Is Your Product Pitch Too Shiny?

By Scott Rouse On · Leave a Comment

As Entrepreneur In Residence at the Entrepreneur Center, I see pitches every day.

A pitch for an iPad app. A pitch for a healthcare robot. One for a drink company, one for a drug and then one for a line of safety helmets. The list is long and extremely varied.

Most of the pitches are long and way too focused on how “shiny” the product or service is.

Michael Burcham, President and CEO of the Entrepreneur Center, has a saying that should be in a little frame on the nightstand next to every Entrepreneur’s alarm clock.

It should be the last thing they see before they go to sleep and the first thing they see when they wake up.

I hear him say it in my head when I’ve been listening to a pitch that’s all about how wonderful the product or service is while not showing where the profits are. He taught me how to pitch and how to examine every pitch from many different angles and points of view. When I would get wrapped up in how great a product or service was and bring those points up, even subtly, in the pitch or in a few slides, and not focus on how it made profits, Michael would inevitably say:

“If your shiny object doesn’t make money, it’s art. It’s not a business. Hang it on the wall.”

If you think about that and say it out loud, it will put your head right where it needs to be when you start designing your pitches. I’m pretty sure you’re thinking to yourself, “Is my pitch too shiny?”. It may be. If so, that’s okay. We all start there because of the passion we have for the idea. You must realize that’s what you’re doing and get beyond that stage very quickly.

If you don’t, you may be pitching the most powerful and cost effective health care system ever conceived… that will look just fantastic next to that extremely potent, fast acting cure for baldness that hangs right above the good couch in the living room.

(You can see Michael actually saying “If your shiny object…” at the White House here.)