Stunningly Awful Demo Communication – Unencrispening the Demo
The higher
the customer’s job title, typically, the stronger is their desire for vendors
to be crisp, focused and precise in their communications. “Get to the point!” is what many senior managers
are thinking, even if they don’t say it out loud. Instead, their actions often speak louder
than words, as they quietly get up and walk out of the demo after just a few
minutes…
Here are a
few areas where we can likely improve our verbal delivery in demos:
Mixed Metaphors
“This will
help you knock it out of the park and out-flank your competition…!” says the
vendor. “Huh?” thinks the customer – who
misses the next several sentences from the vendor as he chews on the verbal
gristle he was just served… If you are
going to use a metaphor, stay with it!
Don’t swap horses in the middle of the meal! (How’s that for a bad one?) Here are a few more, just for illustrative fun:
"I don’t think
we should wait until the other shoe drops. History has already shown what is
likely to happen. The ball has been down this court before and I can see
already the light at the end of the tunnel."
(Detroit
News, quoted in The New Yorker, November 26, 2012)
"I knew enough
to realize that the alligators were in the swamp and that it was time to circle
the wagons."
(attributed
to Rush Limbaugh)
"The committee
was tired of stoking public outrage with fortnightly gobbets of scandal. It
decided to publish everything it had left, warts and all. Now everyone is
tarred with the same ugly brush, and the myth that forever simmers in the
public consciousness--that the House shelters 435 parasitic, fat-cat
deadbeats--has received another shot of adrenalin."
(Washington
Post, 1992)
“I’ve decided to
put down roots and send up a trial balloon – I’m throwing my hat in the ring…!”
(anonymous,
for now)
Blech and gack.
Inappropriate Analogies
“We eat our
own dog food…!”
Ick,
really? Why would you do that? Instead,
contemplate communicating the same idea with a gentler version, “We drink our
own champagne.” Much more palatable!
Your vs. You’re
This is just
sloppy writing and proofing – but how many times do you see someone use “your”
when they should have written “you’re”?
Just saw an example recently:
“Your really going to like this upcoming release!” Sigh.
Don’t you
wish your word processer had a “reality checker” in addition to its
spell-checker and grammar checker?
Colloquialisms
A few years
back I was hosting a visit to our facilities by a group of Japanese customers,
whose English was fairly good (but not complete). At one point in the discussion our head of
development responded to a question regarding timing for delivery of a specific
capability – he was then asked, “How did you come up with that timing?”
He replied,
“Oh, I just pulled those numbers out of my butt…” I watched our customers’ faces as they
contorted, trying to make sense of his answer…
Fortunately, one of our guests was able to understand the idea and
provided his colleagues with a more accurate (and less literal) translation –
and smiles and nodding heads replaced the perplexed (and slightly frightened)
expressions.
Many
U.S.-based sales, presales and marketing people communicate as if the rest of
the world has fully adopted our version of English. They are, of course, in error. They have missed the pitch, dropped the ball,
fumbled the handoff, and simply not make the extra point. (How’s that for a combo with mixed
metaphors?)
Solution? When presenting to international audiences,
consciously choose vocabulary and word phrases that are simple, clear and as
internationally universal as possible.
Two Countries Separated By a
Common Language
This famous
quote by Winston Churchill highlights additional differences in English spoken
in different locations. A number of
years ago, we had a Marketing Communications (MarCom) group that was not
particularly well-beloved by the field sales and presales organization. The result was this rather embarrassing
story:
The MarCom
group typically provided “give-aways” for the various trade-shows that we
attended. In one case, they produced a
particular piece of apparel complete with our logo brightly imprinted for a trade-show
in London. Now, in the U.S. this
particular item is called a “Fanny Pack”.
In the UK, “Fanny Pack” has, well, a different meaning (you are welcome
to look it up yourself…!).
Our MarCom
group generated signage for our booth at the show, emblazoned liberally with
“Get Your Fanny Packs Here!” The signage
was installed at the booth and when the show opened it certainly attracted more
attention than our MarCom folks had anticipated…! An (embarrassingly high) number of UK
customers came to the booth and asked, rather loudly in many cases and with
great mirth with others, “Can I please have a fanny pack?”
Sigh.
Regional Differences
You, Y’all
and All Y’all: Which is singular and
which is plural?
Add these to
the list above… But wait, there’s more…!
Slinging Slang: That Dog Don’t Hunt and Other Homilies
In San
Diego, “Gnarly, Dude…!” is an expression of appreciation (and/or the presence
of large, thin-lipped, glassy, tubular waves – or exactly the opposite: slow, blown-out mushburgers).
In New
Hampshire, you may be told, “But it won’t do you no good, you can’t get there
from here…” (pronounced “heah”), meaning your directions are faulty.
In the Carolinas,
“That dog don’t hunt” indicates that your suggestion likely won’t work.
In Texas,
“It’s fixin’ to rain” is a weather forecast and “fixin’ to…” indicates that
something is likely to happen.
In Hawaii,
“Da kine!” is what you want to hear, in conjunction with an accompanying “shaka.”
