How many times have you heard a vendor say in a demo, “It’s slow today because…”? Each time a vendor utters that phrase, they are communicating that their software has performance problems, generating an unnecessary negative impression. Here’s a quick cure for that frightening phrase:
Don’t say it!
The performance/speed of your software is often beyond your control, being dependent on a range of factors including your network, internet connections, cloud servers, etc. It is what it is.
So, get over it.
When you say, “It’s slow today because…,” there’s only one word your audience will remember: “slow.”
Your audience has no idea what performance should look like and you are likely the only person that noticed that things are not as swiftly as you might desire. Here are a few recommendations:
1. When you see that your software isn’t operating as crisply as you expect, fill the time with a description of what it is doing. For example, “Right now the software is searching millions of records using the filters you just set, doing the ‘slicing and dicing’ for the analysis, and will pass the refined results to your dashboard…”
Hopefully, your software will have returned the results by that time and everything will look natural. Have a series of filler sentences ready, accordingly.
2. What if your software still hasn’t completed its work by that point? Invite the comparison. You say, “The software may take a minute or two to finish this process, but I invite you to compare that minute executed automatically by the software vs what has been taking you and your team two weeks, done manually…!”
Very elegant, very professional!
You can find many more tips and best practices in the Third Edition of Great Demo! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1688763837&sr=1-4
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