INTRODUCTION

The Heart of the Matter

For more than four months we fought. More than twenty advertising agencies were shown off the field. We battled against another five, including the odds-on favorite, for a final place in the pitch lineup for this prestigious account. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves in a dead heat with a downtown rival. This had become one of the most-watched competitions in the U.S. advertising business. The prize: over $100 million in fees and a place of glory among our peers. We wrestled day after day, up and down blind alleys, toiling to find a winning idea. Just like our downtown nemesis, we knew that lives would change, and change big, for whoever won this business. The day of presentations came and went. So much preparation and anticipation was over in a flash. Then came the wait.

The call came. But it only added further agony by announcing that our recommended idea would, in the jargon of the advertising business, “go into research.” This meant that for several more weeks we would wait, while the fruits of our labor were pitted in consumer focus groups against those of our rival. May the best idea win! Well, word reached us and the news was not good. We were being outscored by our rivals. The terms laid down in the final stages of the competition were clear. The other agency would be declared the winner.

The phone rang. “We need to talk. We’ve got problems. It’s only right we talk in person.” Our hearts sank. We braced ourselves for the inevitable. Perhaps it wasn’t so surprising. I began to think, What should we have done differently? What was missing? What did we overlook? On the day of the meeting, four clients, somber-faced, ushered us into the boardroom. They took their places across from us in the enormous conference room.

We faced them, literally squirming in our seats. “This has been very difficult,” an executive began. “We know how hard it has been but sometimes things just don’t work out the way you think. We’re sorry to say …” At that moment the MasterCard executives reached into their briefcases and in unison drew out four bottles of champagne bearing the phrase “A Priceless Moment” emblazoned on their labels. “We’re sorry to say you’re stuck with us now.”

How did we win this business? Why didn’t MasterCard hand the business to the agency with the winning score? Was it because we knew more about credit cards? Or was it because we had a slicker presentation? It was neither. We won the MasterCard account because everything about the now famous “Priceless” campaign pitch was rooted in what I call the hidden agenda of the MasterCard team: a desire to, for once, triumph over the seemingly unstoppable Visa. This unspoken, visceral, emotional core was a central motivator behind the company’s search for an advertising partner. Larry Flanagan, a key decision maker who went on to become MasterCard’s celebrated marketing director, observed, “We knew there was a big idea in ‘Priceless,’ but what counted as much was we felt they were a team that could win.”

Life as a Pitchman

My mom has never really been able to understand exactly what I do. She is immensely proud, but I’m unable to provide her with a simple and “braggable” occupation title, like, “My son, the doctor, or my son, the lawyer.” Finally, with the phenomenon of MasterCard’s “Priceless” marketing campaign fully ensconced in popular culture, she has a sense of what I do. While I reiterated time and again that I was the pitch guy in the mix, she became convinced I dreamt up the whole campaign. I tried for some time to dissuade her, trying to describe the role of the pitch guy in the process. I gave up. So, with sincere apologies to the geniuses who gave rise to “Priceless,” I no longer attempt to dissuade her.

I grew up in the tough hallways of the toughest ad agency in the competitive field of advertising, McCann Erickson. Miscast as a sensitive and soft-spoken guy in a sharp-elbowed environment, I became the company’s successful new business winner. It was not because I learned to be like the others, but because I learned to apply natural gifts of human empathy and an ability to sense what was in the hearts of my buyers. I somehow knew instinctively that if I connected the company and our strengths to the client’s emotional needs, we would be chosen. This was not an act of persuasion, but rather a process of creating a profound human bond. By doing this, we won; and we did win, much of the time.

Yes, I was and am a pitch guy. In fact, if you press Mom to describe what I do, she asserts, “That kid could sell refrigerators in the Antarctic!” I now know, after all these years, that she is right, and it’s not through any techniques or tricks but because of certain gifts I have been given. I have a sort of emotional x-ray vision. It’s an ability to instinctively read people. Over the course of twenty-five years, this innate sense became the means by which I could understand and connect with the emotional motivations of my advertising buyers. It might seem crazy to hear from the likes of me, but I can confidently conclude after scores upon scores of pitches, that people are not persuaded to buy your idea, your company, or your product. They are, however, compelled to follow you because you have made a profound connection with what lies in their hearts.

