"Furthermore, you should be asking more questions around why things keep them up at night, not what keeps them up at night". Good one.

WHY is the most important question in sales. 

http://pandawhale.com/post/2807/how-great-leaders-inspire-action-why-simon-sinek-ted-talk

I guess I'd better stop talking about our machine learning algorithm, too.

# 5  - “Machine Learning Algorithm”

Just because you have a machine learning algorithm does not differentiate you in the least. In fact, unless you are the only person doing what you do, who are you to say your algorithm is better than your competitors? Unless you are a real data scientist, most people in the room don’t even know what machine learning algorithm even means. It has become as common and overused as the word unicorn has become in the startup lexicon.

So here's the deal, unless you are actually willing to show us your Pythagorean Theorem, we’d rather you say something like this, although perhaps not as crass:

“I know we have a ton of smart people building our platform, and in fact we have 50+ customers using it on a daily basis. So if you want to ask me anything about the value of our product or service, please do so. I’d love to share everything. And if I do not know the answer I will find it out for you personally and get back to you. So yeah, we do have some fancy machine learning algorithm, but honestly, the easiest thing to say is that our shit works and if it didn’t we wouldn’t have the customers we already have. Now if you don’t mind me asking, how does understanding the working nature of the algorithm actually affect our ability to do business?”