EN 
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A Never Stop Learning! Article
In which we identify common challenges with overview demos and offer solutions. Warning: graphic and potentially painful content ahead!
What’s in This Article for You?
- A True Story
- The Typical Timeline
- Assessment Time!
- Solutions!
- Alternative Approaches?
- An Offer!
A True Story
“What’s he doing?” – Whispered my colleague in my ear
I was a third party joining a demo presented by a partner vendor to a large pharma prospect in Basel, Switzerland. The lead prospect player was the Head of Research IT, and he had assembled his team of a dozen folks for the demo, held in one of the prospect’s large conference rooms.
It was billed as an overview demo and was scheduled for two hours. My organization was present as we had a significant part to play, and we had the last twenty minutes in the meeting for our segment.
The vendor salesperson started the meeting by introducing their team and then began a corporate overview presentation. After ten minutes of slides, the Head of Research IT stood up, walked a few paces to the wall of the room, and methodically began to bang his head against the wall…!
Everyone in the room gasped as they watched this taking place. My colleague whispered, “What’s he doing?”
I responded, “I think he’s suffered through so many of these that he’s giving our partner a clear message: ‘Stop!’”
I asked the head-banger, in my limited Swiss German, “Would you like them to get to the software?”
He answered, “Ja, bitte…!”
The meeting went forward reasonably smoothly from there, but we all certainly learned a lesson! And here, for your inspection and amusement, are more…
The Typical Timeline
“Does that make sense?” – Nearly every vendor rep at some point in their career!
Here’s the rough but strangely consistent timeline for far-too-many web overview demos (with the timing for each segment shown on the left):
00:00: Fumbling with Zoom/Teams/Google Meet:
- “Looks like John/Sue/Page/whoever is just joining now…”
- “Can you see my screen?”
- “Looks like you’re muted…”
- “We’re hearing a really bad echo…”
- (This consumption of time was previously known as the “Webex Tax.”)
00:04: Introductions, but one-sided:
- Introductions and brief personal history of each of the vendor participants
- Occasional long personal story from one vendor rep (and a failed attempt at “building rapport!”)
00:07: Corporate overview presentation (gag!), including:
- Vendor’s mission statement
- Products and services (high level – see next section at 00.18 for more gore!)
- Product history and milestones
- Founders and origins story
- The vendor team (again but including slides!)
- Revenue history and financials
- Office locations
- Obligatory logos slide (with logos that have nothing to do with this prospect’s size or market!)
- Customer testimonials (the most useful part of corporate overview presentations, but often ignored by the vendor. Why?)
00:18: Product overview presentation (yawn), including:
- Obligatory architecture slide(s), with rectangles and cylinders representing software and database components (how novel!)
- Equally obligatory product-centric slide (showing the vendor’s product in the center of a circle of other things (e.g., users, other applications, process steps, you name it. So novel, once again!)
- Key “differentiators” presented without context to the prospect’s needs or specific situation (and largely forgotten by the prospect immediately afterwards!)
- Case studies that are skipped over “because we’re short on time…” (Too bad: Relevant case studies would be very useful!)
00:26: Actual demo, including:
- Slide that says, “Demo” (which lets the audience know that everything from this point forward is fake)
- Opening statement, “We planned on 45 minutes for the demo, but we only have 30 minutes remaining, so we’ll have to go really fast…”
- Followed immediately by, “But we want this be interactive, so please stop me if you have any questions…” (while the presenter is thinking, “But please don’t stop me because I’ve got so much to cover, and you’ll interrupt my flow…!”)
- Brief introduction of the plan for a “story” and five fictional characters whose “day in the life” will be followed in the demo
- Followed by a firehose-like delivery with the presenter speaking non-stop for six or eight minutes or longer (I saw an overview demo where the presenter went on for forty minutes non-stop!)
- Interspersed with, “Any questions so far?”
- Prospect’s response: “Nope, we’re good…”
- And “Does that make sense?”
- Prospect’s response: “Um, yes…” (What else could they say to that?)
- Overview of navigation elements
- Definition of vendor jargon, acronyms and product names (e.g., “What we call a __”)
- Comment that everything is configurable
- Comment that everything can drill-down to the underlying data
- Details on how to set up the application
- A walk-through of the workflow (a run-through, in fact, since time is really getting short)
- Exploration of as many “if”, “or”, and “also” options as possible
- Frequent references to, “Remember when I…” (that aren’t remembered)
- Zippy Mouse Syndrome mouse movements exacerbated by a tiny mouse cursor that can barely be seen with the naked eye
- Made even worse by the lack of use of annotation tools
- Made yet worse by the vendor presenting from a high-resolution monitor to audience members on laptops (“I can’t read the text…”)
OK, take a quick breath before diving into the next section (just like in a typical overview demo)!
