There is a good article at The Atlantic, about how to get a prospective client intrigued in a pitch.
There are some funny anecdotes, especially about printers, but the crux of the article is this:
An elevator pitch without a turning point is usually a story built solely on common sense and information the audience already intuitively knows. What’s wrong with appealing to what the audience already knows? Plenty. When people hear something they already know, they tend to tune out. And if there’s one thing you don’t want during your presentation, it’s an audience that has mentally left the room. Your pitch has to be something your audience will remember long after you finish. The way to make that happen is to create some tension between what they already know and what you want them to know.
This is so true. An awesome presentation will recognise the challenges or problems that a client has, and then present a memorable solution. For me, the biggest challenge is to resist the urge to start delving into the technical benefits. 9 times out of 10, the business challenges are not technical, so the solution shouldn’t be leveraging the technical benefits.
Rather, directly address the business benefits with an equally high-level solution. Leverage the genuinely cool features, as they benefit the user.
To do this, you’ll need to understand the client and their industry, and provide the client with something memorable, something they didn’t already know.