This post is one part of a 7 part bootstrapping guide from Amy and Alex. This is part 4 of 7. Want to get the rest of them? Get the guide here!

Now, on to part 4 – how to talk about your product so that people will listen (even if the product doesn’t exist yet).

Did you catch the little exercise at the end of yesterday’s email?

Take a few minutes to study these pitch pages (both created by 30×500 alumni): Sketching with CSS and Egghead. What do these two pages have in common? Hit reply and let us know what you notice! If you haven’t already, go ahead and take a look now. It’s okay, I’ll wait right here!

…

…

So, what did you notice about these two pages?

And, just out of curiosity…did you take any notes?

We’ll come back to your observations in just a minute…

But first, let’s recap this series so far and remind ourselves what you’ve learned:

You know why you should shrink your 1-year goal of having a successful product business down to a 90 day goal that you will actually act on. You’re wise to the warnings of starting your biz with a “great idea”. You don’t want that idea to make you it’s bitch! You’ll start by figuring out what an audience needs & wants. You’re aware (probably painfully aware, now) that idea validation is a load of horseshit, and that a mix of self-centered, robotic communication habits we’ve learned our entire lives are even worse. You need a persuasive, effective, and human way of communicating with your audience. These 3 things go hand-in-hand: the achievable baby steps, the research, the audience, and the persuasion.

In 30×500, you learn how to start building that connection by writing effective pitches. And that’s also what I’m going to be sharing with you in this email today!

So why a pitch? And what exactly makes for an effective pitch?

In this email, you’re going to learn two of the most valuable pitch-writing techniques that we cover in 30×500.

To be clear, I’m not talking about an elevator pitch, which is a 15 second description of you and your product. Because once again: that’s all about you.

“The only way to get somebody to do something is by giving them what they want.” – Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s true that you can’t make a sale without a customer, but you can absolutely make a sale without a product. A great pitch can be used to grow your audience, and even to make pre-launch sales, before you even start building your product.

A great product is important, but it’s not the critical piece. The critical piece is your would-be customer’s willingness to buy. That’s where a killer pitch comes in.

Sidebar: I shouldn’t have to say this, but don’t be a dick

Amy and I never, ever suggest that our students do anything shady or “growth-hacker-y.”

Many of our students have succeeded with pitch-first development and made THOUSANDS (sometimes tens of thousands) of dollars before building the actual product.

Trust takes work to build, and is easy to destroy. Never take people’s money unless you have a solid plan to follow through (and are fully confident you can and will).

Got it? Good.

So, let’s talk about the 2 most critical parts & techniques for writing pitches that have your audience flinging cash at you.

Open these links up in separate tabs or windows if you haven’t already: Sketching CSS from Sean Fioretto and Egghead Joel Hooks. Seriously. Do it. I’ll wait.

Technique #1 – Who’s starring in this movie?

Quick Exercise: Search for how many times the word “I” appears on the Sketching with CSS page.

I get TWO mentions of “I”; and one of them is in a customer testimonial.

Compare that to the THIRTY ONE of times “you” occurs on the same page.

The first element of an effective pitch is: The reader is the star. The pitch is about them, their abilities, their problems, their desires, and their goals. The pitch needs to describe the things that they want to achieve, but can’t.

It’s not about the product — because until you have a compelling reason, you won’t care “what the product is.” It’s not about you — it doesn’t matter who you are, even if you’re internet famous, which Sean will tell you he most certainly isn’t. Internet fame won’t help you sell shit.

It’s not that people think your product sucks, or even distrust you. It’s just that the nature of humanity is one of self-interest. People are so busy and overloaded worrying about their life and their problems that they simply don’t have time to think about you, and what you want. Or your product. Or its features. Or its benefits.

They don’t have the mental resources to pay attention to everything.

When you make your reader the star, you cater to that natural self interest.

Besides… they’re more interesting than a book or piece of software.

Technique #2 – Prove you understand them

Remember that “Shut up and take my money!” effect that I talked about in the last email? I don’t know if you noticed, but that’s a cry for help. And relief.

How often do you read a product description and think,

“That’s cool, maybe I’ll buy that at some point.”

And then how often do you close the tab, never to return? “Cool” doesn’t equal sales.

Compare that to when you’re really stuck in the mire, and have been thrashing for a while. Think about the feeling of finding a solution. The relief of even knowing that relief is possible.

How quickly do you reach for your wallet, then?

Take a look at the opening excerpt from the pricing page for Egghead. The second element of an effective pitch is an accurate and vivid description of the reader’s pain.

It makes them feel, “Yes, that’s it exactly! You get it!” — and that catches their attention. That makes them begin to hope that you can help. Then you can show them how you can help and why they should trust you.

This is the opposite of an elevator pitch, that talks about the product, or your industry experience. It’s also the dead opposite of “Earplugs, One Dollar!”

A great pitch isn’t limited just to selling products. The pitch keeps on giving: You can use it to scope your product, figure out how to grow your product, generate awesome marketing content, and a lot more.

And a pitch will never make you it’s bitch. It’s not about being cool; it’s not about a thrill; it’s about serving people, helping them.

So… how do you get the elements of an effective pitch without having “ideas”?

At the beginning of this series, you learned the danger of starting a business with a “great idea”. If you’re not supposed to start with ideas, how do you decide what to pitch?

The accurate, vivid pains — where do you get them?

Research, my friends. The answer is unsexy, but damn, it works every time. To sex it up a little bit, we call our 30×500 process “Sales Safari”. But it’s research. A very unusual way of doing research, but still, research.

In 30×500, you learn our special process to use the internet to uncover festering pains. And then you can follow our step-by-step process for wielding that knowledge like a laser… to write pitches that describe reader problems with precision, grabbing their attention, and opening their wallets!

In the next email, Amy’s either going to try to make research sound exciting (knowing full well that we already used up the monster truck story for this series), OR she’s going to show you the difference between our research process, and ineffective “research” like customer interviews.

Either way, I promise that when you see how Sales Safari actually removes all of the guesswork and risk from launching your business, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t thought to do it sooner.

-Alex