To paraphrase (probably) Arthur Rubenstein: “How do you get to “perfect pitch”?” “Practice, practice, practice!”

Linda Plano, Founder of Plano & Simple

When you’re getting ready for a roadshow, you’re under so much pressure and have so many things to do that it can be difficult to get the time to practice your pitch more than a couple times. Some entrepreneurs tell me that they do better when they don’t practice at all. Others hate the process so much that they’ll do almost anything to avoid pitching unless they absolutely have to.

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with several cleantech entrepreneurs who decided to throw caution to the wind and join me for a day of learning and practice, practice, practice at my Perfect Pitch Workshop at Greentown Labs, a member of ACTION, the Association of Cleantech Incubators of New England, who organized and hosted the workshop.

To attain “perfect pitch”, there are just 10 questions that every pitch should answer. We touched on every one of them, just long enough to get clear on how to answer each one.

Then we got to the fun part: each of the participants had a chance to give a one minute elevator pitch about their company in answer to each of the questions. At the start of the day, those elevator pitches were mostly confusing or boring or both. After going through the process for each question, though, the pitches got refined and engaging: we all wanted to know more about what the company had to offer.

That’s really the secret to “perfect pitch” – it’s not pitching perfectly, it’s tuning your words to the ears of your audience. In fact, it’s so important to do that tuning that Question 0 of the 10 Questions is, “Who is your audience?” If you know what they want to hear about, you can frame your pitch so that they are engaged from start to finish.

Curious to hear more about the 10 questions you should be answering in your pitch? I hope to see you at the next ACTION Perfect Pitch Workshop!