You've explained the usefulness of your product idea in one sentence, shown that it's dramatically different and figured out exactly who is going to buy it. Even a hardened skeptic would have to give you a few more minutes before torching your proposal. How do you use those precious minutes?  Here are the next 3 rules:

Rule#4: Show an understanding of how the product fits into a person's life.

It's time to transport your audience into the future, to a day when your new product is a happy part of someone's life. Artists and illustrators would use a storyboard to sketch the scene. Photographs can work very well too. What you want to show in a few frames is the context that a person will experience the product in. Understanding the circumstances surrounding the product is very useful in refining the product idea. At the very least it demonstrates some understanding of the user's point of view and how that's different from the point of view of the people in the room looking at your PowerPoint.

Rule#5: Show some proof that the product actually works in real life.

One of the things that distinguishes inventors from other types of product developers is that they tend to have a prototype handy. Not much captures the imagination of an audience like a working model of something new. Even if it's puffing steam and dripping oil, a prototype lets everybody know how big the challenge is, how much of it has been nailed and how much is still to come. Most of all, a working prototype is proof that the product actually does the job it is meant to do. 

Rule#6: Describe the product's usefulness in a quantifiable way.

Clayton Christensen says that a good way to understand your product is to understand the job it will be doing for someone. The well known analogy is that people don't want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole. Of course, whatever that job is, it should be poorly served by existing solutions. If it's at all possible to quantify the difference between the old way and the new idea, do it. It makes for a convincing argument. To use another wood shop analogy, you could say; "When preparing to cut a piece of wood with a saw, people want to minimize the time it takes to make an accurate measurement. Ordinary measuring tools are clumsy and time-consuming to use accurately." Then the pay-off line; "The special guide reduces the time it takes to measure and set-up a cut by 25%." People need it, they can't easily get it, this thing does it, bingo!

The Perfect Product Pitch is a 4-part series by guest contributor Tasos Calantzis of Readymade. It covers the 12 essential things you already knew about pitching a product idea to your boss, client or VC guys but forgot last time around. Thanks go out to Dave Bayless at Evergreen Innovation Partners for providing the basis for this series.