Great Demo: How to Create and Execute Stunning Software Demonstrations

by Peter E. Cohan

These are exciting and challenging times in the software industry. It is now more important than ever to connect and succeed in the sale of software products. "Great Demo!" provides sales and technical sales staff with tools and methods to dramatically increase the probability of success in closing business through substantially improved software demonstrations:
..".it directly applies to my situation and might have already helped us with a $250,000 order!"
"Thanks for writing the book...really good stuff for experienced people to be reminded of, and new folks to take to heart."
The problems faced by sales teams are examined along with the real costs incurred in typical sales processes today. The "Great Demo!" method is presented simply and clearly, and elaborated more fully in each successive chapter, providing a rich toolkit for technical sales staff and the sales team as a whole. Real-life anecdotes, examples and "axioms" offer humorous and effective punctuation to the material."Great Demo! reads easily on a plane between sales calls and is well organized to provide easy access to specific ideas and materials as a handy reference tool. It dramatically increases the probability of success for each subsequent sales project - and that's the key objective!

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Buisness, Technology, Professional Development, Management

214 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2003

Reviews

[Tony Moze · Rating 5 out of 5]

To know I did a podcast interview and taught by this man, brings more depth to this book for me. This guy is amazing, and I feel that this extends beyond software demonstrations. I think this is about how to publicly speak, how to command the crowd, etc. It’s the psychology of things.

I appreciate this book!

I know I have to read it more than once because it’s the manual for doing GREAT demos.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a book I read for work, and it was fine. It's a bit out of date, but the central premise was solid. I suspect not a ton for a great salesperson or SE, but still a good framework of how to consider things.

We actually did a quick workshop with the author and that was more impressive than the book itself.

[Mikhail Filatov · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is not about “how to create and execute Stunning Software Demonstrations”.
It’s not even a book -it seems to be slide notes for a pre sales course.
There are 2 major recommendations:start with most important part (inverted pyramid) and do Discovery process to understand customer pains, etc.
Can be summarized in 20 pages max.

[Tom Mairs · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good reminder to focus on your audience, not your product. It could use an update on the examples, but the core concepts are sound and more people need to read this book.

[Rodrigo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good compendium on how to structure software demonstrations.

[Tanner Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good for the most part, but from “Remote demonstrations” onwards is for some reason riddled with typos and incredibly out of date. Would still highly recommend!

[Stephanie Midwinter · Rating 3 out of 5]

~3.5 stars. I read this one for work. It was written well and easy enough to read. There's a lot of common sense in here, but some decent tidbits and reminders.

[Jaron Dunford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Notes:

Understand their priorities and then ask, what specific capabilities are needed to solve this problem

Give them what they need right away. 2 real world examples, DMV giving you wrong thing, or car dealer selling features you don't need

Create your summaries before you create the demo. Enables you to focus in key themes consistently.

Summarize early and often

Look for buzz words

Involve people in your demos. Increases owenership

[Krista · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my former SE role we did not follow any one “demo method” and it worked successfully for our team. My new job I will be starting soon uses “The Great Demo!” Method, and my manager recommended I read this book. I absolutely love the method and wish I would have gotten my hand on this book sooner! With that said, they need to write an updated 3rd edition of this book because there was only a small section on remote demos that happen as special circumstances when the new reality is probably 90-95% of software demonstrations are happening remotely now.

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was suggested by a supervisor. I'm in a job where I do demos of enterprise software. This book covers the basic processes involved in understanding client needs and building a great demo. The book is very good on the basics, and provides some sample checklists and reports. I did notice that it is a bit dated - the software references are from 2001 (these may have been updated in a newer version of this book). The book did not go into team demoing, which comprises a lot of enterprise software demos that I see and give. It also did not go into virtual machines for software demos, which came to the front after the book was written. It separated presentations from the demo themselves and spent no time discussing the presentation aspect. The book's recommendations, followed to the letter, would be truly time consuming, but would lead to great customer demos for many kinds of software.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

good basic premises, reminds read of things that seem like common sense -- but, it's good to see it written down in one place.

[Lori Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A should-read book on marketing tools for the knowledge worker, manager, executive, or entrepreneur.