Preamble
Whether you’re sharing a cool new tool with colleagues, or selling enterprise software to C-Suite fortune-500 execs, there is an art to demonstrating software in an impactful way, and it’s harder than you might think at first.
Below is a list of principles that I’ve found ring true no matter the audience, the content or context, ordered roughly by how important I find them to be.
Principles of a good software demo
Anchor yourself to the “So What!?”
This idea isn’t novel, many people refer to anchoring yourself to value and while that’s the essence, I find this perspective from my mentor to be very effective in getting to the point.
During all moments possible, in prep and live, ask yourself (as if you are your audience) "So What!?".
The point here is that the answer to that question is the thing you most need to convey. Often times, that could be quantitative value in $, other times it could be qualitative time-savings or efficiency benefits.
Either way, the critical thing to anchor yourself to is your audience’s perspective of “why do I care about this?“.
Don’t show how the sausage is made
Even if your audience explicitly asked to see how it works, or how it comes together, they don’t need to see how it works. Not yet.
The "how" is only of interest to your audience after they've already come to believe that what you're showing is for them!
Refer back to “So What”. Focus on value, on outcomes, on benefits, and only resort to showing the “How” once your audience has already committed themself to the belief that this IS for them.
I prefer to backlog the sausage making showcases to second or third steps, only once you’ve won the hearts and minds.
With this all said, don’t avoid showing them how they will use the system. They need to see themselves using the tool, and understand how they will use it for their work. Be careful here, stay only to critical elements of a day in their life, and don’t delve into the “how it works”. This is key to differentiate.
Show the last thing first
This one comes straight from Great Demo
I’ve gone back and forth with it a few times and come to my own understanding of this principle.
The point, I find, is to start your demonstration with the final outcome. Show your audience as quickly as possible the screen/feature that is the most final culmination of all the things you’re about to show.
Only AFTER seeing the destination, will your audience be willing to come along for the journey.
If you try to run your demo in sequential logical order (which is natural for engineers) you will quickly lose your audience because they don’t understand the destination, nor the point.
So, show them the outcomes, the destination, the “So What”. And THEN you can go through the journey in getting there.
Importantly, don’t devolve to sausage making! Still remain focused on the “So What”, but when showing the journey you’re now able to show the high impact but lower-level features/functions they’ll see along the journey to the destination.
End on something exhilarating
Nothing kills a great demo like ending on something ill-defined or boring.
Always aim to end your demo either at the last thing (you already showed first), or at least on some call to action that will leave them wanting to jump in head first.
Slides are a double-edged sword
Slideware can be highly impactful, when used the right way.
Most people though use slides to compensate for lacking demo material, and there is nothing that will lose an audience faster than a slieu of slideware and talking.
Use slides sparingly, in ways such as:
- Set the table early.
- Set expectations, and baseline context needed for the demo they’re about to see
- Reference material, either useful as an overview or a leave-behind to keep the content fresh in mind
- Diagrams!!
- A GOOD diagram goes a LONG way to helping your audience understand what you’re showing them
- Be careful though, because a complex or boring diagram can do more harm than good
Final thoughts
This list is something I’ve been meaning to make for a long time as I train more people and get questions about this subject.
I’ll iterate on it over time, so this list & order may change.
At the end of the day, a good demo is one that leaves both the audience AND the presenter excited for what comes next.