Do you have a great product or startup idea but people just aren’t buying into? Maybe you’re not communicating it well enough. Pitching is a vital part of getting your dream off the ground, but the people you’ll likely be pitching to spend their entire day listening to new ideas. If you don’t answer all of their questions, or don’t get your point across fast enough or with enough detail they’ll likely dismiss you without a second thought.

If you want to make sure you’re prepared to pitch you could practice on your mom, cousin, brother, dog and gold fish … but unless they’re professional backers that’s not likely to help much. Instead, check out PitchPhone, a company that is essentially testing your pitch in-the-wild. Here’s how it works (from TechCrunch):

The service works in one of two ways: either you call PitchPhone and answer the question it asks you, or you can have PitchPhone call you at random times during throughout the day to ask you questions about your startup. Each time, you have 30 seconds to answer. …

At first, [creator Francis Dierick] built an iPhone app with 100 startup questions to help him out. But he soon realized that an app alone wouldn’t help him turn pitching practice into a habit, so he built the PitchPhone hotline instead. The hotline has been programmed with 100 different, tough questions about your startup.

Read more at TechCrunch >>>

The random calls are particularly geared toward in-the-wild testing. You never know when you’re going to need to launch into the perfect 10-second pitch for the captive VC guy on the elevator.