Pitch Anything: “The Game” for Investment Banking?

It’s 11 PM and you’re sitting down at a bar with a friend. You see 2 gorgeous blondes stroll over and sit down across from you (if you’re female, just imagine this from your perspective instead).

You strategize with your friend about what to say and who to approach, you think of the perfect opening line, and then you go up and make your move.

The first girl stops you in your tracks, glares at you, and says, “If you’re going to recite lines from that book, we’ve heard them all before – you can go away now.”

Ouch. What went wrong?

The problem is that it’s 2005 and Neil Strauss has just published The Game, detailing the secret society of pickup artists and the exact tactics they use to get beautiful women night after night.

It became so popular in New York that women learned all about it and instantly knew when a guy was using tactics from the book.

And now a new book by Oren Klaff, a capital markets banker based in LA, might just do the same thing for the world of business and investment banking.

Wheeling, Dealing, and Joint Venturing: On the Job in Corporate Development

Last time around you learned all about how to break into corporate development – from getting interviews to answering questions to following up successfully.

But just as with sales & trading, the more interesting part is what you do on a daily basis in corporate development, what the lifestyle is like, how much you get paid, and what you do afterward.

So let’s get started with part 2 of this interview and dive into all of those – plus how this interviewee got a unique experience in China out of his role.

Bottles and Bottles? How You Really Win Clients and Land Mega-Deals as an Investment Banker

Why does the mainstream media hate Wall Street so much?

You can think of dozens of reasons, but one of the biggest is that they don’t understand what bankers really do to earn their fees.

They see news of million-dollar bonuses and assume that financiers earn those bonuses by sitting around and playing Monopoly.

But you don’t earn massive fees by playing board games all day – it’s a process that takes years, which is one reason why bankers make the money they do.

And the infamous “pitch” has very little to do with it.