Sold Out Activist.

Communication is a skill and pitching is a specialization of that skill. Those of us who pitch do so frequently in a narrow environment: scheduled in advance. But the most fruitful pitches are often those unplanned. Such as at a party or convention. I’m sure we’ve all daydreamed about running into a major industry player, investor(, or attractive mate) somewhere and tossing a wonderful 5-minute pitch (or sublime small talk). But more often that ball is dropped because you daydreamed instead of planned. And you certainly didn’t practice for that occurrence. I mean, how often do you get the perfect opportunity for anything?

Some are born with a silver tongue, the words float from their mouth fluffy and sweet like cotton candy. Or clean and prim like freshly minted money. Whatever appeals to your ears, these people have the knack to make sure you hear it. The rest of us have to work at such devilry. And even then we’ve not a silver tongue, but one that’s silver-coated. At the end of the day, you work with what you’ve got. But how to improve your communication skills and add to that coat of silver? Practice.

Obviously, right? I’m certain you practice a lot. In front of mentors, investors, angels, family, significant others, and the mirror. But those are always controlled environments with a lot of set rules and pre-thought. A silver-tongue thrives in the wild, so you must make the trek outside your comfort zone. And the easiest way to do that is to talk to strangers on the street.

I lost my voice this morning, it was on its way out yesterday. I had spent most of Friday in downtown Seattle talking to strangers about an idea that I had. When I stopped at a crosswalk, if there was a person next to me, I encroached upon them for a few minutes of their time. The first few times, I failed. Hard. The second person waved down a nearby policeman on a bike. While I was talking with him, he clued me in on the key issue: people thought I was trying to sell them something. So I changed my intro query. It took a few tries, but eventually I came up with something that worked:

“Excuse me, could I have a few minutes? I’d like your opinion on something.”

That was the ticket. People love tossing down their two cents—even in this down economy. I spoke with the first 5 or 6 strangers for over 10 minutes each. After that, I used my phone to time the discussion so it wouldn’t last much longer than 5 minutes. I spoke with 60+ people that day. The short of it, close to everyone I spoke with loved my idea. Even those that had no interest in the service. (I’ll discuss my idea in another post.) And every single person had suggestions, more than a few which were the same. And that was telling. If 30 people recommend the same restaurant, you have few doubts about eating there.

At the end of the day, I had resounding feedback and handfuls of good suggestions how to make my idea better—as well as 15 business cards, 10 or so from startups like myself, and a handful of numbers from women. Most importantly, I gained incalculable experience in impromptu pitching. And though I’d estimate less than ten percent of those strangers would come close to my startup’s target demographic, they were all immensely valuable because they were real people. And we often forget that’s who we’re after when we speak of demographic targets.

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