It’s Monday morning and you’ve just arrived in your office – what
is the first thing you do?
- Build a brand new dashboard or report
- Set up your user account and
preferences for software you already use everyday
- Configure the options for another
software tool you use everyday
- Browse your web favorites and
bookmarks
- Check your email…
For most people, the answers are as follows:
- Nope
- Nope
- Nope
- Likely
- Highly likely
What do you do when you
start your business day on Monday morning?
In Great Demo! Workshops, I often introduce the idea of “Daily-Use
Mode” vs. “Set-Up Mode” – where Daily-Use Mode is what most users do frequently
in their day-to-day work and Set-Up Mode is what people (administrators, in
many cases) do once, rarely or infrequently.
An example of Set-Up Mode is creating a dashboard or report –
something that is typically done only once
for that specific dashboard or report.
Daily-Use Mode is when users consume
the previously-created dashboard or report in their day-to-day work – which
might happen daily, weekly, monthly or on some other cadence.
Sadly, many traditional demos squander far too much time (and
audience attention) in Set-Up Mode showing how to build these dashboards and
reports, versus showing how these deliverables can be easily consumed.
Monday
Morning Revisited
A terrific way to think about Daily-Use Mode is to contemplate
“Monday morning”.
What do most people do when they arrive at their desks on Monday
morning? They check email. (Yes, and some browse their
favorites/bookmarked websites – and then
they check email…!)
So, consider starting the Daily-Use Mode portion of your demos in email, if possible. For example, start by saying, “It’s Monday
morning and you’ve just arrived in your office…” You then show an “unopened” message, open it
to reveal a link, then click the link to launch a browser that takes the user
to the dashboard or report. The user
then consumes the dashboard or report, looking for problems, trends, or
opportunities in accord with what your software enables.
That’s the way most people start their day – why not map to
it?
For Great Demo! practitioners, the above pathway of starting in
email and proceeding to the dashboard or report is a truly terrific “Do It”
pathway, leading crisply back to a compelling “Illustration”. Delightful!
“Let
me show you how to set this up…”
I was recently
watching a series of recorded demos presented by a vendor to their customers
and noted two rather astonishing things:
Astonishing Thing
Number 1:
Approximately 50% of the elapsed time of the demo was
done showing Set-Up Mode items (setting up the environment, configuring the
application, creating and editing templates, forms, reports and dashboards,
etc.). [These demos ranged 60-90 minutes long overall.]
Astonishing Thing
Number 2:
At the end of all this Set-Up Mode activity, the
vendor noted, ”Of course, you won’t have to do any of this – we take care of it
during implementation, done by our Professional Services team…”
Wait… What did you
say? You just spent 35 minutes showing
stuff the customer will never need to
use? [Enter appropriate exclamation of
surprise and astonishment here ______.]
Rhetorical Question
Number 1:
Why did they show the Set-Up Mode items at all?
Rhetorical Answer
Number 1:
Because they (and we) are Victims of Momentum – we
tend to do the same things the same way over and over, unless someone gives us
a serious shove in a new direction.
Rhetorical Question
Number 2:
What is the impact on the customer of seeing all of
the that Set-Up Mode stuff?
Rhetorical Answer
Number 2:
It makes the software look waaaaaay too complicated.
Cynical Rhetorical
Question:
I’ll bet you’ve never heard that phrase before, from a
customer…!
Recommendation:
Put the Set-Up Mode portions of your demos “behind your back” – have the
answers ready, but only bring them out in response to specific questions from
your customer. Focus first on Daily-Use Mode interactions, presenting the
key deliverables and the business value those deliverables provide your
customer (“Illustrations” and “Do It” pathways, in Great Demo!
vocabulary). Intriguingly, it is likely that you can answer most Set-Up
Mode questions verbally, without ever moving your mouse, for most audience
members.
Question For You:
How much of your current demos are spent showing Set-Up
Mode?
“It’s
all configuration…”
Many vendors tout how their software can be easily configured vs.
requiring extensive (and likely expensive) customization. This is wonderful and can be an enormous
advantage. However, many vendors also show all the nuances of their extensive
configuration capabilities early in a demo – which is typically entirely out of
alignment with audience interests at that point in time.
First
show Daily-Use Mode; then show Set-Up
Mode, if desired by the customer.
For vendors where configuration capabilities are critical
strengths, introduce those ideas during Discovery with your customer so that
those capabilities become part of the list of Specific Capabilities your
customer wants to see in the demo (but shown at the appropriate time).
Consider the following four constituencies:
- Senior
Management
- Middle
Management
- End
Users
- IT and/or
Administrators
Which of these groups cares
about and needs to see configuration capabilities (or
other Set-Up Mode items)?
- Senior
Management – does care about, but does not
want to see
- Middle
Management – may care about, but likely does not need to see much
- End
Users – does not care about and does not want to see
- IT or
Administrators – does care about and does want to see
Who will likely be making the decision whether or not to buy – and
how important is their opinion?
- Senior
Management – extremely high and has the authority to buy
- Middle
Management – may make the decision to recommend (but often does not have the
authority to buy)
- End
Users – may be asked for an opinion that is taken into account
- IT or
Administrators – ditto
Based on this, I recommend satisfying these constituencies in that
same corresponding order:
- Senior
Management – show relevant Daily-Use Mode items; be prepared to answer questions
about Set-Up Mode items (likely verbally, only).
- Middle
Management – ditto; may need to show small amounts of Set-Up Mode.
- End
Users – likely only interested
in Daily-Use Mode as it applies to them.
- IT or
Administrators – be prepared to show relevant Set-Up Mode items.
Turn
Your Demo Upside Down
For many software vendors, their perception of a “logical
progression” for their demos is to start by showing how to configure their
system, followed by setting up forms, reports, dashboards, templates, workflows
and alerts, followed by running those workflows and – if they don’t run out of
time – showing the reports and dashboards.
End result? Long, complicated, and
confusing.
Recommendation? Turn your demos upside down.
Start with a Daily-Use Mode example
that is relevant and desired for the specific constituency you are presenting
to – and represents a high-probability Daily-Use Mode scenario – then follow with answers to Set-Up Mode
questions, but only if your audience asks
them…!
The result will be crisper, more
aligned, surprisingly compelling
demos that map delightfully to audience interests, delivered in a logical order
in accord with audience authority.
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Derivative – All Rights Reserved.
