The art of the demonstration…

It seems like I’ve seen more than my fair share of CRM software demonstrations of late. We’ve been involved in several vendor selection exercises and have been sitting through a lot of presentations as a result. So for any vendors who happen to be passing my thoughts on the keys to a successful demonstration:

Understand the customer – it’s a real turn off when half way through the demonstration it becomes clear the vendor hasn’t got the slightest notion about the business the customer is in and the issues they are trying to address. There’s no real excuse for this – prospective customers are generally more than happy to talk about their businesses in advance of the demonstration, and they will remember those that took the trouble to do their homework.

Keep it relevant – if the customer doesn’t do mass email marketing, and has no intention of ever doing so, then focusing on the wizzy email campaign management features in your software is not going to get you much applause. The issue of relevancy takes me on to another pet peeve – if you are demonstrating to a UK customer doesn’t it make sense to use a demonstration database that is tuned to the local market and doesn’t showcase US companies with US addresses? Going back to point one – customer want to feel vendors understand them and their businesses, the demonstration needs to reflect this. This does raise a question in my mind as to what extent vendors should customize their demonstrations. It strikes me it’s like jumping between high buildings – it’s something best done well or not at all. I’ve seen vendors who have clearly spent a huge amount of time customizing their demonstrations according to their perception of how the potential client’s business should operate (rather than how it really operates) and end up showcasing their lack on knowledge rather than gaining brownie points for the trouble they’ve taken.

Differentiate – it’s surprising to me how infrequently vendors successfully differentiate themselves. I’ve sat through a series of demonstrations of late with every vendor positioning their key strength as being ‘ease of use’. Skipping the fact that vendors tend to be rather product obsessed (skating over what I would consider to be the rather more important implementation dimensions) it does seem to me that vendors could do a lot better job of explaining ‘why them’ and backing it up with credible evidence that supports their assertions.

Use time well – if you’ve only got an hour to make your presentation then make sure it’s paced to allow you to make the points you want to make well. Too often I see vendors drift around for 55 minutes, then realizing the clock is against them try and cram all their key points into a frantic last five minutes – which brings me to my last point –

Keep it simple – because vendors know their applications inside out, there’s a tendency to assume everyone else is on the same page. I don’t think vendors can go to too much trouble to check their audience fully comprehends what they are seeing on the screen. I don’t think vendors fully appreciate how easy it is for audiences to get ‘lost’ when they are looking at an application for the first time.

Ultimately the purpose of a presentation is to communicate rather than demonstrate. Get that wrong and all too often you will hear the ‘great dem, fantastic software, but a probably more functionality than we need’ compliment that signals your endeavors have been in vain.

ShareThis