Takeaway: Look out for your colleagues and step in when they need support
“What happens if you click that link in the corner?”
I was asked this question during a demo, by a hostile audience member. This person (who I later learnt was a supporter of our competitor), was not impressed that I was showcasing our software using only a static, click-though demo. She seemed determined to make us look bad and kept heckling me, to the point where I lost my temper when she challenged me again about not using a live demo.
This difficult and painful demo experience occured early in my Presales career. I was asked to showcase our project and portfolio management software to an audience at a large Telco. I was confident with the software and the subject matter and at the time had two demo options available to me: a live demo environment running as a virtual machine (VM) image on my laptop, or a canned click-through demo that we called a Fast Tour (Essentially a html mockup of the application using real screen shots, but with static data and a limited set of navigation paths).
The Fast Tour was very useful for initial customer and prospect meetings, as it was quick to launch and easy to talk to. I would always explain that it was a static demo, and would position a live, tailored demo as the appropriate next step, if the customer wanted to explore our solution further. Getting the live demo started and running smoothly could easily take 10 minutes, due to the need to start up the image, launch the application, then login to pre-cache the web pages and avoid slow wait times during the actual demo. So I tended to prefer using the Fast Tour when I could.
Prior to this demo at the Telco, I talked with the Sales Rep for the account and also a Sales Specialist who was involved, to understand the goals and expectations of the meeting. It sounded like an initial introductory or educational type session to a small group of people, and they advised that the Fast Tour would be sufficient. I distinctly asked my colleagues whether the Fast Tour would really be appropriate, and they gave me a confident “Yes”. You can guess where this is going.
What made this a difficult demo wasn’t just the heckler in the audience. First, the audience was much larger than I had expected (about 20 people) and they had come expecting to see our product in action, not just get an introductory overview. I was caught out by a misalignment in expectations. This was the classic scenario that demo trainers warn us about. I had not spoken directly to any customer stakeholders and had relied instead on the sales team. (The Sales Reps were experienced, so I suspect they were also caught off guard by the larger audience.)
So even if I had followed best practice and met with the customer beforehand, it may not have avoided this situation. These days, I do my best to speak to the customer several days before a demo, or to at least get more information from sales about who will be attending. The other thing I have got better at doing is using the opening 5 minutes of a meeting to understand who is in the room, and what they want to get out of the session. I can then tailor my message and demonstration appropriately, as well as managing their expectations before I launch into the presentation.
For many years after this experience, I only delivered live demos. I had been badly burnt and felt more confident having the flexibility of a live environment at my disposal, even though the setup was more painful. There was also risk: one time I was all ready to go and accidentally powered-down my laptop by pressing the power button with my arm, requiring another 10 minutes to get it back up and running! These days, I don’t do many demos, but when I do I use an always-on SaaS environment, which makes it very easy to get started.
The second thing that made this a painful experience was that when I started getting harassed and became flustered, neither of my sales colleagues backed me up. They both remained silent, leaving me to handle the situation on my own. Maybe they had full confidence in me, but this was actually the thing that made me most upset after the demo was finished. What I wanted was for them to speak up, support me and smooth the waters. Especially as I blamed them held them responsible for directing me to use only the Fast Tour, and not a live demo, and they were the ones who had previously met with the customer. Even remembering and writing this now, I’m feeling annoyed. When I angrily challenged the heckler back with “Yes, I can get a live demo running right now if I have to!”, I feel like it should have been obvious to them that I needed help.
I’m not completly sure what the advice for avoiding this sort of situation is here. Maybe it’s something that can get covered in rules-of-engagment discussions between Sales and Presales. One suggestion is for Presales and Sales to have some agreed signals: for example, moving a bottle of water on the table, asking if your colleague would like a glass of water, or having an agreed code word for “help!”. This sort of thing is easier to develop if you are regularly working with the same Sales Rep, so may not be practical.
A tangible action we can take is to be the one to step in and assist when a colleague is struggling or being pressured. Making a few comments or re-directing the conversation can give your teammate time to pause and gather themselves, before continuing on. It’s not always easy to judge the timing, and I’m the first to say that having sales people interrupt me is annoying, but we work best when we work together as a team, and that means looking out for each other.
What has been your most diffucult demo? What did you learn?
Thoughtful Presales 