After I won an account, I had the privilege of going to dinner with our new client, and after a while (often after a few glasses of wine), I would ask the same question: Why did you pick us? The answer was always the same: “Because you get it.” Get it? Get what? The “what” is the hidden agenda, the emotional motivator behind all the statistics, the business jargon, and the other things that surround any key business issue. It is how people in fact make decisions, with their hearts. Whereas I first thought it a business weakness that I was sensitive and intuitive, it actually became a potent business asset, one that will only increase in importance as time progresses.

Over the years I learned to apply this special gift and to codify my approach into The Hidden Agenda method for my colleagues to build on. When I began my company, which is set up to help people grow themselves and their companies using these techniques, an exuberant friend of mine, Chris Weil, exclaimed, “You gotta write this down! You’re the billion dollar man!” Now, I think Chris in his characteristic enthusiasm may have gotten a decimal point slightly in the wrong place, but I can say with all humility that I have used the hidden agenda approach to lead literally dozens of pitches that have won hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues for the ad agencies where I worked. I relentlessly chased growth in my years with the mad men (and women) of McCann Erickson, with advertising holding company The Interpublic Group, and ad agency Lowe Worldwide, winning accounts like Smith Barney, Nestlé, L’Oréal, Lufthansa, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase, Marriott, Opel, South African Airways, Pfizer, Deutsche Bank, Microsoft, Credit Suisse, and others. Later, in my years with the advertising holding company The Interpublic Group, I pitched dozens of companies, including the likes of Nokia and Computer Associates. Global ad agency Lowe Worldwide, where I was vice-chairman, made Ad Age’s “Turnaround Agency of the Year” in 2009, in no small measure because we pitched and won clients such as Unilever, Nestlé, Sharp, Ericsson, Becks, Electrolux, AEG, Zanussi, and China Mobile.

The principles of my approach were formed and tested during my beginnings in the kitchens of Marriott International and in my formative days of pitching to Bernie’s Frozen Hors d’oeuvres in Hoboken, New Jersey. They served me in my years chasing growth with McCann Erickson and with the dozens of companies around the world I pitched to in my years with the Interpublic Group. I saw these principles at work as an advisor in Rudy Giuliani’s “New York Miracle” and during the highs of our famous campaign of MasterCard’s “Priceless” ads; I saw them at work in pitches to venerable brands like Johnson & Johnson and to emerging global companies like China Mobile.

These techniques also made their special mark in people’s lives, including mine. You’ll see how a group from Soweto shared their ambitions for a new nation in a pitch for South African Airways, and how we shared in the fight for AIDS testing that transformed social policy, or how a pitch for a faltering credit card changed lives, or how a team of people came together with the mission to relieve chronic pain. Life-changing and game-changing experiences, all. After these and countless others in my twenty-five years on the frontlines of pitching for my supper, I decided it was time to share my experiences. Instead of running around the globe in pursuit of new business, I founded a company that coaches, trains, and prepares businesses of all shapes and sizes to pitch effectively. The pitching skills I have learned that have served me so well are all in this book. I dedicate them to you.

What Is This Book About?

From babies to banks, from Singapore to Saudi Arabia, I’ve worked for twenty-five years with clients to create growth that spanned cultural divides, various business sectors, and diverse circumstances. Pitching took me to the foot of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and to worldwide gatherings where I evangelized along with the greatest of business gurus. I have counseled, coached, and spoken all over the world about pitching and, perhaps most rewarding of all, I have had the privilege of coaching young, ambitious minds, calling upon them to join the ranks of successful pitch people everywhere.

