Business consultant and former MGM director of creative affairs Stephanie Palmer reveals the techniques used by Hollywood's top writers, producers, and directors to get financing for their projects and explains how you can apply these techniques to be more successful in your own high-stakes meetings. Because, as Palmer has found, the strategies used to sell yourself and your ideas in Hollywood not only work in other businesses, they often work better.Whether you are a manager or executive with an innovative proposal, a professional with a hot concept, a salesperson selling to a potential client or investor, or an entrepreneur with a business plan, Good in a Room shows you how to: -Master the five stages of the face-to-face meeting -Avoid the secret deal breakers of the first ninety seconds -Be confident in high-pressure situations -Present yourself better and more effectively than you ever have before Whether you want to ask for a raise, grow your client list, launch a new business, or find financing for a creative project, you must not only present your ideas in a compelling way-you must also sell yourself. Good in a Room shows you how to construct a winning presentation and deliver the kind of performance that will get your project greenlighted, whatever industry you are in.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Stephanie Palmer coaches business leaders and creative professionals in a wide range of industries to help them get their ideas the attention and financing they deserve. As part of MGM's executive team for six years, she supervised twenty films with multimillion-dollar budgets, including the international success Legally Blond. Stephanie has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Variety, and on NPR. She lives in Los Angeles. Judith Brackley worked in major market radio for twenty years as an announcer, program director, and producer for commercial broadcast outlets and NPR affiliates. She has numerous radio spots, industrial voice-overs, and narrations to her credit, including for the Prudential Insurance Company, Gillette, Hewlett-Packard, Polaroid, and National Geographic. She is also a nationally published writer.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1
Why You Should Read This Book
The reason you should read this book is because the strategies and tactics that people use to sell ideas in Hollywood work in the rest of the business world. I have worked with entrepreneurs, executives, and professionals in industries such as real estate, financial services, retail sales, law, advertising, marketing, video games, and more. The techniques used to sell ideas in Hollywood not only work in other industries, they often work better.
As you already know, “good in a room” is a Hollywood term referring to creative people who excel at pitching in high-stakes meetings. I’ve had–literally–thousands of these meetings. During my time as a studio executive at MGM, I had over three thousand pitch meetings where writers, directors, stars, and producers would try to persuade me to buy their ideas.
Most of the time, ideas are pitched poorly. However, there are some people who succeed all the time. Over a period of years, I paid attention to what worked and what didn’t. I identified the techniques that were being used in all of the successful meetings–regardless of who was pitching. I also found a considerable number of ways that the person pitching could break the deal, often without knowing it.
Many studio executives, or “suits,” have backgrounds in sales, marketing, or finance. My degree is in theatrical directing from Carnegie Mellon. So when I started hearing pitches, I wasn’t just thinking about whether to say yes or no. I was seeing the meeting as a theatrical performance.
Unfortunately, most writers, like most people, do not have a comprehensive strategy to deliver a great performance. When the time comes to pitch in a high-stakes situation, even someone experienced can stumble and ruin a golden opportunity without a solid meeting technique.
When someone with a great idea doesn’t present it effectively, it not only hurts them, but all of us as well. Why? Because mediocre ideas will get purchased and produced if superior ideas aren’t pitched well enough.
The fact is that when it comes to making a buying decision, buyers can more easily evaluate the information on the surface, i.e., the pitch. It’s harder to evaluate what’s inside. As you know, this is true beyond Hollywood. In a grocery aisle, success is determined more by the design and copywriting on the packaging than by the quality of the product. In job interviews, hiring decisions tend to look past differences in work experience and focus on how the candidates perform in the room. My point is not that pitching is everything. Rather, it’s that good products deserve good packaging and great ideas deserve a great pitch.
Even shy, awkward, introverted people can learn to pitch well. One of my highlights from MGM was when I found a new writer named Mike who was pitching a high school comedy with a unique angle. His script was great, but his pitch was a disaster. He didn’t know how to handle the small talk, he pitched too soon and with way too much detail–he broke the deal in a dozen different ways. Ordinarily I would just pass on his project, but I was frustrated with the quality of the movies we were making and I didn’t want to send this great script back to the slush pile. So I coached Mike on how to perform in each stage of the meeting and told him exactly what to say when my boss asked, “So, what’s your project about?”
The next day, Mike pitched his idea beautifully to my boss, and it sold right there in the meeting. Afterward, he told me that he’d been staying on his brother’s couch for the last three months and was preparing to move back in with his parents. With this one sale, his career was on an entirely new trajectory. And for me, in a job where so much of my time was spent surviving cutthroat politics and producing mediocre ideas, helping Mike succeed was really gratifying. I realized then that I wanted to focus on pitching, not production.
