Pitch Like Hollywood: What You Can Learn from the High-Stakes Film Industry

PERSUASION: PERSONOLOGICAL VARIABLES

The more someone likes you, the easier it is for you to persuade him or her.¹ Liking you permits people to use their intuition. It functions like an all-clear signal for trust.

When people are forced to abandon intuition and replace it with deeper thought, they unconsciously become more suspicious. Their threshold for being persuaded rises.² Because we are prone to trust people we like, it makes it easier for us to persuade them if we can keep them processing information at an intuitive level throughout our pitch.

In Hollywood, a common pitching strategy is to bring an actor in when pitching. An actor knows ...