MADELEINE BUSINESS

Your company has spent many months developing a new version of your system and now it is time to show it off to prospective customers. What is the best approach? How should you structure the demonstration for maximum effect?

To answer this question, we should first consider the reasons behind giving a demo. What is the demo meant to do? Is it to show how it works? Is to prove the technology works or is it to open your audience’s minds to new ways of working, to the potential of your system in providing solutions to their current business problems?

For most demos the objective should be the latter. To create a vision of success which you’re prospective customers can buy into. Where many people go wrong is in thinking that the demo is the place to show how it all works and to impress people with all the nifty technology which they have spent so long developing. People aren’t really interested in the technology; they are only interested in what the technology enables them to do.

Remember when you are giving a demo; you should be giving a demonstration of a solution not of a product.

This one statement affects the whole process of giving a demo. It means it is imperative that you establish up front, before you even start the demonstration, what problems people have, what their current situation is and what they would see as a solution to those problems. If you do not have a good understanding of this then it is unlikely that your demo will address their needs. So I recommend that you start by asking some questions so that you understand the problems your customer faces and the implications that those problems lead to. Only then will you start to understand what your prospective customer needs.

Now you know what problems the customers have, you need to map your technology on to how it helps solve those business problems and addresses the customer’s needs. There are probably a whole host of different things your system can do which will help the customer. Pick the most impressive one and do that first. Many demos that I have seen (and even some that I have done myself in the past), start by describing the environment, showing the background and then building to a climax. The problem with this approach is it can easily fall in to the frog in the pan syndrome. You know the old theory, if you drop a frog in a pan of boiling water it will jump straight back out, but if you put it in a pan of cold water and gently heat it, the frog will stay there until it’s cooked! If you build slowly to your climax then your audience get used to each small incremental jump and when you do reach your climax it will just be another small step.