A Product Demo Field Guide
There’s a few components to a product demo. The content of the presentation itself. The nuts-and-bolt logistics of how you’ll physically present your content. And then there’s another aspect you have to plan for — the technical difficulties. The mishaps. The curve-balls.
The unexpected.
Though after having delivered a hundred some-odd product demos, these “unexpected issues” have taken a much more predictable air about them for me. In fact I’m pressed to think of a single presentation I’ve given where at least something didn’t go differently than planned.
We can’t know exactly what to expect during the course of a presentation. But we do know the general types of issues that arise, and we can position our presentations in a way that doesn’t allow these issues to unhinge them.
Below are three different ways to address the factors I’ve found to play a consistent role here. By using these frameworks when planning and producing a product demo, you can avoid a great deal of pitfalls that tend to surface while presenting.
3 Practices for Strong Product Demos
1. Limit the Variables
When planning a product demo, it’s understandable to want to “think big”. You want to wow your audience. Dazzle them. Give ‘em the real thing! And then before you know it, you’ve assembled a Rube Goldberg machine of moving parts. Variables that add extra degrees of risk in the successful execution of your demonstration.
But the thing is, the less moving parts you have in your presentation, the less opportunities there are for errors.
An elaborate show of function is not the aim of a product demo. Effectively communicating why a product is relevant, and how it can impact users should be the aim of a product demo.
Anything that jeopardizes that mission is a liability.
2. Establish Contingency Plans (and contingency plans for those too)
Once you’ve trimmed the fat of unnecessary variables, assess the remaining components and identify any possible stress points.
My bag of tricks I bring to all my demos
Play out all the scenarios in your head:
What if the WiFi network at a venue gets overloaded? Personal hotspot? Ethernet cable? Maybe I’d be better off using stored content, and not relying on having a connection at all.
What if the file gets lost? Cloud copy? Hard copy? USB Flash drive? USB-C adaptor for flash drive?
What if the device dies on stage? Backup device? Powered on, plugged in, with the demo up— standing by on another video input, just in case?
It only sounds paranoid until it doesn’t. Just ask Bill Gates…
Each demo has a unique environment and requires its own assessment. Creating an exhaustive set of contingency plans allows you to easily circumvent any “unexpected” malfunctions.
Establish and ready your plan B’s, C’s, and D’s (E’s and F’s if you have them). The more you have, the less stress you’re presentation will take on.
3. Improvise
It’s true. Even with a structurally sound presentation, and an alphabet full of backup plans at your disposal. The best laid plans go awry.
But that’s okay. It’s part of the gig, really.
Stay loose.
Now, onstage, is not the time to be rigid. Stubbornly trying to execute your original plan, when circumstance calls for impromptu adjustments, will only make things worse.
Equip yourself with the advantage of expecting to improvise. Planning on it. Anticipating the moment when you’ll need to think on your feet, briefly.
By simply realizing beforehand that you’ll likely be called upon to make small adjustments throughout your presentation, you’ll enhance your ability to make small adjustments throughout your presentation. Everything from needing to do your demo in half the planned time, to adapting to glitches.
Demoing “What song is this?” on X1 for 2018 Olympics
I can remember a product demo I gave where the audio wasn’t working. Naturally, the product being demo’ed had a feature that allowed the user to ask the device what song was playing. Well, given there was no audio the audience couldn’t hear the song playing. But instead of distracting the audience, from the feature itself, with our technical difficulty, I just talked around it.
Something to the effect of, “Now, if you hear a song you like, you can ask the device… and the song will appear on the screen.”
Looking back, maybe it was better that way. Maybe… by not having the song playing, the audience was able to focus on the feature more intently, rather than on the song itself.
Either way, the presentation was fine.
Improvisation is a small but useful tactic to the smooth execution of a product demo.
Demoing X1 App at Industry Conference
Hopefully these concepts seem obvious, in part, to most people. The concepts, themselves, are not the key here. The key, here, is deliberately integrating these features into the preparation and production process. When utilized as a cohesive playbook, these approaches can keep even the most sabotaging of issues from the audience’s attention.
Keeping the focus on the product.
Preston Smalley produced in collaboration with Mark Mizera