David Spark has a great piece up titled The worst product demonstration I’ve ever seen. It’s full of good advice on fit and finish around demos. I enjoyed his critique. One of the things that I would add to his comments is that you have to focus on the architecture of your demo. If you treat your demo as an interactive product sheet, then you’ll have a good foundation for a truly effective pitch.
After winning a DEMOgod award in 2006, Howard and I built a slide presentation that we delivered at BarCamp Ottawa to describe that architecture. Here’s how to knock your audience off their seats in 6 minutes or less (notes taken by Jay Goldman at BarCamp).
Architecture of a great demo
Hook
- 0:00 to 0:20
- State the problem (sometimes it feels like the whole world wants your attention)
- Engage the audience (we can’t help you with the co-worker who wants to sit in your office and chat)
Position
- 0:20 to 0:30
- My product is…
Prove
- 0:30 to 5:15
- Blow the crowd away with three big ideas
- Awesome! (killer feature 1)
- Awesome! (killer feature 2)
- Doesn’t suck (it’s easy, it’s inexpensive, etc. remove the one big objection people might have)
- This has to be the main focus of the presentation – show the entire product in detail
Close
- 5:15 to 5:45
- Synchronized blast to phones throughout the audience
- Smart closing lines
Pitfalls
- Trying to be too funny
- Some company did a terrorist sketch that wasn’t funny and no one remembers who they were – just the dreadful sketch
- It’s not about you and it’s not about your company – it’s about the DEMO
- One DEMO that could have been great was about an in-car entertainment centre but they spent the first three minutes on market position and on showing connectors on the back of the box
- Timing is everything
- 5:45 is only a :15 second
- Listen to your advisors
- Speed to cool is key – how quick can you get to the cool stuff?
- Practice, Practice, Practice
- iotum practiced about four times a day for two weeks before to get it totally slick
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