Ask yourself:
·
Have you ever felt like you have far too much to show in a demo – and insufficient
time to show it?
·
Have you ever said, “I’d like this to
be interactive…” but you don’t get many questions?
·
And when you ask, “Any questions so
far?” you hear, “Nope, we’re good…”
·
Have you even run out of time before
you got to the best stuff?
·
Have you ever felt like your audience
just didn’t “get it”?
You are likely suffering from the tyranny, the
terror, and the trap of traditional demos.
The Tyranny
Traditional demos force us to present as much
as we can in the allotted time. We talk rapidly,
mouse vigorously and cover as much demo territory as we can. There is so
much to show – and an hour is simply not enough time…
And it gets worse with each new release – all
of those new capabilities to highlight!
The Terror
Has this ever happened?
“I promised them an overview demo…”
reports the salesperson, “…and it’s a huge
opportunity!”
We respond, “What do we know about the
customer?”
“They are really interested…” is the response, “and they need to see a demo
right away!”
We jump onto a web session and start our demo,
only to realize that the customer is completely
unfamiliar with our offerings and we know very little about them… We pump up the energy in our delivery to try
to connect with the audience, but they aren’t very responsive…
It feels like the more we show, the less they
respond – we’ve entered terrifying territory – a place without time or
dimension – we’ve entered The Traditional Demo Zone…!
The Traditional Trap
When a demo is first created for a new product,
it is typically short and well-focused – there’s simply not that much to show. With each successive release, demos get
longer as new capabilities and workflows are added.
Don’t we want to show the new stuff that’s
just been released? Don’t we want to
show the latest and greatest? Oh, and
the slightly older stuff is also good, and the earlier stuff has some really
cool capabilities and…
Release after release, year after year, our
demos grow inexorably…! And what fit
nicely into an hour originally couldn’t possibly
be done in an hour – so now we’ll do an hour-long overview and then schedule a
deep dive…
But wait, there’s more terror in this trap…
Each time we hear a question that is asked by
more than one customer, what do we do?
We add the answer to that question to our growing talk-track. Not only do we need to cover more features
and functions, but we also need to address all the questions we’ve heard more
than once.
We’re trapped!
There’s just too much to demo to
do it well…!
And Our Customers’ Perceptions?
What about our customers – what are they thinking during these demos?
“Wow – this looks really complicated…”
“This is more than we need…”
“Where is this going…?”
“I just got lost – what are they
talking about now?”
“Hmmm – just got a text I need to
respond to…”
“And might as well check email…”
“Did they just ask us something? Must have missed it…”
“Is this an hour meeting?”
“I wonder what I’ll have for lunch…”
Oh-oh… And
what are they saying after the demo,
when we (the vendor) are gone?
“Well, that’s an hour I’ll never get
back…”
“They don’t understand our business at
all…”
“I got completely lost…”
“It looked really complicated and
confusing…”
“Who invited those guys in…?”
Not good.
How did we get into this predicament?
We built traditional demos, that’s how…
The Traditional Approach to Building the Traditional Demo
The customary approach for creating demos is to
outline a long story – “end-to-end” – designed to cover all of the workflows
and capabilities, using a handful of fictional characters to tie things
together. Demos become training
sessions, describing how to navigate the interface, how to customize for
specific user types, how to set up forms, dashboards, create and edit records,
enter and update supplementary data, walk through multiple interrelated
workflows and (eventually) customize and run reports. Very little is left out – “we need to
communicate the full value of our offering…”
Intricate interdependencies seek to link
disparate parts of the demo together:
We say, “Remember the record that we created
for ‘Jane’ an hour ago?”
Customer thinks, “Nope…”
We plunge on, “Now we’ll show how to
take that information and edit it as Jane’s manager Jack and then pass it on to
John and Jill in marketing and accounting…”
Customer is checking phone…
We say, “There are several ways you
can do this…”
Customer wonders, “Is there a way out
of this room?”
These demos often show multiple ways to accomplish individual tasks (why would a user want
to see anything but the fastest
possible way?). Traditional demos attempt
to show way too much – and strangely,
not enough of what the customer
actually wants to see.
Wasted Time, Wasted Demos
And it gets worse…! In theory, the more demos we do, the bigger
the pipeline, correct? Well, in theory…
But let’s examine. How many demos that we deliver we know were simply a waste of time? 25%?
33%? 50%? (Please don’t say more than 50% - that’s
simply too painful…)
So we do more and more and more demos to try
to fill the pipeline. And the faster we
go, the behinder we get (to paraphrase Lewis Carroll). Our true productivity is frankly pretty poor
– but it is not our fault! (Or is it, at least partly?)
We are caught in the terrible, tyrannical trap
of traditional demos. There must be a
way out…!
A Refreshing Approach – and Rescue
First, let’s invest a few healthy minutes in
doing Discovery, before offering any substantive demo. That alone would be a huge improvement…
But our sales colleague said they want a demo right away…! We understand that – but let’s push back,
gently but firmly, and use part of that “overview demo” meeting to do enough
Discovery to enable a focused, customer-centric demo to be put together.
Let’s stop guessing. Let’s stop assuming that one demo fits all users.
Let’s use the Menu
Approach to help our customer understand what high-level solutions
are possible and enable them to
self-qualify by letting them choose the Menu items of most interest to them.
Once they’ve selected a few topics, we’ll
share brief Vision Generation Demos
to provide our customer with a vision of what is possible – and to enable the
Discovery conversation to take place.
And during our Discovery conversation, we
provided some intriguing insights that lead to capabilities competitively
biased in our favor. Now we’ve
got what we need to put together a truly Great Demo!
We know what Specific Capabilities we need to show
in the demo – so we can leave out everything else that is not of interest to
the customer – how refreshing!
We know what key deliverables the customer
wants to consume – so we show those right up front, to engage our customer and
begin a real conversation – and make our demo truly interactive. How wonderful!
By knowing what is important for the various
players, we can manage questions to
avoid being dragged down rabbit holes or get lost in the weeds. How delightful!
And we can organize
our demo in accord with the relative importance and availability of
the key players, engaging executive first, then middle managers, staffer/users
and ultimately administrators and super-users.
How elegant!
Now our demos are crisp, prospects’ needs are
clearly addressed, and the sales process moves forward productively. And we’ve reduced the number of wasted demos
substantially. How productive!
And our lives take a pleasant turn for the
better, as well – and since we do many fewer wasted demos, we have more time to
prepare for the demos that really matter.
Rescue is at hand!
Excelsior! Forward! Banish the Traditional Demo Tyranny!
If you seek liberation from the tyranny of
traditional demos, consider making a change.
And not a small, incremental,
get-a-little-bit-better-but-still-do-largely-the-same-things change – make a real change. A step
change – a substantive change that
will likely change your life…
Throw off the shackles of the old traditional
approach – embrace a new, delightfully effective approach to creating and
delivering demos.
When you do, you’ll hear your customers say to
you, “Wow – that was a Great Demo!”
Copyright © 2018 The Second Derivative – All
Rights Reserved.