In all these years, the single most important thing I learned is that there is no magic formula, trick, or technique of hypnotic persuasion that will make people do anything you say like a bunch of zombies. Instead, behind every decision to buy—whether the item is a service or a product, an argument or an idea—is an unspoken emotional motivation. This is the hidden agenda. People don’t follow you because they’ve been hoodwinked; they follow you because they believe in you. They employ you, promote you, buy from you, or hire you because you understand their values, their wants, and their needs. It doesn’t matter how or where the pitch is delivered, or what it is you have to sell. People will make an active decision to follow you based upon the way you resonate with their hidden agendas. Understanding and connecting to the powerful emotions that underlie the hidden agenda is the first and most important step you can take toward winning the business and the following you intend. This book is about how to unlock your target’s hidden agenda and connect your core strengths, values, and ambitions with your prospect in a way that resonates, engages, and wins.

Who Should Read This Book?

In a word: everyone. Each of us pitches every day. A successful pitch can mean quietly motivating a hesitant client, one on one, or it can mean mobilizing an entire organization, heart and soul, to put every ounce of its abilities on display. Sometimes we pitch to a small room full of skeptical colleagues. Other times we pitch to a boss, or to a board of directors, or to a new organization. Sometimes we pitch an idea or a vision. Other times we pitch a service, or a hundred million dollars–worth of high-tech equipment. Every pitch involves the fundamental belief that behind every sale is an unspoken emotional motivation.

This book is for leaders of all types. The head of any organization is its ultimate pitch person, pitching for loyalty and for uniting around a common direction, a belief system, a real ambition. Conventional wisdom among the ranks of business gurus suggest that if the majority of employees can articulate the values and direction of the organization, then the company will outperform its peers exponentially. I’d say it another way: If you can see into the hearts of your people and understand and connect with their hidden agendas, their emotional motivation, you can mobilize them to accomplish anything.

This refinement of pitch isn’t a once-in-a-while thing. It ranges from the informal meetings we have with colleagues and clients each and every day to the momentous acts associated with leading huge organizations to accomplish the seemingly impossible. As a leader, your principle job is to stir people to join you and to act.

This book is written by an adman, but it is for any of you out there with a story to tell and a pitch to make. You might be a young graduate on the frontlines, moving up your company’s ladder and contributing toward its prosperity, or you might be a CEO steering a turnaround. You might be part of a community of new entrepreneurs created by the economic earthquakes of the last several years. Perhaps you are leading a foundation or a not-for-profit, or are rallying a community to drive a vital issue. Maybe you are running for office. No matter which leadership profile fits you, you will be leading your organization into new unknowns and uncharted waters.

I call all you dreamers, strivers, fighters, doers, and itchy-feet people “growth aspirants.” You are optimists who can see possibilities. You’re quest people, on a journey toward a goal of personal and professional enrichment, who believe that the place they seek can be reached. I am willing to bet you share a common ambition: to sell your ideas, to grow the enterprises you are a part of, and to grow yourselves with it. Your ability to pitch is the very spearpoint and lifeblood of achieving these ambitions.

This book is for you.

Why Now?

We now enter an era of what I call pure growth. Pure growth is not deals, mergers, cost-cutting, or balance sheet gymnastics. It is the basics, the fundamentals of any business, big or small. It focuses on the customer; the crystallization of a great idea; the development of an innovation that represents true value; and the channeling of company efforts, from the executive suite to the loading dock, to sell that innovation with passion. Pure growth is not a financial game, it is a people game. It is an inspired subject. It flows from a wellspring of ambition pursued with passion.

The economic downturn of the last few years is a long-awaited reckoning. Growth, as it was heralded, was brought to us by mergers, deal making, acquisition, hedging, betting, and balance sheet tricks. There’s only one way out: shoe leather. “Shoe leather,” by which I mean real live selling to the real live needs of a buyer, is the foundation of solid growth. “Shoe leather growth,” then, is about the simple, vital elements at the core of commerce. It is about creation, passion, and pursuit. It is propelled by good-hearted persuasiveness and the discipline to deliver honorably. And this philosophy is not restricted to those whose job description is to sell. It requires the mobilization of everyone in the organization. The question is, How do you reach them?

