Stop calling it a DEMO as a demo, is a one way street.
You’ve been invited to sit at a technology demo by a supplier. Perhaps some new features of the platform you already use or a completely new platform your company just bought or…better yet, you yourself initiated the demo with an existing technology supplier. The demo is scheduled for an hour and sometime in the next couple of days you need to make the decision whether to buy this technology or go with another one.
Demo begins. It is Friday afternoon. People in the room. Sales person dancing by the screen with his techie side-kick right next to him. Budgets go into it, ROI, your team will be working on it, data will be flowing and yet….after about 21 minutes into the demo you find your mind wandering somewhere to other things you need to do this weekend. You look around and your colleagues around the table have all been staring at their smartphones except for Jim, your geeky IT guy who simply, bluntly…fell asleep. And this is only because his iPhone is at the shop being fixed.
Sounds familiar?
We can blame the fact that we don’t REALLY care as it’s a work thing. We can look into the fact these guys have been pitching for 21 minutes straight (19 of which in the most monotonous voice). We may consider it is 1:34 pm now and we just came back from lunch and everyone is sleepy or even ponder around the notion of TGIF.
There are so many methods to pitch in a more interesting way, to demo technology and captivate your audience. Full libraries around the psychology of listening, brain breaks, DISC assessments and what not. And I urge you all to read as much as you can about it, understand it as it’s all true and very helpful. However, what I would like to point out here is the mere basics of the terminology. A demo. You gave a demo TO the team…, they sat in a demo DELIVERED by…, I demoed this TO them. However, you spin it, a demo is, by definition, a one-way type of communication. Someone presenting to someone else. One-way communication. Of course, there may be questions at the end but this is at the end, and as a response to what was already….demoed….in a one directional form of communication.
