Debilitating Demo Diseases – Rambleitis - Great Demo! and Doing Discovery

Debilitating Demo Diseases – Rambleitis

Symptoms:

No pauses, no breaks, no interaction with audience; an unceasing talk track. Often compounded by Conjunctionitis, fits of Whooping If, and Zippy Mouse Syndrome. In moderate cases, Speaker Switch times take place after five or six minutes; in more severe cases Speaker Switches may exceed eight to ten minutes or not take place at all.

Examples:

“I’ll start by showing navigation, then go through all the workflows, then show you how to set up the system, and finally I’ll go through the configuration options and, if we have any time remaining, we can look at building some reports…”

“OK, now let’s look at how to…”

Cure:

Break your demo into discrete consumable chunks. Introduce each segment, execute it, and close each chunk with a crisp summary, then pause. Causatively interact with your audience using phrases like “What do you think so far?” and “Questions, comments, observations?” at least once per segment, at the end, and repeat as frequently as needed.

An older cure, still applicable in extreme cases, is to place the patient in an ice bath until talk-track subsides.

Consume Great Demo! through page 236. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

 

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