Every buyer buys with his heart, not with his head, and in every heart lies a hidden agenda. No doubt, we must be masters of the contemporary means by which we engage with our communities and with our customers. That’s staying current and relevant. No matter how complex the selling landscape is, at the root of the sale are human beings with desires. This unspoken, visceral, emotional core is the true motivator behind every pitch. When you unlock it and connect your strengths, beliefs, and ambitions that resonate with the hidden agenda, you win.

The Amazing Enid

In my childhood, I remember the dozens of “shoe leather” people who showed up at our door on a regular basis selling everything from milk to vacuum cleaners. Some were familiar, like the Fuller Brush man, who would whiz by, calling out to my mother, “Need anything today, Mrs. Allen?” Each and every one of these individuals who was working in a time-honored and, I think, noble profession were good, hard-working people out there pitching to make a living while trying to make our lives just a little bit easier.

“I’m putting myself through college … selling the book of knowledge.” This little ditty is one folks would sing in amusement about the salesmen (and women) who arrived at the doorstep with Brylcreem in their hair and an encyclopedia under their arm. While researching this book, I decided to try to find a real-life, honest-to-goodness, door-to-door salesperson from this era, the fifties. Through my mother’s over-sixty-five dance troupe (you can’t make this stuff up), I hit pay dirt, a marvelous woman in the form of one Enid Merin, of Levittown, New York (I presumed her to be in her late seventies, but one never asks such questions). Enid had sold a number of products door to door throughout her career, notably The World Book Encyclopedia.

Listening to this remarkable woman speak about pitching was like listening to Einstein talk about relativity. The essential elements of understanding and connecting to a hidden agenda were woven throughout the compelling basics laid out by this energetic and charming lady.

First, Enid decided who her target was.

“As I approach the door of the house, I started by noticing small details so I could qualify them, for example if there was a fresh net in the basketball hoop this would indicate the presence of children in the home.”

Enid understood that, no matter how complex the selling landscape, at the root of a successful pitch are human beings with wants, needs, and values. Her aim was to understand the emotional makeup of her potential customers.

“It’s very simple, Kevin, it’s about desires,” Enid commented. “A young mother may want a set of encyclopedias, but she desires for her kid to become president.”

Once she understood who she was dealing with, Enid set about finding what would connect emotionally with her audience. Her aim was to forge a bond with the individuals to whom she was pitching. For Enid, aspiring mothers who wished the world for their children would, by definition, be a group who valued the advantages that encyclopedias would bring. Ultimately, these women would respond to somebody who, like Enid, had a profound belief in the intrinsic value of the product she was selling.

“I loved what I was selling. It wasn’t schlock. I truly believe the best gift you can give your kids is the advantage of a good education. A young mind without the opportunity for knowledge and education is a terrible waste and I knew that I could make a difference.”

Of course, Enid’s pitch process ultimately could not have been successful without superb communication skills. How Enid delivered her pitch was a key part of her success. She built an argument, demonstrated passion for what she believed in, and communicated in the right tone with language that resonated with her targets.

“Good morning. My name is Enid Merin and I represent World Book Encyclopedia. I imagine you have an entertainment center in your home, but do you have an education center? May I step in?”

Enid affirmed my unwavering belief that the pitch, to be effective, is rooted in fundamental human truths that lie in the very hearts of your audience. Underpinning the success of the amazing Enid and every other successful shoe leather person is a simple but far-reaching logic:

A pitch is always about your target’s wants or needs, or about the values they hold close.

Wants, needs, and values are locked into your target’s hidden agenda.

Unlocking your target’s hidden agenda wins the pitch.

In other words, if you shape your pitch based on the emotional motivation that lies in the hidden agenda of your target, you’ll win. Of course, this isn’t to say that the quality of what you are selling is unimportant. Delivering whatever great product or service you have promised is a given. But let’s move beyond the belief that your pitch is exclusively about the product or the service. What you have to pitch only has value if it resonates with your target’s hidden agenda. I have seen many a pitch for a technically brilliant idea go down in flames because it had nothing whatsoever to do with the target’s real reason for being interested in the product or service. Building a better mousetrap is essential, but only when you pitch it effectively can you guarantee you’ll win every time. Like Enid, the best pitch people understand their target’s emotional motivation, have an abiding belief in what they are selling, and put on a show … they tell a story. This book looks in detail at each element in a winning formula: the who, the what, and the how that comprise every effective shoe leather pitch.

