Start with the problem, not the product
You have thirty seconds of someone's attention and you spend the first twenty on architecture.
It is an easy mistake, because the product is the part you know best and the part you are proud of. But the listener is running one question the whole time, and it is not "how does it work". It is "is this for me". Until you answer that, nothing else lands.
The order that works
- The problem, stated as a situation, not a category.
- Who has it, named tightly enough to exclude people.
- What changes, in plain before and after.
- How, briefly, and only now.
Most people do this in reverse and wonder why the room is polite rather than interested.
Say the problem as a scene
Abstract problems do not stick. "Inefficient event marketing" is a category. Try:
You have an event in two weeks. The page is half written. You have told forty people and you do not know how many are actually coming.
Anyone who has run an event is now nodding, because they have been in that exact room. You have not described a market, you have described a Tuesday.
Let the problem do the selling
If the problem is well drawn, the product almost introduces itself. The listener starts solving it in their head, and then you tell them what you built and it slots into a gap they have just made for it.
If you lead with the product, they have nowhere to put it. They file it under "another tool", which is the folder where things go to be forgotten.
The trap: problems that flatter you
There is a version of this that goes wrong. You describe a problem that only your product solves, in the exact shape your product solves it, and it sounds like a job advert written for one candidate.
The test: would your customer describe the problem this way, unprompted, before they had heard of you? If not, you have written a feature and put a question mark after it.
What to do this week
Write down the problem in one paragraph, with no product words in it at all. No feature names, no category, no adjectives about yourself. Then read it to three people who have the problem.
If they say "yes, exactly", you can build everything else on top of that paragraph. If they say "interesting", you have not found it yet.