Demonstrating a piece of software? Consider not using the software.

Ever taken one of those marketing surveys that asks, “How involved are you in the selection and purchase of new software for your company?” Where the responses range from “Not at all involved” to “L’etat c’est moi”? Well, I spent a number of years in that last category, at least for the department I was running. In that position, I watched plenty of software demonstrations. Almost every one of them used the software product itself as the presentation platform. Which kind of says it all: unless your product is in fact a presentation platform (and possibly even then) you might want to look very carefully at whether your product is really the best possible tool for showing your audience about the product.

It’s a subtle distinction to be sure, but time and again I have watched as a demonstrator’s monologue wandered off into description of function or capability or benefit that their audience could not see, and their product could not actually make apparent. Because their product was not built as a presentation platform for its own sales pitch. It was built to do what it does. So that is all the product itself can demonstrate: what happens when you use it. That is all the audience can see on a screen.

Very likely you, as a demonstrator, have a lot more that you want your audience to know about the product than just what happens on the screen. So why try to do one thing—communicate to your audience information and features and benefits and background—with a software product that was not designed to do that?

Imagine you have a product that performs some highly complex operations on collections of emails (like weeding out the junk mail from my online inbox; can we get a product that does that, please?). A click here and a click there, and something very specific happens on the screen. You, as demonstrator, want your audience to know that a lot is going on behind the scenes between those clicks, so that they can a) trust it is doing the right things, and b) be duly impressed by all the complexity and sophistication built into your product. But all the product can do is show those two clicks. It cannot serve as a visual aid for all the marvelous engineering you want your audience to know about. That would be the role of some other product—like PowerPoint, or Visio, or the like—not your email-processing product.

Yes, there is certainly a need and a place for your audience to see what your product looks like when it is doing its job. But “its job” was never to serve as its own demonstration tool.

So it is worth your while, when planning a demonstration (especially a “sales demonstration”), to take a step back from the product itself and make sure you are using the most appropriate tools to display and convey the message you want your audience not to miss.