A year later, I left my executive job and started my own company, also called Good in a Room, to help writers and directors with quality ideas get the attention and financing they deserve. Then I did an interview with National Public Radio and I started getting some remarkable calls. A fashion designer wanted help bringing out his summer collection. A marketing exec wanted to get promoted to VP. A financial advisor wanted to find new clients and expand her business.
Soon enough, my non-Hollywood clients were landing million-dollar accounts, doubling their client rosters, launching successful small businesses, increasing their revenue, and getting promoted. Sure, some of my clients were skeptical at first. William, for example, was a sixty-something financial advisor from Texas. We met at the Merrill Lynch campus in New Jersey. I was there to give the concluding presentation at the annual conference for top producers.
William was already quite successful. He didn’t need to change how he was doing business. As well, he was in a conservative business in a conservative part of the country, so anything that came out of a liberal place such as Hollywood was immediately suspect.
Still, he wanted to take his business to the next level, and he was smart enough to realize that unless he wanted to simply put in more hours and work harder, he was going to have to try something new. I consulted with him the next morning before we went to the airport and suggested that he modify his standard approach in a few significant ways. He was doubtful, but he said he’d give it a shot when he got back to Texas.
When I landed in LA, William had already left me a message. Turns out the guy sitting next to him on the plane had just sold his business and needed a financial advisor he could trust. Rather than trying to “sell” him, as so many financial advisors do, my client practiced the Good in a Room techniques and signed him rather effortlessly.
Meeting a client on a plane is practically a cliché (though in reality, it doesn’t happen very often), and all of the credit belongs to William. Still, the idea that a sixty-something financial advisor in conservative Texas could, with one consultation, master and successfully apply what works for thirty-something writers in liberal Los Angeles? Very cool.
Whether you work in Hollywood or not, the fact is that selling ideas is really difficult to do. The reason the pitching secrets of the most successful writers and directors are relevant is that these people have evolved an advanced method for selling ideas.
Whether you’re a screenwriter, a journalist with an idea for a story, an entrepreneur with a business plan, an inventor with a blueprint, or a manager with an innovative solution, if you want other people to invest their time, energy, and money in your idea, you face an uphill battle.
First, ideas aren’t tangible–no one can kick the tires of your idea. Second, ideas aren’t quantifiable–the decision maker can’t reliably estimate the value of your idea in monetary terms. As my boss at MGM used to say, “If we knew which ideas would be hits, we would only make hits.” Third, ideas are risky–there can be millions of dollars on the line and reputations at stake when a buyer says yes to an idea. Fourth, people who buy ideas hear so many pitches that getting their attention and actually convincing them is exceptionally difficult. Finally, the more original your idea is, the tougher it is to pitch effectively. Any groundbreaking idea will be harder to sell simply because there isn’t a precedent to show it will work.
As risks increase and buyers become more difficult to persuade, people who sell ideas must clear an even higher bar. We must get in the right rooms with the right people. We need a comprehensive strategy and the most advanced tactics. Then we can present ourselves and our ideas with confidence. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Why You Should Read This Book
The reason you should read this book is because the strategies and tactics that people use to sell ideas in Hollywood work in the rest of the business world. I have worked with entrepreneurs, executives, and professionals in industries such as real estate, financial services, retail sales, law, advertising, marketing, video games, and more. The techniques used to sell ideas in Hollywood not only work in other industries, they often work better.
As you already know, “good in a room” is a Hollywood term referring to creative people who excel at pitching in high-stakes meetings. I’ve had–literally–thousands of these meetings. During my time as a studio executive at MGM, I had over three thousand pitch meetings where writers, directors, stars, and producers would try to persuade me to buy their ideas.
Most of the time, ideas are pitched poorly. However, there are some people who succeed all the time. Over a period of years, I paid attention to what worked and what didn’t. I identified the techniques that were being used in all of the successful meetings–regardless of who was pitching. I also found a considerable number of ways that the person pitching could break the deal, often without knowing it.
Many studio executives, or “suits,” have backgrounds in sales, marketing, or finance. My degree is in theatrical directing from Carnegie Mellon. So when I started hearing pitches, I wasn’t just thinking about whether to say yes or no. I was seeing the meeting as a theatrical performance.
Unfortunately, most writers, like most people, do not have a comprehensive strategy to deliver a great performance. When the time comes to pitch in a high-stakes situation, even someone experienced can stumble and ruin a golden opportunity without a solid meeting technique.
When someone with a great idea doesn’t present it effectively, it not only hurts them, but all of us as well. Why? Because mediocre ideas will get purchased and produced if superior ideas aren’t pitched well enough.