How Is This Book Organized?

The Hidden Agenda is designed to be easy to follow and implement. Part 1 of this book looks at the who. These chapters are about your audience and the hidden agenda that drives them. These individuals have needs, wants, and values. They may be collected together in a community of like-minded people who share common beliefs and value systems. Pitching effectively to them requires digging deep to understand the emotional, visceral, and unstated emotional motivation that lies in their hearts. Chapter 1 explores what the hidden agenda is and how to conceptualize it in a hidden agenda statement. Chapter 2 looks at how to conceptualize the hidden agendas of large communities of buyers into a conceptual target. Chapter 3 is packed with practical techniques and strategies for uncovering and elucidating your target’s hidden agenda.

Part 2 is about the what. This is about finding the leverageable assets that connect emotionally with your audience. When you connect your leverageable assets to the hidden agenda of your buyer, you win. This alchemy is a result of a careful and disciplined distillation of who you are and what makes you special. An essential element in developing your pitch is to reach in and find the special character and uniqueness that makes you who you are. It is not being something that you are not. It is finding and bringing forward, in compelling terms, what makes you special and connecting to an audience who values it. Chapter 4 looks at your core. These are your true and compelling assets, the rich mosaic of characteristics you possess that your target will be drawn to and will bond with through affinity and even a little bit of curiosity. Your core is your unique ability and the strengths that separate you from others. Chapter 5 explores your credo, your beliefs and value systems. Successful pitches express the abiding and sincere beliefs of the individual or company making that pitch. Shared beliefs win pitches. Chapter 6 addresses your real ambition. Your real ambition is your desire to create something good where nothing existed before. It is a measure of your worth, and of the worth of your organization. You will be chosen because your special ambitions ignite those of your buyer.

Part 3 of the book looks at the how. This is assembling your pitch with crystal clear logic and delivering it in an engaging and memorable way. A pitch is not a mere communications undertaking. It is a means to mobilize an individual or a community of people to follow you and to embrace where you are going. A powerful pitch inspires your target to engage with the product or services you offer, and to essentially vote for you now and in the future. Chapter 7 looks at your win strategy and explores how your core, credo, and real ambition can be strategically communicated in clear, compelling, and engaging terms. Chapter 8 identifies the advocate’s approach to building an unbeatable argument. Chapter 9 explores how to demonstrate passion and strike the right tone that resonates and moves your audience to join you through the power of storytelling.

How to Use This Book

I have been very lucky to have had wonderful mentors. Some kindhearted, others grumpy (but still kindhearted); all had rich experience, a great deal of talent, and most of all a generous desire to share. They are a very tough act to follow, and though I’ll never be quite like them, I somehow feel that now it’s my turn. So think of this book not as a star-studded tale of my exploits or a list of to-dos, but as coaching in print. I will lay out for you the alchemy of moving an audience, no matter who they are. Oh, and to help the cause further, when you see this icon (see KAPTV above) you can go to www.kevinallenpartners.com/video and view supporting videos from yours truly expanding on some the key concepts throughout the book.

These days I do a lot of coaching. I think it is helpful not only to lay out how things evolved for me—the key ideas and step-by-step techniques that worked—but also to offer assurance that if a gangling and under-confident kid from nowhere like me can acquire the knack, I guarantee you can, too. A successful pitch is not glibness or slick show biz, but a studied empathy with what truly lies in the heart of your target, as well as the courage to be yourself and to match what makes you special with this hidden agenda. When you make this kind of connection, they’ll choose you. My hope is that you use this book for its broad principles, as steady guidance, and as a handy pitch-to-pitch field manual, but maybe most importantly, I hope that it serves as a constant reminder that you can pitch and do it brilliantly.

And Now …

This whole book is about something I call the hidden agenda, so let’s start with a definition of what it is, and what comprises it.