Don't bobble their heads
How Jane from accounting helped me discover the right way to show off software
Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash
Many years ago I stood before a crowd of mostly accountants ready to show off some slick new cloud-based financial software. The organization had already signed a deal to replace their aging accounting system so what I was showing off was coming to this group of people whether they liked it or not. Still, this felt a lot more like a sales presentation than a software demonstration because I knew that if they hated what they saw then the next 6 months were going to be miserable for me.
What happened next forced me to rethink how I ran demonstrations and has been benefiting me ever since.
Jane (not her real name) was sitting in the front row of the auditorium. My guess is that she was in her 60s and this was likely the only company that she had ever worked for. She had an old-school yellow legal pad and one of those Bic pens that every financial services company hands out. Behind her glasses were eyes that were nervous about what the future held - I empathized with that feeling completely as I had seen that look many times before while running these large transformation programs.
The guest internet connection in this room was awful and page loads of our “modern, scalable” solution were taking a really, really long time to complete. Like anyone standing before a room of people waiting for something to happen, my hand was shifting on the mouse back and forth frantically, almost trying to will a refresh of the journal entry I had just submitted. That’s when I noticed poor Jane’s head moving around like one of those cheap bobbleheads you get at a baseball game.
I moved the mouse up and down. Jane’s head nodded. I moved it again, left and right. Her head shook. I stopped moving. Jane sat idle.
Epiphany.
A better software demonstration
After the involuntary puppeteering I subjected Jane to, I sat down and mapped out how I might better serve a future audience attending one of my software demonstrations. I practiced, executed, and refined this approach to get to the guidelines I present to you today.
You should apply your own style to any presentation, but these rules will improve the quality of your work significantly.
Why are we here?
“Next up, Dale is going to show us the new API.”
Dale then proceeds to take over the screen. Say “hello” and show a command line interface of an API call. A few people say “Nice job,” but no one understands why that just happened.
Dale should have instead introduced himself, mentioned what his team does, and spoken about the business value that his demo was going to create. How much better is this: “Hi I’m Dale from the Business Productivity team and today I am going to demonstrate how we can use an API to reduce the time needed to process statement generation from the current 5 minutes per statement to less than a second.”
Now Dale is cooking with gas. He should also avoid a CLI-based demo. No one wants to see those.
The mouse holds the power
When the audience isn’t sure what to look at, they will look for something familiar and focus on it. If you treat the mouse like a jump to lightspeed, you will reward your audience the same way I treated poor Jane: with motion sickness. Make your mouse movement slow, but deliberate. Smoothly move from one area of focus to the next. Pause when you arrive and speak.
This is a guided tour of the software, not an opportunity to impress people with how fast you can fly through screens they have never seen before.
Practice one more time
The more complicated the demonstration, the more times you should go through it. Record yourself giving the demo and watch it back a few times. Take notes while you watch the recording. What did you like? What was uncomfortable?
There is no magic number, but I like a minimum of three for a demo that is 5-7 minutes long. The practice will surface unexpected issues and smooth out your delivery. If you can give the demo without any notes, then you are ready.
Speak a touch slower
If you have ever taken a public speaking course this recommendation will be familiar. When we are nervous we speak faster. The combination of listening to content they haven’t heard before and watching a presentation they haven’t seen before is already a lot of cognitive load on your audience. Slow your cadence down and let them keep up.
Live demos only
Pre-recording material doesn’t have the same impact. Yes, you need to account for more things going wrong, but you get a lot of bonus points for showing the goods. More importantly, by actually being in the software during the demo you can go off-script when a great question comes up.
I recall having the Controller of a large asset management organization challenge the way a certain software package handled foreign exchange rate conversions. Since I wasn’t just pressing play on a recording we were able to dive right into the question. That detour convinced this individual that the software worked and resulted in a major project for our firm.
That being said, recording the demo as a backup isn’t the worst idea (refer to “The curveball and the crash” at the end of this article).
Put yourself in the audience
If you were watching your presentation what questions would you ask? Spend some time trying to brainstorm the 3-5 most obvious questions anyone watching might have and then see if you can work those questions/answers into your presentation. This can be as easy as saying “You might be asking yourself X” and going from there.
If there isn’t a logical place to address the question proactively, come up with a well-formed answer in the event someone does ask the question. Being able to jump right into a topic that doesn’t feel like it was a part of the original presentation will build a lot of credibility with your audience.
Distraction-free is the place for me
Part of the reason you need to practice your demo is that you need to understand what you need for the demo itself. Are you staying on one application/window the whole time? Good, then it is easy, just share that. Do you need to switch between applications/windows during the demo? If yes, that means you might be sharing a full screen. Make sure you handle a few things to prevent any unfortunate distractions:
Quit any email clients and messaging apps that might generate notifications. No one needs to see that you used your work email to sign up for great deals on Bahamian cruises
Clean up your desktop. Do you have an endless number of files and applications on your desktop? Have you convinced yourself that this is somehow better for your work life than being organized? Get rid of all of them
Change the desktop background image to something generic. That artistic photo might be cool to you, but it breaks everyone’s concentration
Practice switching between the applications as a part of your preparation and make sure you understand the timeouts on windows so you aren’t logging back into an application. Your audience shouldn’t have their concentration broken by sloppy transitions.
The curveball and the crash
It’s impossible to anticipate every question that could be raised. Some people who attend presentations have these areas of focus that are so niche that no one is able to successfully present to them. Try not to improvise a response with something that ends up at a dead-end. Instead, thank the individual for the question, write down the topic, and promise to follow up with a well-researched response.
Similarly, if you demo software with any sort of regularity you will be blessed with an unexpected system crash, error message, or some other technical gremlin at some point. Everyone gets an opportunity to deal with this so don’t panic! It is a rite of passage in many ways. Acknowledge that whatever happened wasn’t supposed to and take 10 seconds to see if you can get back on script.
If you are completely dead in the water - break out that recording and finish up. Here the recording benefits you because you appear to be very prepared!
Exhale
Simply that: exhale. A few butterflies are OK, but don’t stress yourself out so much that you become stiff. Breathe slowly and calmly to keep yourself balanced.
Reminder
Demonstrations and Presentations are a great way to raise your profile and move your team forward. Maybe more important than all of the rules/guidelines above is this: do it a lot. Show off your work as much as you can, big or small. You will get better as a presenter and everyone will think you are insanely productive. That’s a win-win if I’ve ever seen one.
If you have any other great tips, I’d love to hear them!