Delivering a Great Demo

Kevin Feasel (@feaselkl)
https://csmore.info/on/greatdemo

Who Am I? What Am I Doing Here?

Catallaxy Services
Curated SQL
Finding Ghosts in Your Data

@feaselkl

Motivation

My goals in this talk:

  • Explain why technical sales demos fail
  • Introduce the Great Demo method
  • Demonstrate a Great Demo

Peter Cohan's book Great Demo! How to create and execute stunning software demonstrations is the primary resource for this talk.

A Quick Note

You're not in technical pre-sales? That's okay--neither am I!

But we can also perform the equivalent of pre-sales inside the organization. Are you selling other teams on your team's services? Then you're still doing pre-sales!

Agenda

  1. Introduction to a Great Demo
  2. Introduce the Situation
  3. Present the Illustration
  4. Do It!
  5. Peel Back the Layers
  6. Q&A
  7. Final Summary

The Typical Sales Demo

Have you ever experienced a poor technical sales demo?

What makes for a bad demo?

Causes of Failure

  1. The "harbor tour"
  2. The canned, generic demo
  3. The unprepared demoer: sticking to the "happy path"
  4. The demoer making the app appear overly complicated

Summarizing Failure

  1. "They never showed what I really needed to see"
  2. "It took forever and I lost track"

These are the most common reasons why technical sales demos fail.

The Solution: Do the last Thing First!

Begin by showing what people want to see. Let people know up-front that we can solve the relevant issue.

This is critical because "power walks first"--the most important people in a meeting typically have the strongest constraints on their time and may not be able to wait until minute 57 of a 60-minute meeting to learn what they need.

Agenda

  1. Introduction to a Great Demo
  2. Introduce the Situation
  3. Present the Illustration
  4. Do It!
  5. Peel Back the Layers
  6. Q&A
  7. Final Summary

Introduce the Situation

Take 1-2 minutes at the start of the meeting to confirm the following:

  • Audience
  • Critical Business Issue
  • Secific capabilities
  • The Delta
  • Critical date

Introduce the Situation

Who is your audience?

  • Level in the organization?
  • Expected application role?
  • Technical? Business? Finance?
  • Why are they in the room right now?

Introduce the Situation

What is the Critical Business Issue your customer is experiencing?

Think of a Critical Business Issue as something fitting the pattern:

"I am unable to {do something} because {reason}, and therefore {problem}."

"I am unable to get good metrics on employee absenteeism because it takes six weeks to get absence information in my report, and therefore I am not able to plan project work efficiently."

Critical Business Issue

Note that a CBI may exhibit differently at different levels of the organization!

"I am unable to get good metrics on employee absenteeism because it takes six weeks to get absence information in my report, and therefore I am not able to plan project work efficiently."

"I am unable to enter absence information into the payroll system in a timely manner because employees submit time cards once every two weeks and may correct their entries over the next four weeks, and therefore the application will not make report results available until reconciliation completes."

Introduce the Situation

What are the specific capabilities you offer to solve this problem?

"Our payroll system immediately surfaces absences and you can see this information in one of our built-in reports."

Introduce the Situation

What is the Delta? In other words, what is the value of your specific capability to the customer?

  • Our solution is cheaper / better / faster / not previously possible
  • Measure in terms of calendar time, employee hours, necessary headcount, or money

Introduce the Situation

What is the critical date? When does the solution need to be in place?

Companies tend to move on deadline. If there isn't a critical date, this may actually be a barrier to success!

Agenda

  1. Introduction to a Great Demo
  2. Introduce the Situation
  3. Present the Illustration
  4. Do It!
  5. Peel Back the Layers
  6. Q&A
  7. Final Summary

Present the Illustration

You've laid out the problem. Now show the solution.

Start with the end in mind: the most impactful and relevant screen that ties back to the delta.

Present the Illustration

This section should take no more than 1-2 minutes!

After showing this, ask, "Would you like to learn more about how to do this?" This helps affirm customer interest and drives engagement.

And if the customer says no, you're not wasting their time!

