I know of no harder place to do a software demo than a trade-show/exhibition-hall floor:
- It’s noisy.
- You have to figure out a strategy for getting people to stop at the booth and listen for at least ten seconds.
- The people who do stop will have different situations (contexts) and different needs… and some proportion won’t be your audience at all.
- You may have multiple viewers from different companies with radically different needs.
- People enter and leave the demos at different times; not all see it from the start.
- Most software is harder — and less exciting — to demo than Ginsu knives.
Here are some brief suggestions for dealing with each of these situations in turn.
- Noise. If the show floor allows it, get a sound system. These don’t have to be expensive; you can put together a wired lapel microphone, a preamp/amplifier with parametric equalizer, and two (ideally pole-mounted) speakers for $400. Here is a decent all-in-one system ($300), though I’d add a head-worn mic to replace the handheld one included with the system. I’d splurge on a good microphone, such as this one for $180. A step up would include a wireless mic… but at a show with lots of these, there could be interference issues; wired is clumsier but safer. Mount the speakers just above head height on the outside of the booth pointing toward each other and aimed down a bit for a single demo station; you have to get more creative for multiple demo stations in a booth. They shouldn’t be loud; you need just enough volume so that the person you’re talking to can hear you clearly over the show-floor noise level. Do not get into a sound war with neighboring booths! A good equalizer allows you to eliminate feedback (that screech when a microphone picks up and reinforces the sound from the speakers), but it also allows you to tune the system to emphasize the frequencies that make human speech distinguishable. Play around with settings before the show opens and then during the first 20 minutes of the show.
- Stopping power. What problem does your solution solve? If your booth’s signage is devoted to anything else, you’re in trouble. (Mostly. Some products are so well known, either generally, such as Microsoft Office, or in their particular field that the product name may become important.) People look more than they listen as they walk a show floor, glancing into each booth. A very large flat-screen monitor should also be essential these days; Wal-Mart sells a 46″ monitor for $630, and you can get a pretty good 50″ unit for $1000 at a number of stores. Mounting hardware, crating/shipping, and so on will add to the cost, but if people can’t see it, why demo it? Another option is to mount a number of 22″ LCD monitors around the booth if you have multiple demo stations; these are under $200 with wall mounts these days.
- Contexts: It’s a good idea to have a number of scenarios for different contexts — user, customer, champion, IT — that you can set up instantly and run through in 30-40 seconds. Show the one thing that makes the viewer’s life easier and better, especially if the show floor is crowded. Save the longer demos for when the floor isn’t crowded and you’ve got someone interested in what you’re selling. Even better, funnel that person to a private demo, whether in a suite or just elsewhere in the booth. Even in a basic 10×10 booth, you can have a couple of chairs for a private demo while the front-person continues with the public demos. Keep it simple for walk-by viewers. Most of all, make sure than anyone who stops for ten seconds can identify the problem your product solves. (“Anyone” means someone who has some sort of need for what you’re selling. If you’re selling an IT network-security solution, don’t worry about trying to make sense of it for a passing businessperson looking for an alternative to Office.)
- Random viewers: Ask what their biggest problem is, if your solution is more than a one-trick pony. Take the time-and-billing solution I wrote about recently. Once it’s clear that it is a T&B tool, ask whether the viewer is a timekeeper, on the financial side such as a billing coordinator, firm management, or IT. Then hit the 30-second make-your-life-better key scenario for that person. It’s okay to say to two viewers, “Great. Let me take 30 seconds to show [person 1] how MyTimeThingy makes less work for the timekeeper, and then I’ll prove to [person 2] how the firm can boost revenues by 5%.”
- In Medias Res (in the middle of things): 30 seconds, 30 seconds, 30 seconds. If your scenarios are clear, you identify the problem you’re solving, you solve it in 30 seconds or so, and you make clear it’s a brief demo cycle, someone who enters in the middle and has some sort of need around what you’re offering will stick with you until you can focus on them. Don’t get into a protracted discussion or ten-minute demo if instead you can funnel that person to a private demo/discussion. I know this is impossible for solo folks at a booth, and that there are times when even at a big booth you’re on your own during a presumed slow period just when two potential customers walk up. Here’s where the salesperson in you has to override the demoer and decide whether the potential sale from the long discussion outweighs the likelihood of the newcomer being a customer.
- It slices, it dices: Software simply isn’t as sexy as slicing a tin can and then a tomato with the same knife. The big-screen monitor and here’s-the-problem-we-solve signage can help. So can a salesperson who’s good at stopping people in the aisle — but you need to be ready to wow them in 20 seconds or so after she stops them.
There are exceptions to every rule. I once gave Bill Gates an unplanned demo at a trade show; I was happy to keep going as long as he was interested no matter who else was around the booth. On the other hand, I think the folks around the booth were far more interested in watching Bill than in what I was demoing anyway. (For the record, he spent about ten minutes watching and asking questions, which eventually led to my schlepping two 17-pound computers through airports as I described yesterday.)
