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Demo Environment #1: The Live Demo

September 3, 2018 /

One of my favorite recent movies is The Greatest Showman.  It’s just so much damn fun!  For the uninitiated it’s a movie loosely based on the life of PT Barnum.  Barnum famously said: “No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.”  The live demo, where you are onsite, live and in person, presents the greatest opportunity to stand out from the crowded competition.  Here are my top 5 tips for when you are live and in the flesh presenting to a single company.

  • Give them a taste – There’s no faster way to bridge a prospect from where they are to what might be than letting them get behind your keyboard and try it for themselves.  I talk more about this in my Designated Driver Demo post so I’ll leave it at that.
  • Use Props – Built an analogy into your presentation?  Why not have the actual item physically there.  I used to use an analogy comparing different categories of reporting solutions to an oven, a stove, and (dramatic pause) a toaster (pull an actual toaster out).  It always go a good laugh while driving home my point that our solution was as easy to use as a toaster.
  • Have Giveaways – Ever find the attention of certain audience members drifting away?  It’s hard to drift away when a Hershey bar could come zinging by your head at any moment.  I use trinkets or candy to keep people engaged.  Ask a thoughtful question?  Get some chocolate. It may seem cheesy at first but it’s always entertaining to see people fight over who gets the dark chocolate over the granola bar.  Plus a little jolt of sugar never hurt!
  • Move it! – “I like to move it move it.  I like to move it move it. We like to…”  I bet you finished that lyric!  Damn that song gets stuck in your head.  Anyways I digress.  Presenting live in front of a group can be unnerving even for the most seasoned SC.  One way I see this manifest is that people get tethered to the podium like a security blanket.  You’ve got to cut the lifeline and move around the room.  I once saw another SC start slowly walking all the way around the conference room.  It was super creepy, but captivating at the same time.  Sometimes I will just pick up my wireless mouse and in a jovial manner, plop down across the room among the audience members and do some of the demo seated next to them.  It breaks up the monotony and creates a personal connection with the prospect.
  • Come early; Stay late – Login early to a web demo and you’re probably just going to check your email.  Come early to a live demo to 1. make sure the AV and WiFi works, but more importantly build relationships with the early bird audience members that wonder in.  You can get more intel you can incorporate into a demo in 5 minutes face to face with the staff accountant than you can with an hour on a discovery call with the CFO sometimes.  And stick around after the demo to get some feedback and intel from the prospect coach. I’ve gotten more insight from them standing by the elevator than anytime else.  One trick you can use is to purposefully schedule the demo a half hour long so that their calendar is booked and they don’t have to run off to another meeting.

I hope you found a nugget or two that will help you stand out from your competition.  Stay tuned for Part 2 : The Web Demo.

Next: The Web Demo

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