Agenda

  1. Introduction to a Great Demo
  2. Introduce the Situation
  3. Present the Illustration
  4. Do It!
  5. Peel Back the Layers
  6. Q&A
  7. Final Summary

Do It!

Assuming the customer is still interested, perform your most direct demonstration.

Begin at a logical starting point: a home page or other "starting" position.

Then, choose the path to get to your illustration.

Do It!

Your goals for the demonstration:

  1. Get from the starting point to the illustration
  2. Minimize the number of mouse clicks or operations to get through your demo
  3. Show that your application is easy to use

To do that, stay focused and disciplined--don't go on a harbor tour! This should take you 1-3 minutes.

Agenda

  1. Introduction to a Great Demo
  2. Introduce the Situation
  3. Present the Illustration
  4. Do It!
  5. Peel Back the Layers
  6. Q&A
  7. Final Summary

Peel Back the Layers

You've shown the quick-and-painless way of getting what the customer wants. Now we do it again! Why?

The first go-around was for management to see that it's possible.

The second go-around is for employees, who are now paying attention. It also lets you expand on your quick and easy solution.

Peel Back the Layers

Tips for peeling back the layers:

  • Walk through the process again, but expand on it
  • This should take you 5-10 minutes
  • This is where you can discuss the breadth and depth of options
  • You can also let great audience questions drive the discussion

Audience Questions

There are three types of audience question:

  • Great questions directly impact the specific capability the customer needs and what we are demonstrating. "Can you host it on Linux instead of Windows?" "Can you include data from this other report?"
  • Good questions deserve a response but can derail the demo. Capture those in a 'not now' list and respond to them at the end or offline.
  • Stupid questions come from people trying to trip you up or people who are completely misunderstanding. Treat those as Good questions.

Agenda

  1. Introduction to a Great Demo
  2. Introduce the Situation
  3. Present the Illustration
  4. Do It!
  5. Peel Back the Layers
  6. Q&A
  7. Final Summary

Q&A

Q&A is your opportunity to go back over the Not Now list and answer customer questions in the remaining time. The process is:

  1. Restate the question and ask if you understand it correctly
  2. Provide a clear and sufficient answer
  3. Summarize both the question and the answer

Q&A

Q&A is also a chance for customers to ask you to show them additional specific capabilities.

If you can present the specific capability, do so in the Great Demo fashion: present the illustration, do it quickly, do it thoroughly, take Q&A.

If you cannot present the specific capability, say so. Either set up a separate meeting to demonstrate it, or explain why you cannot demonstrate it.

Q&A

What about specific examples from customers?

Yes! These are a great opportunity to gain goodwill, assuming you understand your product well enough.

But be sure to explain the range of possible outcomes: might not have all of the relevant data in our demo environment, might not get back an expected result, etc.

Agenda

  1. Introduction to a Great Demo
  2. Introduce the Situation
  3. Present the Illustration
  4. Do It!
  5. Peel Back the Layers
  6. Q&A
  7. Final Summary

Final Summary

The closing summary is your way to wrap up what the customers have learned about this demo.

It is critical to use the final summary to tie your demonstration back to the delta, to ensure the customer makes the connection.

Trying this Out

The (hypothetical) situation: you are developers, dev managers, DBAs, and architects wanting to learn how to get to code from a Catallaxy Services talk.

CBI: You are unable to get great examples of awesome code because you do not know how to get to the demo code, and therefore you are losing out on being more productive.

Specific capability: Catallaxy Services offers a repo for each presentation!

The Delta: You can write better code and save up to 906 hours per year by writing code more efficiently and effectively.

Demo Time

Wrapping Up

Over the course of this talk, we learned about the Great Demo approach to performing technical demonstrations. We learned several techniques for laying out an effective demonstration to an audience, one that increases the likelihood of a successful sale (or "internal sale").

Wrapping Up

To learn more, go here:
https://csmore.info/on/greatdemo

And for help, contact me:
feasel@catallaxyservices.com | @feaselkl


Catallaxy Services consulting:
https://CSmore.info/on/contact