And here’s a
beauty that combines several items from the topics above:
“I conclude that the
city’s proposal to skim the frosting, pocket the cake, and avoid paying the
fair, reasonable, and affordable value of the meal is a hound that will not
hunt."
(a
labor arbitrator, quoted by the Boston Globe, May 8, 2010)
Solution? Again, choose verbiage that is as neutral as
possible – particularly when working with international groups or customers
from diverse U.S. locations.
International Equivalences
“It’s
awesome!” in the U.S. is the same as “Ja, well, it is adequate” in Germany and
the UK’s “That’s brilliant!” (but it is likely that the UK offering was really
meant to be sarcastic…).
Listen
closely!
Cloudy With a Chance of Feature
Obscuration
Vendor says, “For this next new
feature let me explain our thinking and rationale for development…” followed by
“and here’s the underlying architecture, schema and data organization…,” which
leads to “the seventeen options for configuration and set-up,” “the three
different ways of accomplishing the same task” and the “hundreds of pre-built
templates and reports we’ve generated…”
The customer, reeling under this
onslaught of verbal rubbish and useless details, wonders “Where is this
going…?” followed minutes later by “When will this be over?”
Solution? Start with what good things the new
capability will enable – the relevant deliverables – and then offer explore it
in as much depth as the customer is
interested in seeing…!
Note that
the affliction above often develops into a more violent and virulent form,
known as…
Expert’s Disease
Many of us
with technical backgrounds feel obligated to explain how things work – before providing the simple answer desired by the
customer. For example, your customer asks,
“What time is it?”
You respond,
“Well, in order to tell you the time, let me first explain how a watch
works. Now in this watch, the time is metered by a small quartz tuning fork that
vibrates at a constant frequency – assuming, of course, that it is in a sealed
environment, because the density of the surrounding medium will impact the actual vibration frequency. Now the older manual watches used a coiled
spring and an escapement mechanism, which operated on the principle of an
impulse action and a locking action, actuated generally with either a pendulum (in
large, standing clocks) or a rotating balance wheel and um… sorry, what
was your question again…?”
A
solution? Answer the immediate question
right away – and then test (ask) if your customer desires further elucidation.
Kinda, Like, Sorta, Ya Know?
As noted at
the beginning of this article, the higher the job title, typically, the
stronger is that person’s desire for vendors to be crisp, focused and precise
with their communications. Imagine the
reaction of a 55 year-old Senior VP to a vendor saying, “And like here, kinda,
are the types of reports that we, like, sorta do, ya know…?”
Instead, be
precise: “These are three examples of
reports you can produce with our tool.”
Much better!
The Content-Free
Buzzword-Compliant Vocabulary List
In a demo,
the vendor states, “Our powerful software is flexible, intuitive, easy-to-use
and integrates seamlessly with your other tools. Robust and scalable, your organization can
enjoy the benefits of our best-of-breed world-class offering – the most
comprehensive solution available.”
What have
you learned so far? Nothing, other than
this person is clearly a talking marketing brochure (and that you may be able
to declare victory in “Buzzword Bingo…”)!
Vendor credibility drops precipitously and the audience furtively starts
to check email and the sports scores on their smart phones…
Robust, Powerful, Flexible, Integrated, Seamless, Extensible, Scalable, Interoperable, Easy-to-use, Intuitive, User-friendly, Comprehensive, Best-of-breed, World-class – any
to add to the list?
[Pet
peeve: “Most comprehensive”? Impossible!
Something is either comprehensive or it’s not!]
A
solution? Convert these meaningless
buzzwords to concrete, fact-based statements that can be supported by evidence
– where the evidence is the capabilities and processes you demonstrate.
Faux Fictional Names
“In our demo
we’ll be using the following characters for our storyline:
Mary the Manager Andrew the Admin Ulysses the User
Oscar the Occasional User Ernie the Expert User Theodore the Third Party
Sean the Senior Manager Victoria
the VP Alex
from Accounting …”
This tactic
has two drawbacks:
First, one
of our objectives in a demo is to suspend
disbelief – and anything that is obviously fake hurts our cause. As a
result, I don’t recommend fake names such as those above.
Second,
asking the audience to remember the relationship between “Mary” and her job
title has the additional negative impact of consuming the (far too) limited
number of memory slots we humans have available.
Solution? Use the wonderful pronoun (and its
derivatives) “You”:
“So, here you would see the report you need to
manage this process…”
“Your team would then receive this
alert…”
“And here’s
where you and your expert users could configure the system…”
Your
objective is to build a vision in your customers’ minds that they are using the software.
Fabulous Phony Fictional Names
I’ve seen
databases populated with the names of Hollywood stars, movie characters,
comic-book creatures and sports figures.
Don’t. Just don’t – it’s even
worse than above and screams “fake”!
Encrispen!
Our demos
need to be clear, concise and compelling.
To achieve this, we need to focus carefully on both what we show and how
we present it.
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2014 The Second Derivative – All Rights Reserved.
