I sat through yet another awful software demo recently.
It got me thinking of how bad most software demos are… and why they don’t have to be like that.
I’ve been part of all the aspects of software demos over the years. I’ve demoed to customers and large audiences software that my company sold, sometimes software that I’d written or designed. I’ve attended both one-on-one and large demos where I was the intended customer. I’ve run departments where I was the purchaser or final approver of software meant for others — some who worked for me but mostly for those who didn’t — and have had vendors present to me and the users, or sometimes to me hoping I’d call them back to talk to the users. I’ve even been a casual observer at various demos, sometimes because I was studying the demo techniques and others because if I sat through it I’d get some sort of tchotchke I thought useful at the time.
Most of those demos, frankly, were awful, a total waste of time for vendor and customer. Even the ones I gave 15 years ago weren’t very good, though I did figure out many of the issues over time and got a lot better at pulling them off, winning both smiles and sales.
In two weeks I’ll be attending LegalTech, the big legal-technology trade show. I’ll probably subject myself to at least a couple of dozen demos. I anticipate most of them will feel like having my teeth worked on… which was my activity this morning, in fact — and it was sitting in the dentist’s chair that made me think of this series of posts.
So between now and LegalTech, I’ll put up a series of posts about what’s wrong with the majority of software demos… and how to fix them.
You don’t have to be slick or smooth to deliver an effective demo to customers. If you’re doing the mass audience thing, smooth is a factor — think Steve Jobs — but it’s not a make-or-break issue by any means for demoing to a customer or a small group such as might cluster at your booth at a trade show.
I hope this stuff, drawn from my experience, will be helpful. I figure that the demo-target’s life I save may be my own.
