Demos Done Right - Momentum

At this point, the stage is set for the most amazing software demonstration. We have taken a moment to introduce ourselves, introduce the contents of the demonstration, and choose a starting location that is common ground for all participants. All this pre-work was discussed in the previous post. Now, all that needs to be done is execute.

As the features and functionality are presented, do your audience (and yourself) a favor and start slowly. Explaining how each step supports the business case, leaving plenty of space for comments and questions between your thoughts and commentary. Too often, I experience technical demos that feel like the presenter is a needy friend lacking confidence. The presenter will start by quickly pointing out a piece of work in the next breath as a question to the audience looking for feedback on what was just shown. Before anyone can formulate a sentence the presenter is already on to the next part of the demonstration. Making the performance worse by not speaking clearly or introducing jargon the audience does not understand. This gets repeated for 10 to 15 minutes and everyone is left baffled by what just happened.

By starting slow, you are giving everyone time to catch up to where you are mentally. Getting their "head in the game" so to speak. As the audience's body language shows signs of preparedness for the next steps, you then pick up the pace of the demonstration. Often in re-occurring demonstrations, you will have parties with different interests. As the demonstration crosses these boundaries of interest, you will want to decrease the pace for the new sub-section of the audience and continue the pattern of increasing the pace, as body language tells you.

While speaking directly to the audience choose precise language. Not so precise that only a PhD would understand, but precise enough to convey the idea without too many fillers. Choosing language that an inexperienced person on the topic would understand is what I chose for a level of precision.

When choosing language and precision; two examples from everyday life we can learn from, newspapers and interactions with medical staff. A news article has many parts, the headline, by line, excerpt, and the body. When presenting a concept, often the audience does not what the full body of the article. The body of the article is quite long with all of the details of the story. The closer we are to presenting the whole article the more likely we are going to lose the audience in the technical details. They also do not want just the headline, it is too short, is not actionable, and lacks context. The closer we are to presenting the headline, we are going to lose the audience due to lack of trust. As what they are hearing is lacking depth and understanding. What you want to present is the excerpt. Enough information to feel informed on the subject and sparring all the details. As the audience has a detailed question, the spacing and pace will give time to ask.

With the correct level of detail, we then look to our next example of medical professionals. Every day professionals in the medical industry have to articulate complex information to inexperienced people. One way they do that is by using language the patient (or family) understands. To spare the patient from feelings of stupidity, the medical professional chose the correct technical level to communicate. Through the patient interaction, the medical professional evaluates the patient's understanding of the material. Adjusting the language technicality up or down as necessary. What you will not hear is a medical professional spewing language straight from the medical textbooks without first explaining what is going on in common language.

Lastly, as you are presenting, it is important to be tuned into language that is used repeatedly. A common utterance that we often hear in many presentations, is "um...", or similar to fill the void of silence. Another common repeat in demonstrations is, "Any questions?". Whenever I hear either of these (or similar) repeated I hear the presenter communicating they do not know what to say next or they are struggling to get the engagement from the audience. All of these can be fought off by saying nothing at all. Leaving an opportunity for the audience to comment, and giving you a moment to set up the next part of the demonstration. That pause for 2 to 4 seconds between takes you from a presenter lacking confidence to a master.

In summary, slow down the demo. Give space to others to chime in. Speak at a well-understood level of technicality. Increase pace as the audience can handle it. Finally, watch for repeating language. In the next post, we will dig more into audience participation and some tactics to share the stage with them.