- The occasional “piling on” of a feature description by the salesperson, immediately after a perfectly adequate explanation by the presenter
- Pre-answering questions that the vendor frequently hears (but weren’t asked)
- Driving “into the weeds” by a random question from a low-level prospect team member
- Cutting off prospect questions before the prospect finishes (because the vendor has heard the question so many times before)
- Not confirming that they answered the prospect’s question before moving on
- A rapid verbal description of the reporting and dashboard capabilities:
- Including the claim that “we have over 600 canned reports/dashboards…” of which a typical user might only consume a few!
- Discussion of broad report and dashboard creation and editing capabilities
- Repeated comment that everything can drill-down to the underlying data
- Repeated comment that everything is configurable
- Showing data that is obviously fake and/or lacks problems to solve, opportunities to exploit, or exceptions to investigate
- Comment that “we didn’t have enough time to show you everything…”
- No interim summaries: just a firehose furiously flinging features, functions, and facts
- No stories to improve the audience’s retention of key ideas
- No analogies or metaphors, either
- And, of course, absolutely no communication of value!
00:56 Salesperson summary, with platitudinal “value proposition” statements (that have little or limited bearing on this prospect’s specific situation)
00:58 Salesperson asks, “What do you think?”
- Prospect replies, “Well, I’m not sure…”
- Salesperson immediately offers a “deep dive” demo and a free POC!
Whew. Frightening, gruesome and remarkably common!
If the objective was to “show the customer a demo” then that objective was achieved, but it is doubtful that other tangible progress was made in the sale. Very sad and largely a waste of time for all involved.
How do your team’s overview demos compare?
Assessment Time!
“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.” – Mark Twain
Play a few recordings of your organization’s overview demos and see how many of the items above you or your team does today. Score one point for each item committed above.
Now for grading: How did you do?
0-5 Points: A – your demos are delightfully delivered (and you are likely a Great Demo! graduate!)
6-10 Points: B – your demos could improve
11-15 Points: C – your demos could really improve
16-20 Points: D – your demos should seriously improve
20+ Points: F – your demos qualify for membership in the “Sales Prevention Team”!
Sadly, most overview demos rate a C grade or worse. If you are comfortable with your results, read no further (and keep your expectations low!). However, if you would like to see improvement, here are some ideas…
Solutions!
“It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton
Fumbling with Zoom/Teams/Google Meet:
- Start your web session 10 minutes early to get prepared. (See Chapter 13 “Virtual Demonstrations” in Great Demo! for much more guidance!)
Introductions:
- Your prospect doesn’t care about you, the vendor, so don’t invest any significant time introducing your side. Instead, ask three simple questions of each prospect participant:
- What’s your name?
- What’s your job title?
- What’s your objective for this meeting?
This approach provides you with critical information and starts the demo by being all about your prospect!
Corporate overview presentation:
- Don’t. Just don’t! Your prospect wouldn’t have agreed to invest an hour with you if they hadn’t already vetted you as a vendor.
- But if you must (sigh), reduce it to a single slide and limit it to one minute. That’s all your prospect will tolerate!
Product overview presentation:
- Architecture slide(s): Hold these for later, if your prospect asks relevant questions!
- Product-centric slide: Ditto!
- Key “differentiators”: Insert into your discovery conversations, using Biased Questions (see page 183 in Doing Discovery)
- Case studies: Yes! Present when relevant for your prospect’s situation. These are often fabulous feedstock for Biased Questions, as well!
“Actual” demo:
- Slide that says, “Demo”: Remove (best!) or replace with a slide that reads, “Live Software” or similar.
- “We planned on 45 minutes for the demo, but we only have 30 minutes remaining…”: You won’t need to say this if you apply the ideas above!
- “We’d like this be interactive…”: Make it so by turning your demo into a conversation!
- “Day in the life story”: Don’t; they are ineffective. Instead, Do the Last Thing First. Share an agenda to keep everyone aligned and return to your agenda to summarize as you finish each “chunk.”
- Firehose-like delivery: Studies show that the most successful demos enjoy “speaker switches” an average of every 76 seconds. If you’ve been presenting uninterrupted for three or four minutes or longer, summarize and check-in with your audience!
- “Any questions so far?”: Consider alternatives such as, “Questions, comments, observations, your thoughts so far?”
