Want a horror story?
I’ll give you a teaser: The punchline is, “Nope, I’m good…”
I do a lot of “prep” demos with my customers, asking
them to present live demos to me over the web.
I was working with a customer and had seen demos from two presales folks
up to this point and both demos were effectively the same. The only difference was their verbal style of
presenting – the content and the sequence of steps in each demo were exactly
the same for both.
We had scheduled one more demo from a third
presales person. He starts off, over the
web, with the classic phrase, “Can you see my screen?” – I reply, “I think so…”
He says, “Great!” and dives into his demo – and I realize he’s doing exactly the same
pathway and talk track as his two predecessors.
Eight minutes later he surfaces and asks, “Any questions so far?”
“Nope,
I’m good…” is my reply.
He dives back into his demo, continues
for another eight minutes, then resurfaces and asks, “Any questions so far?”
I respond, “No, it’s all clear…” And he dives back in…
As many readers know, I time demos. I said to myself, “I have to run this
experiment.” I grabbed my coffee mug,
left my office, went to the kitchen, refreshed my coffee, looked out at the
view for a few minutes, relaxed for a bit – and at the 6.5-minute mark I
returned to my office. Sure enough, in
about one minute, what do you think happened?
He resurfaces and asks, “Any questions so
far?”
“Nope, I’m good…” is my response. So, what is the horrifying thing about this?
He was in his talk track, just talking and
mousing, mousing and talking; the demo was going perfectly, as far as he
was concerned. But – his audience was literally
gone – and he had no clue I had left the room (and
the demo)!
That’s one horrifying example – here’s another:
You are the customer, in this case, and
you are watching another vendor’s live demo over the web – and you’re getting
bored. Someone comes into your office –
you mute your phone and chat with your colleague for a few minutes. She leaves and you turn back to the demo,
still in progress…
After another few minutes of listening
listlessly, you receive an email – you read it and respond, then idly review
your Inbox – while the demonstrator’s voice drones on about, “Another really
nice thing about our software is the set-up section – I’ll show you now…”
Annnnnd you’ve tuned out… Does this sound familiar? Has the demo made a strong (positive)
impression with you? Likely not!
Now let’s turn these examples around and
imagine that it is you or your organization delivering these demos
to your prospects… Ouch!
So, what can we do to improve our Remote Demos?
Here are twelve terrific tips:
1. Apply The Technology: (And avoid the “Gosh this
is boring…” customer perception)
Most vendors assume that delivering a
Remote Demo is nothing more than mouse and talk, talk and mouse... But
that is insufficient to hold audience attention.
Differentiate – by using the
tools that the folks at WebEx, Zoom, GoToMeeting, et al have implemented to increase interactivity with your
customers. Use the annotation tools
(including pens, shapes, stamps, arrows and more), chat and Q&A dialog
boxes, audience status dashboards, whiteboards, the pause button (SUCH a
great tool…!), video, giving/taking control, etc.
Start with the annotation tools. The act of a new, unanticipated drawing or graphic
appearing on the screen grabs your audience’s attention and wakes them up. Try it!
2. Learn The Technology: (We rarely try something new
in front of a customer)
To get comfortable with the tool that you
use (and the tools in that tool), set up a training session with a colleague
from your own company. Invest thirty
minutes to investigate and practice using the capabilities available. That way, you will be able to deploy and apply
those tools when you are live with a customer on the line, with confidence.
For the first 15 minutes, explore all of
the various capabilities and get feedback from your colleague – make it your
own personal Harbor Tour…! Then switch
and let your coworker explore similarly.
Bonus:
Make sure that your colleague’s view is full-screen – some web
collaboration tools do this automatically, some do not and you have to guide
your audience to go full screen.
Practice this!
3. Test The Technology: (And avoid “Sorry, we
can’t seem to join the meeting…”)
Let’s say you scheduled a Remote Demo
for 11:00 AM with your customer. Reach
out to your key contact, champion, or principal or a day or two ahead of the demo
and suggest that the two of you start the web session ten minutes before the
formal meeting is scheduled to begin.
Use those ten minutes to check the latency,
screen resolution, color rendering, sound level and clarity, and font
readability – and remember to enter full-screen mode.
For those using VOIP connections and
headsets, check to make sure your connection is clear – to avoid garbled
sentences, dropped phrases, and chopped words, “Nic op bop tis pref ont sys…!”
This way, everything is tested and
working properly when the formal meeting starts, and you won’t suffer the “WebEx
Tax” that often consumes the first seven minutes of the session…
4. Put Some Passion Into Your Delivery: (And avoid audience “Zzzzzz…”)
Nothing says “boredom” like a flat,
passionless voice droning on endlessly…
You may need to compensate for the
inability of the audience to see you by injecting more energy and dynamics in
your verbal delivery. Some presenters prefer
to stand when delivering a web demo to help with this – “push from your diaphragm…”
5. Video View: (“Oh, it is a real
person doing the demo…”)
Learn and practice using video:
ON:
During introductions – it helps “personalize” the demo and reduces (a
bit) the likelihood of hostile questions.
It’s a real person presenting, not a disembodied voice…
OFF: While sharing your
software screens – audiences can only watch one thing at time.
ON: For your mid-demo summaries
and ON again for your final summary.
And consider what your webcam shows behind
you, as well…!
6. Move Your Mouse Smooooothly And
Deliberately:
(Avoid “Zippy Mouse Syndrome…”)
When we mouse for ourselves, the mouse
follows where our eyes are looking – resulting, in many cases, in the mouse zooming
wildly around the screen. This is
actually painful for many viewers…!
Similarly, have you ever seen someone
circle something endlessly with their mouse…?
Solution? “Move and Stop”.
