Like most of you, I have sat through hundreds of presentations and demos during my career. Most were horrible and few were good. Most of the time, I find myself thinking why I am wasting my time sitting in this room or call listening to this self serving sales person or consultant bragging about how great their company, solution or process is. I generally shutdown five minutes into the presentation and start checking my e-mails and doing “real” work. On the other hand, when the time comes for me to present or demo my ideas, I find myself doing exactly the same things that I loath about. Let me explain what I learned the hard way through several attempts.
Presentation and demos are inevitable. We all need to learn new concepts, solutions, processes and systems to keep our knowledge up to date. On the other hand, we have limited time. We have a thousand of things going on. Our attention is precious. We want to grasp these new ideas within the shortest time possible and understand whether they are applicable to our business or not. This is quite a high bar to meet.
Most sales people and consultants understand their solutions well. They try to bring you through their learning journey. They start explaining what needs to be setup, how transactions are executed and why the results matter. This is the most logical way for them to explain a new concept. In their minds, they are laying the wall brick by brick to support their ideas. This is the what – how – why cycle. I refer to this as the training flow. You start with what you need to setup, move on to how you need to transact, and finally show the results – the best moment you build up to.
Well, this is exactly the reverse order the audience prefers to consume the information. At the start, we want to see the results first. We need to be convinced that the results matter to us. If they matter, we will be drawn into asking the next logical question – how did we get these results? Once we understand the how, we then ask the final question – what do we need to setup? Thus, the flow is why – how – what. I refer to this as the demo flow. You show the results first and explain why they matter. Upon questions, you drill down to the transactional layer and show the how. Upon further questions, you show the what.
Demo flow is the complete opposite of the training flow. Most presenters look at the presentation from their perspective. They fall into the trap of picking the training flow to present a new idea. The audience are force fed through a long training journey. The build up takes time. Once the presentation reaches the results, the attention is lost. On the other hand, with the demo flow, you start with grabbing their attention first. You then jump from one layer to the next only upon questions. This helps the audience to drive the demo – not you. The audience consumes the information when they are ready. They are peeling the onion one layer at a time and feel in control.
A book that I will highly recommend is Great Demo! How to Create and execute stunning software demonstrations by Peter E. Cohan (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Demo-Stunning-Software-Demonstrations-ebook/dp/B001CHSSUO).