In a recent post, I talked about my brief brush with Walt Mossberg, 7 years ago at the Demo conference.  Walt  commented on my post, reminding me that, after 7 years, he didn't remember talking to me.  Now, there ARE pitches that he received 7 or 10 years ago that I'm sure Walt does remember, unfortunately, not mine. 

So where did I go wrong?  When I had the chance to impress arguably one of the most important influencers in my marketplace, why didn't I grab his attention, either at the time or later? 

Well, first of all, I can tell you that it took nearly 1 year after the conference where I cornered Walt before DoBox had clarity on which parts of our vision the market cared about.  We started with a rich vision of the "home server gateway and Family Firewall" and learned, over that time in the market, that the "Family Firewall" and "simple, easy protection" were very compelling to the market, the shared server concept was much less so (at the time).

If you meet that crucial influencer in your market, are you going to deliver a "wow"?  You only will if you have spent as much energy as you can, as quickly as you can, talking, talking, talking to potential customer, partners and "big friends" about your vision and what you hope to accomplish.  The marketplace of ideas is pretty ruthless, but if you open yourself up to this dialog, you should be able to get a lot more clarity, a lot faster than a year. Often you have to pick and choose out of your vision the elements that will "sell now" and put on the back burner those that "may come later".

And then, once you have clarity, you have to create your elevator pitch.  You've heard it before, but I'll say it again, get it crisp, get it right, get it "informed" by the marketplace, then practice, practice, practice.  If you do that, your chance of impressing the "Walt Mossberg" of your industry or segment will go way up!