Missing Features

Your correspondent had the recent displeasure to participate in a web demo of Giftworks, a donor management system. Despite the best efforts of our host the software looked fine. The problem was the demo itself.

Our intrepid inexperienced host led a meandering, long-winded and unhelpful demonstration to a group of potential customers. Clearly the goal of our host was to alienate as many potential customers as possible. Our host succeeded gloriously.

In the spirit of this train-wreck of a demo, here is a handy guide to alienating potential customers with an awful webinar:

Step 1: Waste time

Our host spent 5 minutes at the start of the demo explaining how to change the database file the program used. What a feature to highlight in a demo! You can open different database files, and store those files in different network shares! Amazing!

Lesson: Nothing makes customers happier than wasting their time.

Step 2: Show your potential customers how easy it will be to spam them

Giftworks — as our host claimed — is a hybrid software product. What does this mean? It means while Giftworks is installed on your computer it can still communicate to the Internet! Why? Well apparently to download news items to post on your dashboard. That is news items from the makers of Giftworks, trying to sell you stuff.

Amazing! Not only has Giftworks built in a way to advertise to their customers, our host spent 5 minutes showing and discussing this feature.

Lesson: Highlight the useless subtle marketing channels you are forcing on your paying customers.

Step 3: Gear your demo to an audience you aren’t speaking to

This call was attended by potential customers but the host wanted to spend time to demonstrate how we could enhance our existing use of Giftworks in new ways.

Lesson: Don’t speak to the needs of your audience. Pick a random topic and make it work.

Step 4: Sell basic features — that every other application has standard — as product innovations

Our host was delighted to show us how you could sort a search results listings screen by clicking on the various column headers in the results. He spent 5 whole minutes demonstrating and discussing this feature, showing us the usefulness of being able to instantly resorting the results. Then he spent another 5 minutes showing us how to pick various columns for display in the search results.

Lesson: If a feature is standard and built-in to every other application on the planet, claim it’s unique and sell it!

Step 5: Don’t show the good stuff

In a 60 minute demo of a donor and contact management system, the host spent 8 seconds on the donor profile screen and 59 minutes and 52 seconds on search, reporting and useless features.

Lesson: Never show the core screen of your product.

Step 6: Explain how your product is known to crash when you use a certain feature… and then blame the user

Our host explained during the demo how a mail merge screen had a tendency to hang when merging letters with images. He then said the real source of the problem was the user’s computer memory, not the software.

His crack solution to this flaw? Pay $40 to purchase image software to scale down the images you use in the merge letters. (Wait! Why can’t the software scale down images automatically?)

It’s always a good sign when your software burdens the user.

Lesson: Point out performance issues during the demo that you could have glossed over and then blame the user.

Step 7: Make it an open call

Have more than one client attending the call for the web demo? Perhaps a dozen people or more? The best way to make the call seem professional is to make it an open call. Let all the attendees interrupt each other on too many speaker phones in too many conference rooms as they fight for air time to awkwardly ask questions no one else really cares about.

Our demo was interrupted five times by ringing in the offices of various attendees and even once for a barking dog.

Lesson: Ensure you clutter the voice quality of the call with ambient noise from attendees by leaving the call open.

Step 8: Don’t show the email tool

Our host had an hour and didn’t show us how email integrates with the application.

Fact: Email is a fad.

Lesson: Don’t bother showing email tools in the demo.

Some guidelines for delivering a good web demo:

• Show exactly what is relevant to the people on the call
• If you expect more than 1 client mute the call and take questions via the chat feature in your web conferencing system
• Start the call by explaining what is going to happen (or more simply: review the agenda!)
• Address how and when to ask questions
• Leave time for questions
• Spend 2-3 minutes at the start of the demo explaining the company and methodology of the software design
• Show critical features that address the work flow used by the audience
• Break up the demo with breaks for questions
• Don’t ever say no; instead, explain how something might be possible
• Check out Joel Splotsky’s Guide to demoing software

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