A colleague
once cynically commented, in response to a request for a “day-in-the-life”
demo, “Give me a week and I can show you a day-in-the-life…” Very clever,
but still painful! Day-in-the-life demos are challenging, so here are
some Great Demo! principles you can apply to increase your success rates.
A
Task-in-the-Day (vs. a Day-in-the-Life)
Why do
customers ask for a day-in-the-life demo experience? Two reasons, typically:
1. Reduce
risk: They need to make sure that the
vendor’s software will work with their people, processes and workflows (and
their perceived uniqueness of their
people, processes and workflows…).
2. Vendor
expectations: vendors have been offering
day-in-the-life demos since the first two rocks were pounded together to create
COBOL. We, as vendors, have trained our
customers to expect long, boring,
painful day-in-the-life demos.
One way to
begin to reduce the risk, complexity and torture of a day-in-the-life demo is
to break it down into smaller segments:
A Task in the Day. Here are some
ideas that will help…
Basic Great Demo! Principles
First, if
you have a mixed audience consisting (for example) of high-ranking
executives, middle managers and staffers, DO NOT start with a day-in-the-life
from the staffers’ perspective.
Why? Execs will (quietly) walk
out and middle managers will visualize your software as complicated.
Follow Great
Demo! methodology and present to the execs first, then the managers – and
then the staffers, after the higher-ranking folks are satisfied. (You
can use the concept of “teasers” to let each group know what Good Things are in
store for them as the overall meeting progresses.)
Next,
Situation Slides and Illustrations very much still apply. Using a
Situation Slide to confirm the customer’s situation (and desired gains and
outcomes) is an excellent starting point for any day-in-the-life (or
task-in-the-day) demo segment. Illustrations can and should be used to
summarize and/or confirm the desired outcome(s) and deliverables from these
workflows.
A Terrific Top Ten List
Now consider
the following top ten ideas (OK, there are 11 – you get a bonus best practice,
no charge):
0. Do the Last
Thing First: Demos don’t need to be
long, painful and boring. Do the Last Thing First and turn your traditional
demo upside down.
Start by presenting the highest impact, most
compelling screen relevant to the audience at hand, then “Peel Back the Layers”
in accord with your audience’s depth level of interest. This will make
your demos more engaging, more interactive, and surprisingly compelling.
1.
Fewest
number of clicks: ALWAYS applicable. Nobody wants their
day-in-the-life to take a week! Apply
personal discipline to show only what
is required to complete the task.
Execute
all demo pathways using the fewest number of clicks. Your objective is to
make your offering appear as easy to use as possible (and not
complicated). Each click and each additional option that is shown increases
perceived complexity in the minds of the audience members.
2.
Break things
into “chunks”. Just as people take breaks throughout a workday, you
should break the overall workflow up into logical chunks as well.
How
long can an adult human pay attention before needing to be “refreshed” in some
way? About 10 minutes. If you have a 2-hour demo meeting planned,
you had better find ways to restructure it into (at minimum) 12 chunks. Each should have a clear beginning and a
summary at the end.
3.
Use a
Roadmap/agenda to help manage the process, keep the audience (and you)
organized, and to enable you to “chunk” with discrete beginnings and ends to
tasks and subtasks.
4.
Introduce
the segment at the beginning; remember to summarize at the end.
Tell
them what you are going to tell them; present the segment (tell them);
summarize at the end (tell them what you just told them). The act of summarizing effectively closes a
chunk and alerts the audience that it is their turn to ask questions, and acts
as an audience “refresh”.
5.
Avoid using
“If”, “Or”, and “Also” – these words branch your demo and make it MUCH longer
than it needs to be… Avoid “buying it
back” by showing capabilities the customer doesn’t feel they need (or want to
pay for).
6.
Instead, let
the audience ask, “Can it do xxx?” and “How do you do yyy?” Turn the demo
into a conversation, vs. a firehose frantically flinging features and functions
(frankly frightening)!
7.
Use a Menu
to prioritize chunks and portions of the workflow(s), when possible. No
need to squander 50 minutes at the beginning with a segment that is of least
interest to the audience.
8.
When
possible, take a lesson from Julia Child and show the end product (the fabulous
roast turkey/beef/lamb/pork/tofu, ready to be carved) to get the audience’s
juices flowing, then start the workflow and follow it for a few steps (get the
roast into the oven) – and then jump towards the end to finish the
workflow. You may not need to show all the intermediate steps (do you
really want to watch a turkey roast for 6 hours?).
9.
Mouse
smoooooooooothly and deliiiiiiiberately. Avoid Zippy Mouse Syndrome
(unless you really want to make your software look confusing and complicated).
10. Let a member of the audience drive, under
your guidance. This will help to prove ease-of-use and make the segment
much more engaging…! (You might practice
this ahead of time…)
Julia Child – What Can We Learn from Cooking
Shows?
Julia Child
brought French cooking dishes and methods into American households in the last
century (1963-1973 or thereabouts) in her entertaining and educational cooking
shows (see this link
for an example). We can take away several
clever ideas from cooking shows that can be applied to the wonderful world of
demos.
Do the Last
Thing First: Go find a recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon and DON’T look at the picture. Instead, read through the recipe instructions
and try to decide if the recipe looks interesting. Then, look at the picture of the completed
dish (try to avoid peeking…). Which
approach is more compelling?
Cooking
shows typically start by showing the completed dish, plated and ready to be
served – beautifully delicious. They are
showing us “what” the recipe will result in, to invite us to want to learn
“how” it is done. The balance of the
show takes us back to a (logical) beginning and then guides us through the
steps to complete preparation and plating of that appealing, delicious dish.
We can apply
the same idea to day-in-the-life demos through the use of Illustrations (the
“wow!” or pay-off screens) to whet the audience’s appetite…
Prepare
sub-segments ahead of time – and/or verbally describe them as opposed to
showing the gory, intimate details of a long workflow. You never see the chef chop onions on-screen!
Instead, all the ingredients have been
prepared ahead of time (likely by some poor underling) and placed ready-to-use
in bowls, etc. You can apply the same principle
to many demo segments, similarly.
Warp time. Julie Child (and other cooking show chefs)
use two ovens or pots (and two instances of the recipe) to warp time. Prepare the dish, using the pre-prepped
ingredients, and show starting the cooking process. Then move to the nearly done instance, finish
it, plate and enjoy!
Plate your
dish elegantly. In nice restaurants, a dish
is plated carefully, to make it look as delicious and appetizing as possible –
and the waiter “sells” it when he presents it to the customer. “Madame, here you have your free-range, organic,
macro-chaotic, non-EIEIO young salad greens; they were grown in our own special
garden, nurtured daily with lute music and gentle leaf massages; tenderly and
lovingly selected, picked, washed in pure Tahitian rain-water… Enjoy!”
The waiter
is making the dish look as delicious as possible – we can (and should)
similarly “sell” the key screens and deliverables (the Illustrations) from our
software to make them look as appealing and valuable as possible. Yum!
I hope these
tips help you turn an otherwise traditional, long, boring, and painful
day-in-the-life demo into a click-and-you’re-done delight – bon appétit!
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© 2017 The Second Derivative – All Rights Reserved.
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