They all make the same four moves

The thing that makes this track possible is that there are not very many pitches. There are four moves, arranged in the same order, wearing different clothes.

Once you can name the move you are currently being shown, the pitch stops being a persuasive experience and becomes a recognisable sequence, which is a much less effective thing to be inside.

Move one: standing

Before anything is claimed about returns, something is established about the person. Not qualifications — standing. The distinction matters.

The materials establish that they have done well, are trusted by people you would trust, have been doing this a long time, or have a connection you can verify. Any of these can be entirely true. What none of them can be is evidence about whether the thing on offer works, and the move relies on you not separating the two.

The strongest version uses somebody you already know. When the person telling you is a friend, a colleague or a member of your community, the standing move has already happened before anyone said anything, and it did not cost the operator anything to arrange.

Move two: a mechanism you cannot check

Then comes an explanation of where the returns come from. It is always specific enough to satisfy and never specific enough to verify.

The forms rotate with the decade — an arbitrage between two markets, a relationship that gets access others do not have, a model, a technology, a regulatory quirk, an inefficiency that has not been noticed. The content is not the point. The structural property they share is that checking would require information the pitch does not provide and you cannot obtain.

Predict

What is the actual function of a complicated mechanism in a pitch?

Choose one answer

To convince you the returns are realTo explain why nobody else is doing itTo give your doubt somewhere to go and then close it offTo make the operator look intelligent

Lock in answer

Move three: pre-empting the objection

This is the move that separates a competent pitch from an amateur one, and it is the one most people never notice.

Before you raise the obvious concern, the pitch raises it for you — and answers it. Sometimes with a genuine limitation, which is what makes it convincing. Nobody says "there is no risk"; they say "the risk is X, and here is how it is managed", where X is a real but manageable risk that is not the one that will actually cost you.

Two things happen at once. Your specific objection is now handled, so raising it again feels redundant. And the person has demonstrated candour, which is expensive to fake and therefore trusted — except that here it was not faked, merely aimed. They were candid about the wrong risk.

Not the same thing

Disclosure

Stating the risks that would change your decision if you understood them.

Measured in

Whether the worst realistic outcome is described, and what it does to you

For example

A statement that the whole amount can be lost, that it cannot be withdrawn for four years, and who holds it meanwhile.

Chase it alone and

It is unappealing to read and it loses sales, so a seller under competitive pressure has to be made to do it.

Inoculation

Naming a manageable risk in advance so that the listener's doubt is discharged on it.

Measured in

Whether the risk named is the one that would actually cost you the money

For example

A long, frank passage about short-term price movements, in something whose real risk is that the operator holds the assets.

Chase it alone and

For the listener it is indistinguishable from candour, because it is candour, pointed somewhere harmless.

Which is which? Put each one on a side.

• A frank warning about volatility, in a product where your money is held by the seller

  DisclosureInoculation

• A statement of the worst outcome, what triggers it, and what you would be left with

  DisclosureInoculation

• A page describing the operator's own past losses, ending with what they learned

  DisclosureInoculation

Move four: the close

Last comes something that has to be decided now — a closing date, a limited allocation, a price that changes, a group that is filling up.

Its function is narrow and specific. It removes the overnight. Almost every one of these propositions is defeated by twenty-four hours of ordinary distance from the person presenting it, and the operator knows this better than you do, because they have watched it happen.

There is usually a small first step attached. A modest amount, an easily-reversible commitment, an introductory position. It is not there to make money. It is there because someone who has taken a small step has become someone who does this, and the second step is asked of a different person than the first.

Check

Which of the four moves is the one you can actually interrupt in real time?

Choose one answer

Standing — by checking the person's claims about themselvesThe mechanism — by understanding it well enough to judge itThe close — by leaving and deciding tomorrowThe pre-emption — by raising the objection anyway

Check answer

The version that is not a scam

Every move described here is also used by legitimate businesses, and this is worth being clear about rather than glossing over.

Establishing standing is what a track record is for. Explaining a mechanism is what a company should do. Raising risks in advance is required of regulated sellers in most places. Deadlines exist because some things genuinely close.

The four moves are not a diagnosis. They are a description of how persuasion about money is structured, and recognising them tells you where you are in a sequence, not whether the thing is real. What tells you whether the thing is real is the next six lessons, and none of them is about the pitch.

Worth remembering

• Pitches follow four moves in order: standing, an uncheckable mechanism, a pre-empted objection, and a close that removes the overnight.
• None of the moves requires a lie, which is why looking out for false claims is a weak defence.
• A mechanism's function is to give doubt somewhere to go, so plausibility carries no information without a way to check it.
• Inoculation is candour about a risk that is not the one that would cost you, and it reads exactly like disclosure.
• The close is the only move with a countermeasure needing no expertise: leave, and decide a week later.