Advice for Delivering Great Product Demos
A friend of mine, Matt Birchler, recently wrote a really solid article on how to deliver great product demos. He starts the piece off with what, in my opinion, is the most important part of a product demo.
Explain the Why
Why did you work on this project? What is the user problem you’re solving in the first place? This is table setting, and even if you think that everyone in the room should “just get” why something made sense to do, don’t assume that it’s at top of mind for them.
Explaining the current problem that exists, especially by giving a real world example, is super useful for getting people on board. At the end of this explanation, your audience should be chomping at the bit for something better, making them more receptive to whatever you’ll be showing since it should solve the problems you’ve just presented.
Matt goes on to cover 6 more important parts of delivering a good product demo. Go read the whole thing. But there is one thing I’d like to add.
I’m not sure I can stress enough the importance of speaking from the perspective of a user, particularly when you’re describing the problem and the solution.
It’s easy to speak about functionality and capability and tech debt and operational efficiency and other important things. But if you truly understand the problem you’re solving for the customer, and you can describe the problem and solution in the simple words of a friend, you will deliver a great product demo.