Monday, May 22, 2017

Demo “Chunks”, Attention, and Agendas

The average adult human can pay attention for (any guesses?) about 10 minutes, maximum, before he/she needs to be “refreshed” in some way.  [Take a deeeeep breath – let it out…]  Some researchers comment that a more realistic limit for business people is 5-7 minutes; less if they are seeing a presentation or demo over the web.

This suggests that when you present a demo, you need to break it up into consumable components – chunks – and your chunks should be no longer than 10 minutes, at maximum!

A great way to structure in chunks is to generate and work from an agenda, or road-map, for your demo.  You present your agenda at the beginning and return to it after each chunk is completed.  The act of returning to your agenda reminds you to summarize and provides your audience with a cue that it is their turn for questions, if they had been otherwise holding back.

I like to use open box bullets for each agenda item initially and then show that each item has been addressed by changing the open box to a “check” or “tick” box – which means that I return to my agenda after each chunk.


If you do the math, for a 1 hour demo you should contemplate having at least 6 chunks and (therefore) 7 uses of your agenda.

Friday, May 5, 2017

Friday Fun - Amusing Presales Videos

Here are a handful of amusing and/or cynical presales-related videos for your viewing pleasure:

- Rockwell Turbo Encabulator: Wonderfully produced demo spoof - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXJKdh1KZ0w
- The Expert: Less about demos, but fun in any case - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg&app=desktop
- Pre-sales Life 1.0 – sadly funny… - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYJU-SKBaqE
- A conference Call in Real Life – WebEx/GoToMeeting/etc. horrors we’ve all lived through - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ  
- Subterranean Presales Blues – older but fun also - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6G9knOLdQzo&feature=related
- Apple and Dongles (gosh, the word itself is funny…) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XSC_UG5_kU
- And dongles again (this is actually a very well produced Zoom ad…) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdUKP4fFiBY


Any others to add?