He titled it “What Desires are Politically Important” – but it applies to behaviour in the business realm.

“But man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise… four in particular, which we can label acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power.”

Acquisitiveness

There is a meme in social media which is popular for its takedown of the billionaires

“If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat, while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what the heck was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”

This explains the uniquely human desire to acquire things. It also explains why firms like McKinsey look to recruit “insecure overachievers”. Self-actualised individuals are terrifying to HR departments and managers in corporate settings. Companies, by their very nature are acquisitive. Lack of growth is death knell for the company.

How does your pitch or conversation dwell on this desire of your prospect? The more specific the desire, the better. For instance, instead of a vague “you can reduce costs”, can you focus on exactly what of this will increase their ability to acquire more? One of the most frequent pitches we used to sell Managed Services to CIO’s was how those cost savings can fund their new projects.?

Rivalry

Here’s Russel on Rivalry.

“Rivalry is a much stronger motive (than acquisitiveness)… When the British Government very unwisely allowed the Kaiser to be present at a naval review at Spithead, the thought which arose in his mind was not the one which we had intended. What he thought was, ‘I must have a Navy as good as Grandmamma’s’. And from this thought have sprung all our subsequent troubles… in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals.”

What Russell says here is backed by research. Look up Ultimatum Game and how rivalry is linked to unethical behaviour.

Many of our pitches focus on how we, as sellers, are better than our rivals. We benchmark our proposals and presentations on how competitive these are. What are our differentiators? What are our discriminators? USP’s? Value Wedges? In our quest to distinguish ourselves from our competitors, we are satisfying our own desire. Surely, would it not make more sense to focus on how your prospect will beat their rivals?

So, when you review your pitch, don’t just focus on how you are better than your competition, but how your prospect can become better than their competition.?

Vanity

Five centuries ago, supporters of a Dominican friar collected and burnt several objects of vanity– cosmetics, mirrors, pieces of art, and books in a public square in Florence, Italy. It was called “Bonfire of the Vanities” – a rebuke to admiring oneself to the exclusion of giving the same reverence to others. Nearly every religion rails against it, casting it as a sin with immeasurable consequences.?

Russell brands vanity “a motive of immense potency”.

“Look at me”, Russell says in his speech about vanity, “is one of the most fundamental desires of the heart”.

“The condemned murderer who is allowed to see the account of his trial in the press is indignant if he finds a newspaper which has reported it inadequately,”

How can your pitch appeal to your prospect’s desire to be the cynosure of attention. Remember though, that you cannot be putting him in a position where he is taking a risk without adequate protection.? No one wants to stand out and take responsibility, when things go bad. So, check if your pitch includes some personal importance to your prospect, while at the same time reassuring them of the safety in choosing you.?

Love of Power.

For Russell, the love of power is the biggest of these motives.

“But great as is the influence of the motives we have been considering, there is one which outweighs them all. I mean the love of power...When Blücher, in 1814, saw Napoleon’s palaces, he said, ‘Wasn’t he a fool to have all this and to go running after Moscow.’ Napoleon, who certainly was not destitute of vanity, preferred power when he had to choose. To Blücher, this choice seemed foolish. Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely…?It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.”

When you pitch to decision makers,? how does your pitch address their strongest motive? How will their decision to buy from you increase their power? When you start thinking about this, you go beyond the usual way in preparing for your client conversations. Thinking about increasing your prospect’s power can trigger powerful ways in which you can become important to your prospect as you sate their strongest desire.

There you have it. Four powerful levers to make your best ever pitch. Make sure your pitch addresses these uniquely human motives: acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power.

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