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With Dreamforce less than a week away, those of us who do technical demos are polishing off our best talk tracks, setting up our demo components and rehearsing the night away to ensure everything goes well at the big show. But how can we create demos that flow flawlessly, stand out and most importantly, grab our audiences' attention?
Don't fret, the Salesforce Customer Experience team is here to help. Our team develops and executes the keynote demos at Dreamforce and all of Salesforce's World Tours so we know a thing or two about technical demos. To help ensure you rock your demo, we've put together this Dreamforce Demo Survival Guide with 7 key tips along with two breakout sessions that cover everything from Storytelling for Presentations and Demos to Demo Delivery Best Practices, Tools and Tips.
Without further ado, here's the first demo tip!
It's not just a habit of highly effective people, it's a crucial part of your demo. Before you begin ANY demo build, ask yourself “what is the one thing I want my audience to do after my demo?” Every single thing you show and say in the demo should lead to that inevitable conclusion. This guiding light will help you decide which technical features to show along with directing you on how the demo story should flow. Do you feel like your demo is long, complicated or boring? Then ask yourself “does this portion of the demo inspire my audience to <fill in your one thing here>?” If not, axe it. Finally, when delivering the demo, never forget to end it by reinforcing and telling your audience that one thing you decided on.
Audiences can be fickle and easily distracted by any number of things happening in their lives. If you don't get your audience's attention in the first 30 seconds of your demo, they'll likely switch their attention to email on their phone and if another 30 seconds go by, they'll probably go to Facebook (and NO ONE's attention comes back after that). To avoid this fate, don't begin your demo with the tired old intro of your name and title. Instead, start with a video that piques their curiosity or ask them a question that causes them to think/get in the right mindset for your demo. You can also share a personal story. Metaphors and similes are also great openers as they not only capture your audiences attention but they can also take complicated concepts and make them far easier to understand and remember. Whatever you do this is your time to wake the audience up and engage them. Demos that begin this way are far more memorable and likely to accomplish the one thing you decided on from Tip #1.
It doesn't matter if you're running your business from your phone or if you have a command center. It is absolutely crucial that you setup all the devices you'll be using for your demo. If you're using a mobile device like a smartphone, ensure you've got your apps installed and configured correctly.
For example, when we're showcasing Salesforce on mobile, we double check a) The mobile device has the latest software updates installed, and b) the Salesforce app is logged into the right instance for the demo.
This ensures that when we go into a demo, we're not caught off guard by our app requiring a re-login.
If you are presenting at a customer site or from any location that's not your office — create a checklist. Checklists help confirm you have all your devices in order and packed with you. By having every component you need for a demo (Laptop, Power Supply, Display dongles etc.) you will show up more prepared and less likely to experience a #demoFail
Along those lines, having dedicated hardware to demo is helpful and brings us to...
While apps like Facebook Messenger, Gmail, Whatsapp and Tinder are super helpful in your personal life, they're also great at throwing up notifications in the middle of your demo. Once this happens, you're going to get distracted and so is your audience. We suggest acquiring devices that are dedicated to demos (if you do them regularly).
By doing this, you can rest assured your demo won't be interrupted by a embarrasment-inducing push notification. For our demonstrations, we use laptops and phones that are dedicated and have the minimal set of apps installed that are necessary to run the demo. We recommend you take the same approach wherever possible.
In the case when this isn't possible and you have to use a personal device, we recommend you go into “settings” on your mobile device or laptop and turn off ALL notifications except for the ones needed for your demo. This will reduce the chance of an errant notification adding extra “excitement” into your demo.
Transitions between sections in your demo can be places where you can a) Lose people b) Accidentally cause a demo fail c) Cause audience whiplash when done poorly, or d) All of the above.
Technical transitions between your screens or devices can be handled by dedicated hardware like “HDMI Switchers” or software on your devices.
When your demos span across several products — such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud—you can clearly transition between screens by taking advantage of desktops. We’re not talking about those big bulky towers that fit beneath your desk. We are talking about the working area of a computer screen that contains icons representing files, folders, and a wastebasket.
Set up a separate desktop for each section of your demo. If you are using MacOS, swipe left or right with four fingers to navigate between your desktops, and upwards to sort your desktops. This process makes your demo look much more polished and helps you keep the audience attention steady and engaged.
Here’s how you activate multi-touch gestures on a Mac:
Another way to transition between desktops is to use an A/V switcher. It is a hardware switch which allows you to transition from Device 1 (say a Macbook Pro) to Device 2 (an iPhone) with a button push. As a rule of thumb, more expensive switchers will “switch” faster and they also have a few cool features like being able to “freeze” an image on screen. If you have critical demos, we recommend using switchers whenever possible. Here are high end and low end switcher options you might consider.
Inputting text into an application is an activity you do in most demos. Our rule of thumb is that you are 327% more likely to “fat finger” or mistype text during a demo than you would normally. Keyboard shortcuts are an awesome way to easily paste in large chunks of text. All you have to remember is the right key combination. Here are several ways you can set up keyboard shortcuts.
To set up keyboard shortcuts on iOS:
To set up keyboard shortcuts on Mac we use Keyboard Maestro.
To set up keyboard shortcuts on Windows we recommend Autohotkey.
In our experience, adding a fun factor to your demo is a great way to transform average presentations into inspiring presentations.
Props and actors liven up demos by making them more fun and engaging. If you’re not having fun while presenting, do you think your audience is having fun?
Now, we know what you’re thinking: Isn’t including actors and props a little childish for a professional presentation? The answer is no, if used in context of the story. Actors and props make the intangible nature of our products real and physical. Here’s an example:
In a demo to a Fortune 50 company our team told a story of a factory manager who helps resolve an issue in a remote factory by dispatching a maintenance worker using Service Cloud Lightning. To add extra energy to the demo, one of our team members dressed up as a repair technician, knocked on the door of the conference room, walked up to the actual CIO and had him sign off on a work report. The CIO was delighted and said it was the best demo his company had ever seen. The actor made the CIO's experience real and memorable.
Bringing in props and actors doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. The hard hat cost $15 and our team borrowed the jumpsuit. Add creativity to your demo by taking a step back and looking at your story. Could you add extra energy by having people physically act out a portion of the demo? Is there a prop that would make the story more real? This is your chance to get creative, so embrace it!
If you're interested in learning more about storytelling and demo delivery, then come to our Dreamforce Breakout Sessions! All attendees will get a FREE Demo Toolkit. You can register for our sessions here:
Storytelling Tools to Make Your Demos and Presentations Shine
http://bit.ly/StorytellingForDemosDF
Demo Delivery Tools and Best Practices to Make You Shine
http://bit.ly/DemoDeliveryToolsDF
We'll see you at Dreamforce!
