Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Over 25,000 Copies of Great Demo! – And What’s Next?

We are amazed (and quietly proud) to report that over 25,000 copies of Great Demo! have been purchased, including well over 1000 Audiobooks.  These numbers do NOT include used copies that are re-sold, copies that are shared, or (ah-hem) copies of PDF's that get forwarded. 

If you do the math (and I did, can’t help it…)  that translates to about 7 new copies every working day, which suggests three ideas:

First, if you haven’t read Great Demo! and/or taken a Great Demo! class you are (likely) at risk…

Second, (and more intriguing) the question is now becoming:  how well do you (and does your team) implement and practice the methodology?  Great Demo! enables differentiation; the degree to which one applies the methodology determines the amount of differentiation!

Third, a number of people have asked if I plan to release a 3rd edition – I do not. Why?  I realized that the moment a third edition is ready to publish it is already out of date.  A more evergreen approach was needed. 

The Great Demo! LinkedIn Group (and this blog, to a lesser degree) was designed to be a Great Demo! practitioners’ community, with posts providing new ideas for discussion, surfacing of new best practices, tips and new technologies to explore, enabling ongoing improvement and evolution of the methodology. 

And as new practices solidify, I publish articles that present the ideas for your consumption at www.SecondDerivative.com/articles.html, as another evergreen resource.  (If you simply compiled the articles on the site, you'd have a "3rd Edition"...!)

Great Demo! practitioners report that their demos get better and better – with results that increasingly (and delightfully) surpass those of more traditional approaches.


So what’s next?  Who knows – the best is, perhaps, yet to come!

Monday, July 10, 2017

Upcoming Webinar: How to Take Your Software Demos to the Next Level

How indeed?

Join Richard Smith, Brian Geery and myself as we explore, discuss, examine and debate a range of topics in the Wonderful World of Demos during this webinar on August 1.

And to make this even more interesting, we welcome your questions, topics and challenges – let us know what you’d like us to address during the session.  Simply post your questions and topics as replies/comments to this discussion or send me an email at PCohan@SecondDerivative.com.  Looking forward to your input!


Wednesday, July 5, 2017

On Time?

A wise person once said,

“Being early is on time;
Being on time is late; and
Being late is inexcusable!”

As a customer, how would you feel if the vendor is late to a demo meeting that they scheduled with you, and where you have assembled a number of folks from your team? 


I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on the receiving end of a demo, scheduled by a vendor, only to have the vendor show up late to the meeting.  NOT a good first impression…!  (Guess why I posted this, by the way…)