The fact is that when it comes to making a buying decision, buyers can more easily evaluate the information on the surface, i.e., the pitch. It’s harder to evaluate what’s inside. As you know, this is true beyond Hollywood. In a grocery aisle, success is determined more by the design and copywriting on the packaging than by the quality of the product. In job interviews, hiring decisions tend to look past differences in work experience and focus on how the candidates perform in the room. My point is not that pitching is everything. Rather, it’s that good products deserve good packaging and great ideas deserve a great pitch.
Even shy, awkward, introverted people can learn to pitch well. One of my highlights from MGM was when I found a new writer named Mike who was pitching a high school comedy with a unique angle. His script was great, but his pitch was a disaster. He didn’t know how to handle the small talk, he pitched too soon and with way too much detail–he broke the deal in a dozen different ways. Ordinarily I would just pass on his project, but I was frustrated with the quality of the movies we were making and I didn’t want to send this great script back to the slush pile. So I coached Mike on how to perform in each stage of the meeting and told him exactly what to say when my boss asked, “So, what’s your project about?”
The next day, Mike pitched his idea beautifully to my boss, and it sold right there in the meeting. Afterward, he told me that he’d been staying on his brother’s couch for the last three months and was preparing to move back in with his parents. With this one sale, his career was on an entirely new trajectory. And for me, in a job where so much of my time was spent surviving cutthroat politics and producing mediocre ideas, helping Mike succeed was really gratifying. I realized then that I wanted to focus on pitching, not production.
A year later, I left my executive job and started my own company, also called Good in a Room, to help writers and directors with quality ideas get the attention and financing they deserve. Then I did an interview with National Public Radio and I started getting some remarkable calls. A fashion designer wanted help bringing out his summer collection. A marketing exec wanted to get promoted to VP. A financial advisor wanted to find new clients and expand her business.
Soon enough, my non-Hollywood clients were landing million-dollar accounts, doubling their client rosters, launching successful small businesses, increasing their revenue, and getting promoted. Sure, some of my clients were skeptical at first. William, for example, was a sixty-something financial advisor from Texas. We met at the Merrill Lynch campus in New Jersey. I was there to give the concluding presentation at the annual conference for top producers.
William was already quite successful. He didn’t need to change how he was doing business. As well, he was in a conservative business in a conservative part of the country, so anything that came out of a liberal place such as Hollywood was immediately suspect.
Still, he wanted to take his business to the next level, and he was smart enough to realize that unless he wanted to simply put in more hours and work harder, he was going to have to try something new. I consulted with him the next morning before we went to the airport and suggested that he modify his standard approach in a few significant ways. He was doubtful, but he said he’d give it a shot when he got back to Texas.
When I landed in LA, William had already left me a message. Turns out the guy sitting next to him on the plane had just sold his business and needed a financial advisor he could trust. Rather than trying to “sell” him, as so many financial advisors do, my client practiced the Good in a Room techniques and signed him rather effortlessly.
Meeting a client on a plane is practically a cliché (though in reality, it doesn’t happen very often), and all of the credit belongs to William. Still, the idea that a sixty-something financial advisor in conservative Texas could, with one consultation, master and successfully apply what works for thirty-something writers in liberal Los Angeles? Very cool.
Whether you work in Hollywood or not, the fact is that selling ideas is really difficult to do. The reason the pitching secrets of the most successful writers and directors are relevant is that these people have evolved an advanced method for selling ideas.
Whether you’re a screenwriter, a journalist with an idea for a story, an entrepreneur with a business plan, an inventor with a blueprint, or a manager with an innovative solution, if you want other people to invest their time, energy, and money in your idea, you face an uphill battle.
First, ideas aren’t tangible–no one can kick the tires of your idea. Second, ideas aren’t quantifiable–the decision maker can’t reliably estimate the value of your idea in monetary terms. As my boss at MGM used to say, “If we knew which ideas would be hits, we would only make hits.” Third, ideas are risky–there can be millions of dollars on the line and reputations at stake when a buyer says yes to an idea. Fourth, people who buy ideas hear so many pitches that getting their attention and actually convincing them is exceptionally difficult. Finally, the more original your idea is, the tougher it is to pitch effectively. Any groundbreaking idea will be harder to sell simply because there isn’t a precedent to show it will work.
As risks increase and buyers become more difficult to persuade, people who sell ideas must clear an even higher bar. We must get in the right rooms with the right people. We need a comprehensive strategy and the most advanced tactics. Then we can present ourselves and our ideas with confidence. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Specific and practical advice you can start using right away.,
This review is from: Good in a Room: How to Sell Yourself (and Your Ideas) and Win Over Any Audience (Hardcover)
This book is a strategy guide for people selling a project, product or even themselves. It gives suggestions for getting into a room (landing a meeting with a buyer or employer), staying there (keeping them interested in you or your project) and getting out (following up without being annoying). Where this book really shines for me is in its specific and real-world suggestions. I liked that the author wasn't heavy on theory but instead focused on her years of experience at the other end of the table. In thousands of meetings, she was the buyer listening to people pitch their screenplays, projects or resumes. From that experience she distills the essence of what works and why, including some of the disastrous (and funny) ways you can self-destruct and how to avoid them.
