Although this is based on my experience of enterprise product demonstrations, most of the notes are applicable to any sort of demonstration or presentation. So, it does not matter if you are doing the keynote speech at a big conference or an informal talk at your local village hall, there are probably a few things here that might be useful.
A great demo will not win an enterprise deal for you. It might win a $25k deal if you are lucky but not a $500K deal. A bad demo can wreck any deal no matter how big. In an enterprise deal, the demo (or more likely demos, proof of concept, and maybe pilot) really just confirm that the business solution is possible with the product you have to sell. Don't screw it up.
PPPPP
Almost everything that makes a demo great happens before the demo takes place. Always consider the five Ps. Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. I have also heard, "failing to prepare is preparing to fail". Both get the idea across. That means find out what the prospect would like to see, what they don't want to see and their technical level. Decide which slides to use as introductions, what you will show in what order and then rehearse it all to make sure you fit everything you want to say in the time available. Remember to adjust your timing to allow for questions and interruptions.
I was often asked about how to help with nerves before a big presentation. It is OK to be a little nervous. After all a half a million dollar deal might hang on your every word. I always told nervous people to over prepare and rehearse many times in front of colleagues as much as possible to iron out all the little issues. There is nothing better to build demo confidence than a load of practice. There is nothing worse than doing a very important demo to some very important people having not practiced at all.
It must be perfect
1 + 1 = 2
2 + 2 = 4
3 + 3 = 5
4 + 4 = 8
5 + 5 = 10
It does not matter that only one of these is incorrect and 80% are correct; the incorrect one is the one everybody will notice. You can show 10 great things in your demo and screw up on one of them. Everybody remembers the mistake. Did I mention preparation?
Avoid a mixed audience
It's great for a prospect to assemble all the interested parties in one big meeting but mixing technical and non-technical (let's call them marketing) people in the same room can lead to problems. A lot of technical questions from the back of the room about database versions can make the marketing people at the front switch off and start updating their Facebook status.
If possible, have two sessions. In the first session show the user/marketing/non-technical part to everybody, and in the second session just have the technical people. If any technical questions are asked in the first session, put them off until the second session. Tell everybody in the first session, that is exactly what you are going to do.
Tell them what you are not telling them
It is unlikely that you will be given enough time to show all the product features as this will probably take several days. Introduce your demonstration with a slide listing the things you will not show today. It lets the audience know that your product is much richer than the 60 minutes worth you will be showing and it provides an opportunity to be invited back to show the items you are not showing today.
I'm sorry, I haven't a clue
Well, this is probably not the best response to a question for which you do not know the answer but do not be afraid to admit you don't know. Make a note and get back to them. Never make up an answer. The Gods of demos will frown upon you and make sure that answer comes back to bite you later. Getting back to a prospect after the meeting also gives you an opportunity to obtain feedback and is a good excuse to keep the dialogue going.
In the worst case, hesitating, looking flustered, and nervously making up an answer might make your audience think you are the person from sales.
Don't show what you don't have to show
It's always tempting to try and cram as much into a demo as possible but remember the demo is there to confirm what you have already told the prospect, that is, the product you are selling can solve their business problem. (As an aside, if your prospect has been told nothing about the product when you start the big demo, then something is seriously wrong with your sales process. This is enterprise sales, not the stack them high and sell them cheap demo to glory.)
Introducing unnecessary additional features can lead to additional questions and investigations. At best, this will delay the deal. At worst you could introduce something the prospect does not like and kill the deal completely.
Know your teammate
If you are going into the big demo all on your own, something is terribly wrong. Enterprise sales is done by a team of people. You should be doing your big demo with at least one teammate.
I am using the term teammate here but the term wingman is also often used. When I was doing enterprise demos, the majority of people were men but there were also women who were great at doing demos. The term wingman was used regardless of gender. Most sales people don't care about the gender, skin colour or religion of the person who does the demo so long as it helps close the deal before the end of the quarter.
Don't demo on your own in front of a live audience. Have a teammate as your second pair of eyes. You will be concentrating on clicking the right buttons and typing so the chances are you will miss a lot of the visual clues from your audience. For example, if somebody in the audience looks like they did not quite understand something but are not confident enough to shout out, you will miss it. That's where your hawk-eyed teammate can spot the problem and address the person in the audience to make sure everything is OK. Even if the teammate does not want to call out a member of the audience specifically, they can say something like, “that's a really key point, can you just cover that again to make sure everybody got it”. Your teammate can also make notes on who looks positive, neutral or negative. You now have a list of people you can work on later. The chances are your roles will swap and you will be the teammate whilst your partner does their part of the presentation.
Vocabulary
Make sure you use the same terms as the prospect. This is not just using terms associated with the prospect's business, such as compliance rather than workflow. Sometimes a seemingly innocuous term can lead to confusion. For example, the term “template” is used a great deal in content management for different things. Some software vendors use the term template as a way to define the components of a content item, some use it to describe the process of rendering the content as a page, and others use it to describe the process of creating multiple content items as a way to clone a hierarchy of content. It can also be confused with an MS Word template. Your prospect has probably had demos from a few vendors so don't assume they understand all your terms.