I’ve found the most amazing principle: if you take your hand off of the mouse, it
stops moving. Yes! Incredible!
Move the mouse to where you want it to be, then take your hand off while
you talk… It doesn’t move!
When mousing in a demo, find the target
location on the screen with your eyes before you move your mouse – then navigate
your mouse smoothly to the new location – and then let go of the mouse! Do not circle the landing location
around and around and around and around…
This is the perfect time to use
an annotation tool to highlight the area on the screen, while you describe the what
the capability does, how it helps the customer address their business problems,
and the value associated with using the capability.
Bonus:
Consider increasing the size of your mouse cursor – and/or exploring filled-in
vs. outline. This will make it easier for
your audience to see and follow your mouse movements.
7. Drive Interactivity: (And avoid the “chirp
chirp chirp” sound of crickets in an empty room…)
Most traditional demos try to pack as
much into the hour as possible – while simultaneously telling the audience, “Please
ask questions along the way to make this as interactive as possible…”
Unfortunately, these two objectives
are mutually exclusive – and many demonstrators really don’t want
any questions, as those questions will consume precious time needed to show the
many capabilities in their software. And
this gets worse with every release as more features are added.
What’s the rescue for this dilemma? Great Demo! methodology provides some
terrific answers:
1.
Do the Last Thing First (as opposed to
“saving the best for last…”).
2.
Use Inverted Pyramid (to ensure you
cover the most important things).
3.
Apply the Fewest Number of Clicks (to
reduce apparent complexity).
A study of demos by Gong.io found that
the most successful demos applied these three principles – and the most
successful demos had “speaker switches” an average of every 76 seconds. (A “speaker switch” is a change from the
vendor talking to the customer speaking and vice versa.)
Applying these techniques provides more
opportunities to drive interactivity – here are a few suggestions:
ü
Summarize frequently – which also cues
the audience that it is their turn to ask questions.
ü
Check-in frequently – with phrases
like, “Comments or questions?” or “What do you think of what you’ve seen so far?”
and “Does that address your requirements sufficiently?”
ü
Test the latency periodically – here’s
a great mid-demo check: Tell your audience,
“I’m going to say ‘3-2-1 click’, then please let me know when you see the graphic
appear…”
ü
Check for specific attention – “Can
you see my mouse pointing at the logo?”
ü
Use the highlighters, arrows, pens and
other annotation tools periodically.
ü
Use inverse text (drag across text to
reverse highlight) – simple and very effective.
ü
Drive interaction with larger audiences
– have them raise their virtual hands and use the chat/Q&A dialogs to
respond to your questions and enable questions/comments from them.
ü
Offer to let someone in the audience
“drive” a portion of the demo – your champion is a good choice – this can delightfully
change the dynamic of the demo!
8. Use An Agenda: (And avoid the customer
wondering, “Where is this going…?”)
In Great Demo! methodology, we teach
the idea of breaking a demo up into chunks. In a sixty-minute demo you should have (at
least!) six chunks – more would be better.
To keep your audience (and yourself) organized,
present an agenda at the beginning of the demo.
As you finish each chunk, return to your agenda and use it as a vehicle
to summarize that segment. This also encourages
your audience to ask questions or offer comments.
9. Use An “Active Conduit”: (Give yourself eyes in the
meeting…)
Designate someone to be your “eyes”
for the meeting that you join remotely – an “Active Conduit” providing information
to you on what is happening in the meeting room.
In the best case, use your salesperson
or other colleague from your company. Next
best is your champion or key contact.
Start the session ten minutes early
and guide this person to help you with:
·
Testing and confirming technology
operation – all the checks from Item 3 above.
·
Managing introductions – have them go
around the room with name, job title and objectives.
·
Communicating tone and how things are
going.
·
Alerting you when new people arrive or
folks leave.
·
Managing (and repeating) questions for
you (this is a really good one…!).
·
Alerting you to side-bar discussions
or comments that you couldn’t hear.
10. Clean Up Your Desktop And Alerts: (And avoid embarrassing,
“Ohhhh, my….!” moments)
It can be amusing to audience members
to see email previews and other messages appearing on the presenter’s screen
during a demo – but it is distracting and can be downright embarrassing!
Want another horror story?
I was watching a remote demo during which
one of the customer team members asked a question – and the vendor salesperson
then texted the presenter to “Ignore that question – that guy is an idiot”
forgetting that this text might appear on the screen for all to see – and it did!
End of demo, end of sales cycle… (And likely end of sales career…)
11. Manage Questions: (Parking professionally)
Consider using a Word or Google
document to capture unaddressed questions during your demo. Show the audience that you have
written the question down (remember to share that portion of your screen) – and
confirm you have captured it correctly.
Bonus:
Use strike-through text to mark questions that you did address in
the session. This will give you a written
record of which questions you covered and what is still pending.
12. Get Better: (“But I hate the sound of my own voice…!”)
Consider recording your web sessions
(when appropriate) – and play them back.
This is a wonderful way to hear what you actually said – your “crutch”
words, your pace, your tone, your word choices, pauses, and summaries.
How did you manage questions? Did you cut them off? Did you confirm you’d addressed the question adequately?
How was your mousing? Was it smooth and deliberate – or are you
still suffering (like me) from Zippy Mouse Syndrome?
Twelve Terrific Tips – And More!
Learning, practicing and applying these twelve
tips will (rather markedly) improve the mechanics of your Remote Demos.
Pick one item to try each week – and in a
quarter you’ll be surprisingly effective…!
Bonus: This
list is a good starting point – but there’s more! Explore the other articles on Remote Demos on
our website for more ideas on how
to drive interactivity when you can’t see your audience.
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