Here are just a few specific areas that I thought were really practical: 1. The chapter on networking is unique in its suggestion that you STOP networking. Or at least, stop networking the way 95% of your competition does it. The author's suggestions make networking sound fun and productive and were refreshing for those of us who just aren't very good at self-promotion. 2. The section on "purposely non-specific phrases" alone is worth the cover price. This section helps you design phrases that describe you or your product in such a way that both retain the right amount of mystery and lead to a dialogue with the buyer that allows you to reel him or her in. Most of us assume more detail is better when describing the thing we're trying to sell. The author suggests going the opposite direction to great effect. 3. What's your name? What do you do? Two very simple questions we've all answered a million times. Believe it or not, the author has some great suggestions on how to respond to these simple questions in ways that start the process of getting people interested in you from the first moment you speak. Rather than waiting for the "perfect" moment to make your pitch, you're actually starting your sales effort from the moment you're introduced. 4. Specific examples are scattered throughout the book. For most topics (like using non-specific phrasing), there is an example of how they can be applied in a conversation, over the phone or in an email. If you're looking for a practical guide, grounded in the real world, on how to land the perfect job, sale, contract, etc, this quick read will give you effective suggestions you can implement immediately. Highly recommended.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just in time!,
By Amy Klein (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Good in a Room: How to Sell Yourself (and Your Ideas) and Win Over Any Audience (Hardcover)
I have been interviewing for a couple months and I thought I was doing okay (it was usually down to me and someone else), but I never seemed to get the job. I bought Good in a Room because I get nervous sometimes and I know that I'm supposed to talk about myself but I'm not a super outgoing person. I have the experience, but I think my competition just must be better at selling themselves.
I loved this because I finally understand what the interviewer is looking for. I get it now and I wish I had read this years ago! I had an interview this afternoon (for a job I REEALLY want) and I practiced the techniques of Ch. 24: 100 Percent Outward Focus and Ch. 25: How To Ask Great Questions. The interview was so different. She was so interested in what I had to say and it felt so natural. I knew what to expect and what to say and I didn't feel nervous at all. The best thing is, she already asked me to come in for a second meeting with her boss!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Invaluable Resource,
By
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This review is from: Good in a Room: How to Sell Yourself (and Your Ideas) and Win Over Any Audience (Hardcover)
Each of us has sat through an important meeting wanting a specific outcome but feeling unable to steer the meeting in the desired direction. Those kinds of meetings keep us up at night, replaying over and over in our minds what we might have done differently. Stephanie Palmer's Good in a Room takes the guesswork (and hopework!) out of these meetings.
Without resorting to recycled corporate clichés, jargon or false `pump-you-up' tactics, Ms. Palmer uses down-to-earth language ("What's the world's most dangerous meeting question?"), insightful exercises ("Square One") and practical techniques ("How to ask great questions"). By walking me through example case studies, important and effective (and straightforward!) exercises and by debunking several commonly held myths, Good in a Room provided me with a pragmatic framework on which I am already positively developing my own unique approach, refining how I interact with potential business partners before, during and after meetings. By the end of the book, anyone who truly wants a higher percentage of success in meetings, negotiations, sales or network building will have an arsenal of techniques at their disposal. Whatever industry in which you work, novice or advanced, if success ultimately hinges on your ability to "sell" your ideas (and yourself!), then Good in a Room is an invaluable resource.
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Under the Surface, Inner Circle, Square One, Make Requests, Macintosh Healing Center, Good People, The Last All Nighter, Case Study, Trailers That Work, Camp Appaloosa, Elliot Okay, Secrets of Rapport, Ask Great Questions, Elliot Forrester, Brothers Grimm, Good Person, Dumb Is the New Smart, The Title Creation Word Grid, The Four Questions, Avoid Deal Breakers, However Liz, Make It Easy, Best Elliot, The Closing Sequence, New York Browse Sample Pages:
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Under the Surface, Inner Circle, Square One, Make Requests, Macintosh Healing Center, Good People, The Last All Nighter, Case Study, Trailers That Work, Camp Appaloosa, Elliot Okay, Secrets of Rapport, Ask Great Questions, Elliot Forrester, Brothers Grimm, Good Person, Dumb Is the New Smart, The Title Creation Word Grid, The Four Questions, Avoid Deal Breakers, However Liz, Make It Easy, Best Elliot, The Closing Sequence, New York Browse Sample Pages:
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