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As you share your story, there has to be some suspense to it because you are going to create intrigue in the telling of the story by telling only part of the story. That’s right, you break the analyst frame by capturing audience attention with a provocative story of something that happened to you, and then you keep their attention by not telling them how it ends until you are ready.

It doesn’t matter how well you argue, the way your points are crafted, or how elegant your flow and logic. If you do not have high status, you will not command the attention necessary to make your pitch heard. You will not persuade, and you will not easily get a deal done.

Your social value is fluid and changes with the environment you are in — or the environment you create. If you wish to elevate your social value in any given situation, you can do so by redirecting people into a domain where you are in charge. This is easier to do than you might think.

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No pitch or message is going to get to the logic center of the other person’s brain without passing through the survival filters of the crocodile brain system first. And because of the way we evolved, those filters make pitching anything extremely difficult.

Only one frame will dominate after the exchange, and the other frames will be subordinate to the winner. This is what happens below the surface of every business meeting you attend, every sales call you make, and every person-to-person business communication you have.

As my pitch got underway, he made things difficult. Maybe it was for sport. Maybe he was having a bad day. But it was clear he wanted to take — and keep — control of the whole presentation. I didn’t realize this at the start, however,

Every social interaction is a collision of frames, and the stronger frame always wins. Frame collisions are primal. They freeze out the neocortex and bring the crocodile brain in to make decisions and determine actions.

Narrative and analytical information does not coexist. It cannot; that’s simply impossible. The human brain is unable to be coldly analytical and warmly engaged in a narrative at the same time. This is the secret power of the intrigue frame. When your target drills down into technical material, you break that frame by telling a brief but relevant story that involves you. This is not a story that you make up on the spot; this is a personal story that you have prepared in advance and that you take to every meeting you have. Since all croc brains are pretty similar, you will not need more than one story because the intrigue it will contain will have the same impact on every audience. You need to be at the center of the story, which immediately redirects attention back to you. People will pause, look up, and listen because you are sharing something personal.