- “Does that make sense?”: Ugh! Try “How does that resonate with you?” or similar.
- Navigation elements: Nope! That’s training.
- Vendor jargon: Nope ditto!
- Everything is configurable: Let your prospect ask! That’s how a conversation happens.
- Drill-down…: Again, let your prospect ask.
- Set up mode: Ditto! Far too many presenters squander time on things that are done once or are only of interest to the system administrator.
- Workflow walk-through: Reorganize your content so that the most important items are addressed first, as in a news article.
- “If”, “or”, and “also”: Each of these creates a branch in your demo, consuming time and making your offering look more complicated and expensive. Let your prospect ask!
- “Remember when I…”: Don’t, they won’t!
- Zippy Mouse Syndrome: Practice smooooooth and deliiiiiiiberate mouse movements.
- Tiny mouse cursor: See this post to fix!
- Text size: See this post.
OK, take a break and digest the above. When you’re ready, here’s your next course!
- Salesperson “piling on”: Don’t. Here’s the Role of Sales in Great Demos for guidance.
- Pre-answering Questions: Don’t; this is also known as “premature elaboration!” Let your prospect ask.
- Driving “into the weeds”: Manage questions with an elegant, professional process (see Chapter 8 “Managing Time and Questions” in Great Demo!)
- Cutting off prospect questions: Ditto.
- Closing questions: Make sure, don’t assume!
- Reporting and dashboards: These deliverables are often the most important elements of your offering: Do the Last Thing First!
- Showing fake or uncompelling data: Check out A Perfect Demo Environment for guidelines.
- “We didn’t have enough time…”: Now you will!
- Summaries: After every “chunk”, followed by a pause to encourage audience questions and comments.
- Analogies and metaphors: Use them: It’s like the difference between working in black and white vs living in color! (See what I did there?)
- Stories: Real, relevant stories are truly terrific! (See Chapter 14 “Storytelling” in Great Demo!)
- Communicating value: At the beginning, at the end, and throughout!
- Prematurely offering a “deep dive”: Time to do discovery!
- Prematurely offering a POC: Just don’t! (See Chapter 16 “Other Forms Of Proof” in Great Demo!)
- Salesperson summary: Use a Transition Vision conversation for the best results. (See page 108 in Doing Discovery for this!)
Alternative Approaches?
“There is always an easy solution to every problem – neat, plausible, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken
Avoid the overview demo entirely! Replace it with a discovery conversation by applying these self-rescue techniques:
- Persuade your prospect to participate in discovery, if possible, then you’ll be able to prepare a focused Technical Proof Demo based on what you’ve learned in discovery. Here are some ideas to help!
- Use a Vision Generation Demo to provide your prospect with just enough demo to satisfy their desire to “see what’s possible,” while moving them gently (but firmly) into a discovery conversation. Delightful and surprisingly effective! (See Chapter 11 “Vision Generation Demos” in Great Demo!)
This can reduce a 1-hour overview demo meeting to 15-20 minutes, in the case where your prospect is simply interested in exploring but doesn’t have a plan to purchase in the short-term. This gives you 40-45 minutes back in your day for each of these occurrences!
And when your prospect is earnestly interested in implementing a solution, you can perform a Vision Generation Demo followed by sufficient discovery to enable a focused, successful Technical Proof demo all within one hour!
In both cases, this approach satisfies your prospect’s desire to “see what’s possible,” avoiding the horror of Lead Churn.
- Use The Menu Approach, if your audience is a group and/or if your software addresses a range of solution or problem areas.
The Menu Approach is a very simple, elegant, extremely effective method to manage situations where you have many offerings or sets of solutions for a range of problems. (These are what often cause long, painful overview demos!) Check it out!
An Offer!
“There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.” – Mark Twain
I’ve provided answers and alternatives to the challenges of overview demos, and I hope you try the tips and explore the books, articles and blog posts I’ve listed.
But you cannot have a conversation with a book, an article or a post, so if you have questions on these ideas or encounter situations you’d like to discuss, you are welcome to contact me at PCohan@GreatDemo.com. I’d also be happy to review your demo(s) and provide feedback.
Even better, if you want to put these ideas into daily successful practice, consider enrolling yourself or your team in a Great Demo! or Doing Discovery Workshop.
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To learn the methods introduced above, consider enrolling in a Great Demo! Doing Discovery or Demonstration Skills Workshop. For more demo and discovery tips, best practices, tools and techniques, explore our books, blog and articles on the Resources pages of our website at https://GreatDemo.com and join the Great Demo! & Doing Discovery LinkedIn Group to learn from others and share your experiences.