Pages

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Product demonstration – getting the act right!

Having arrived early for an appointment, I decided to window-shop at the Home Life furniture store. As I walked through the store, I actually found myself looking at how the furniture was arranged and mentally mapping this to a similar requirement at home. I did not find cots on sale – there were bedrooms for sale! Even a simple looking bedspread was looking regal amidst a chest of drawers, a grand mirror and a dressing table – the "room" dressed up in pastel shades!

The product presentation happened to be about a pre-press editing tool. The presenter was, I assumed someone who happened to know all the features of the product – obviously someone very passionate about the product, because soon after introducing herself she launched into a spiel on the product, using jargon which I'm sure none of the editors sitting in the audience could make head or tail of. And then she proceeded to type into the notes section "sldkfsld hfsh sdhfsldh fskld"!!! Here I am watching a product demonstration for a pre-press editing tool, and wondering what the author would make of such a note sent to him! This sadly, seems to be the favorite phrase of most software engineers who make product presentations. Even as I watched this product presentation, I could not help thinking about the neatly organized furniture just two floors below, which gave a wonderful sense of how the furniture would actually 'perform'!

I'm sure the company had done a lot of research on the requirements and had indeed developed a product that may cater to this audience. But somehow, sitting over there, I got the sense that she had lost her audience and was so consumed by the beauty of the product and was totally oblivious to customer perspective. Well, there was cocktail and dinner to follow, so they sat patiently waiting for her to complete before making a beeline to the food counter! I wonder if this lecture-cum-demonstration session yielded any results for this company.

Looking at the whole event in retrospect, I wonder how she might have reached to the audience better:

So what does the customer really want?

Quite often we get so carried away by the product features and its configurability, that we tend to forget what the customer really wants. Any customer would want to see in a product something that will help him in his work, something that fulfills a need – basic or hedonistic. Either way, the more easily he is able to relate to the pain area, the easier it is to get the product features across.

It may actually help to have a homogeneous audience so that you can focus on specific aspects. However, a quick poll should give you an idea of the heterogeneity of the audience, and their broad level of expectation. I believe you will have a good idea of this even before starting your presentation, and that should give you the ability to configure the presentation to meet the expectation of the audience.

A solution for it to be effective should be presented in its natural habitat. Just like the cot which looks completely in place in a bedroom. A bed is an intrinsic part of a bedroom, and therefore is inalienable from the context. And depending on what you want to highlight you can set the environment around it to highlight or make it a subliminal feature; for example, to highlight the feature that the bed may be stowed away, you would then make the bedroom look smaller to drive home the point. Similarly, if I was highlighting the ability to send a clarification request note to the author, I would actually type out something that looks like a clarification (in the context of the passage) which would actually give a better sense of what was actually possible; otherwise all you would be describing is a product feature – you have a text box which accepts 144 characters! Have you ever counted the number of characters when you send out a note to anyone?!! You write as much or as little as you think is necessary to get across your message.

How can I assemble or disassemble the cot? Is this a question I would ask myself when buying a cot? Not unless, I was someone who made a living assembling or disassembling cots. While this is an important feature by itself – it definitely will not be the primary reason for which I would go cot-shopping! Yes, I definitely would keep that on my checklist – How will I get this King-size bed into my bedroom through a 3'X7' door? Or I get kicked out by my landlord every six months, so I better get something that is easy to pack and move. But if these became my top considerations, then I probably would make do with a bedroll or a reed-mat, rather than trouble myself with a king-sized bed! And yet, we as software sellers launch right into these wonderful "master tables" that we have created that will allow you to store data of all shapes and sizes! And better still – can't find a table that meets your requirement – here's a table wizard…click and you are ready to store some more data!!!

I think being able to showcase the product in its natural setting – a business environment is half the battle won. I've seen some RFPs come up with detailed scripts, that it has really made me wonder at the amount of pain the customer has taken to explain his business blueprint! And yet, we ignore all of that and launch into our own spiel. Just getting the message across is half the battle won! Anyone who probably gets down to a detailed nuts-and-bolts analysis, will do so only after he is satisfied with the overall 'basic' requirements; besides someone who is looking at the nuts and bolts is probably a person after your own heart and will be interested in the architecture, platform, configuration capabilities, masters, tables, SQL…ad nauseum…and is also less likely to be the chief decision maker!!!

What else do you think is important for a product demonstration?