Rehearse questions
You know what your audience wants to see, you have prepared exactly that demo but what is it they might ask. As an exercise, make a list of all the questions you think your audience might ask as a result of your demo and make sure you have good answers to all of them. You will never come up with every question they might ask but you will come up with some of them and it will save valuable thinking time in the demo. Your list of questions might even prompt you to revise your demo somewhat to save them being asked in the first place.
Timing is everything
The amount of time required to prepare a demo is inversely proportional to the amount of time you have to deliver the demo. If the prospect gives you three hours for the demo, you have the luxury of showing a great deal of product functionality and occasionally going off-piste. If the prospect gives you 20 minutes to show everything, you need to be word-perfect and as smooth as possible with no hiccups.
You do demos all the time, prospects only look at demos every so often. Typically, a prospect will collect together all the topics that the key people would like to cover. The prospect also finds there is only a one hour time slot where all the key people are available. Without thinking about their own maths, the prospect has asked you to cover 20 points in 60 minutes. Don't be afraid to push back and point out that to cover every topic you have been asked to address, each topic has to be covered in 3 minutes and some of the topics include showing a complex workflow with 4 different user roles and another topic is to cover the whole of eCommerce.
If you think you can get away with it, refuse to do the demo. In most cases, the prospect will find this very unusual and they might reconsider what they are trying to achieve. If the prospect understands your concerns but insists you do the demo anyway, then you should take notice of this warning flag. Does the prospect want you there to just make up the numbers? Is your product being shown as a comparison to the rival product the prospect really wants? Would your best strategy be to qualify out of this deal and spend your time working on a different one? This is a very tough call to make and only the bravest of sales people can do it.
Also remember that if you push back on the prospect, explaining it is a waste of everyones time to cram so much into a demo, the prospect will have a problem as well. The prospect has just assembled a room full of the key people and now the prospect has to explain to them why one of the vendors has dropped out because they feel the procurement process is flawed.
Tell, show, tell
Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you have just told them. Launching into a well-rehearsed demo is almost certain to confuse the audience. You do demos all the time and you understand everything about this demo. The audience is probably seeing your product for the first time. This is all new to them. Before you even open a web browser, the audience needs to understand exactly what it is you are going to show and how it fits into their business. This is best done with a presentation outlining the flow so everybody understands what they are going to see. It's worth splitting the whole demo up into these short chunks so at the end of each chunk, you can summarise what has been shown (probably with the same slide) with the opportunity to ask questions.
Mix and match
You have access to many different demo paths within the same demo. Every demo you do should be tailored to the audience. However, this does not mean you need to create a custom demo for everything. If the audience understands what it is you are going to show and how this forms part of their business process you can show a small part of a much larger demo to illustrate the point. For example, take the workflow part of the content creation demo, combine that with the second part of the social messaging demo, and add the analytics part of the email demo. One unified custom demo is better but we don’t always have the luxury of time to craft this.
So what?
As an exercise, you should put yourself in the position of the audience and ask yourself “So what? Why is that important to me?”. If you cannot give a good answer for every part of your demo, you should probably consider changing your demo.
Slow down!
It's the big demo. You are full of adrenalin. You are ready to go. Unless you control yourself, you will do your demo at 500 miles per hour and nobody will understand a word of it. This is particularly important if any of your audience does not speak English as their first language. As soon as you hear a foreign accent you should be switching to a lower gear. Even if everybody speaks English fluently, there are still many differences in colloquial phrases and accents. The US and UK are often described as two countries separated by the same language. If someone in your audience is "pissed", that can be two very different problems depending on if you are British or American. Your teammate can help a lot here identifying those who are having difficulty understanding what you are saying.
Don't forget to show your product
Sometimes a demo can concentrate too much on the customer journey interacting with multiple channels and receiving a personalised and engaging experience. This might be a long 20 minute demo flow that looks very pretty but all you have really shown is how people use the web. The prospect probably already knows that. At each stage of the customer journey, it is important to show how the product helps achieve this journey and how easy it is for content and marketing managers to create these journeys. Keep in mind “this is what the customer sees and this is how it is achieved with the product”.
Two ears, one mouth
You are keen to show everything to the prospect so sometimes you are tempted to try to finish your point even when someone in the audience interrupts you. Don't. If they are talking, they are not listening to you and you are wasting your breath. For the same reason, it's almost never a good idea to interrupt a prospect. One possible exception is, “I'm sorry to interrupt, but the office seems to be on fire and we should think about leaving”. It is also bad form for your teammate to interrupt you or you to interrupt your teammate - even if they are on fire. Always remember we were given two ears and one mouth and there is a very good reason for that, which is, because we are supposed to listen more than talk.
If I had to do this again
The demo is done. On your way back to the office, you should always ask yourself, “if I had a chance to do that demo again, what would I do differently?”. It might be that you found out some information in the meeting that you should really have discovered before the meeting. It might be that you need to buy a set of projector adapters to cater for even the most archaic of projector equipment. Asking yourself these questions always improves your performance. If the answer to the question is, “I would not have changed a thing”, then well done!