Epic demo fails

A software demo can either make or break a sale. Get it right and it’s an easy path to yes. Get it wrong and they walk away with an impression that’s impossible to change.

We've all been there. We've either given demos that have gone horribly wrong. Or have been watching one that is slowly sucking the life out of the room.

Here are some classic fails (there may be more).

1. The seat-of-the-pants demo. “Let’s start with a quick round of introductions.” That’s shorthand for “I have no idea who you are, what you need, or why you are here.” Should have done your homework, matey. With LinkedIn, there is no excuse for not knowing the backgrounds of everyone in the room. What are their roles? Who did they previously work for? Have they used similar tools in the past? If you don’t know who is in the room, how are you going to position your product?
2. The fully-comprehensive demo. “And this feature is useful for those rare occasions when nothing important happens.” No one needs to see every tool in a Swiss Army knife. Each client will probably have one or two use-cases in mind. A good prep questionnaire will extract that. Ask them how they currently do the job, then show them how to do it better.?
3. The endless demo. “Sorry, I’m only halfway through and we’ve run out time.” I attended one last month that went on for 60 minutes, with barely a pause for breath, and still wasn’t finished. There was zero time for questions. To be honest, most of us were too exhausted to ask any, so it came to a very abrupt end. The question should be, how little time does it take before they say yes? Ideally you want them saying "Show me how it does this?"
4. The no-value demo. This really is a sales crime. Starting the demo without a clear benefit statement, and ending it without a value-based conclusion, means that the product is useful, but worthless. How about: “What you are about to see will save you hundreds of hours of hassle, thousands of dollars of waste, and make you look like a total rockstar at the next OpCo meeting.” After you’ve shown them how your product gives them that, tell them again, just in case they’ve forgotten.?Boom.
5. The logical demo. 80% of decision-making is with the heart, not the head (so they say). And yet 80% of demos are devoid of any emotional connection whatsoever. What do people emotionally connect best with? Sadly, it’s pain, circumstances beyond their control and existential catastrophe. So tell stories about regular people, getting things horribly wrong. Everyone relates to it, no one wants it to happen to them. Your demo just needs to show how that nightmare will never occur… if they use your product. “So next time, just click this and this, and you need never fear the zombie apocalypse.”

Other fails are more obvious: the bug that appears only in the demo, the laptop that decides to run Windows Upgrade two minutes before the start, and the “Is everyone on mute?” feeling you get when the audience doesn’t respond to anything you say. Sometimes the god of demos just wants to mess with us.

But most of the time, poor demos happen because we haven’t thought about the audience and worked back.?

By the way, disclaimer, I am guilty of doing all of the above!