Posts filed under 'Demos'
February 5th, 2010
Special Offer for Groups and Organization Members
Discounts are available for members of Bootstrappers Breakfast, Business Marketing Association, Women In Consulting, and organizations sending three or more employees: please contact us for discount codes.
Create and Deliver Surprisingly Compelling Software Demonstrations
“Do The Last Thing First” — the recipe for a Great Demo!
When: Wednesday March 17, 2010 8:15 am – 5:00 pm
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan geared especially for you who demonstrate B-to-B software to your customer and channels. Bring a copy of your demo and be prepared to present it — we’ll help you turn it into a surprisingly compelling demo!
Cost (includes breakfast, lunch, copy of Peter Cohan’s “Great Demo!” book):
- Early Registration: $536
- After March 4: $560
This seminar outlines a framework for the creation and delivery of improved demos and presentations to enable increased success in the marketing, sale, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, in a webinar, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue. Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative gives us the recipe for a Great Demo!
“I am confident that with the insights gained from your workshop we will land more customers in fewer iterations.”
Lav Pachuri, CEO, Xleron Inc.
“Peter Cohan’s Great Demo method really works. It helped us win DEMOgod, and it has allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to prospects.”
Chaim Indig, CEO, Phreesia
(See “DEMOgod Winner Phreesia Praises Peter Cohan Training“)
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About The Speaker: Peter Cohan, Principal at Second Derivative
Community Web Site: www.DemoGurus.com
Peter Cohan is the founder and a principal of The Second Derivative, a consultancy focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005.
Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. and the board of advisors for Excellin, Inc. He holds a degree in chemistry.
Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manage and senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer.
Agenda:
- 8:15 AM Breakfast & Registration
- 8:30 AM Workshop begins
- Noon Lunch & De-brief
- 1 PM Advanced Topics
- multiple solution demos
- presenting to a mixed audience with different needs or information requirements
- vision generation demonstrations
- handling bugs, crashes, and time challenges.
- 5 PM Wrap up
Seating is Limited These are intensive sessions and we ask that you arrive at least 15 minutes before 8:30AM start time to ensure you will have a seat and won’t disrupt the session once it is underway.
For more information: Theresa Shafer 408-252-9676 events@skmurphy.com
January 18th, 2010
Create and Deliver Surprisingly Compelling Software Demonstrations
“Do The Last Thing First” — the recipe for a Great Demo!
When: Wednesday March 17, 2010
- AM Session: 8:15 am – 1:00 pm
- PM Session: 1 – 5pm Advanced Topics (see below)
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan geared especially for you who demonstrate B-to-B software to your customer and channels. Bring a copy of your demo and be prepared to present it — we’ll help you turn it into a surprisingly compelling demo! AM Session Cost (includes breakfast, lunch, copy of Peter Cohan’s “Great Demo!” book):
Early Registration: $336
After March 4: $360
See also Feb 5 Announcement, Group Discounts Available for All Day Sessions
This seminar outlines a framework for the creation and delivery of improved demos and presentations to enable increased success in the marketing, sale, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, in a webinar, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue. Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative gives us the recipe for a Great Demo!
“I am confident that with the insights gained from your workshop we will land more customers in fewer iterations.”
Lav Pachuri, CEO, Xleron Inc.
“Peter Cohan’s Great Demo method really works. It helped us win DEMOgod, and it has allowed us to explain our offering much more clearly to prospects.”
Chaim Indig, CEO, Phreesia
(See “DEMOgod Winner Phreesia Praises Peter Cohan Training“)
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Peter Cohan, Principal at Second Derivative
Community Web Site: www.DemoGurus.com
Peter Cohan is the founder and a principal of The Second Derivative, a consultancy focused on helping software organizations improve their sales and marketing results. In July 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange dedicated to helping sales and marketing teams improve their software demonstrations. In 2003, he authored Great Demo!, a book that provides methods to create and execute compelling demonstrations. The 2nd edition of Great Demo! was published March 2005.
Before The Second Derivative, Peter founded the Discovery Tools® business unit at Symyx Technologies, Inc., where he grew the business from an empty spreadsheet into a $30 million operation. Prior to Symyx, Peter served in marketing, sales, and management positions at MDL Information Systems, a leading provider of scientific information management software. Peter currently serves on the Board of Directors for Collaborative Drug Discovery, Inc. and the board of advisors for Excellin, Inc. He holds a degree in chemistry.
Peter has experience as an individual contributor, manage and senior management in marketing, sales, and business development. He has also been, and continues to be, a customer.
Agenda:
- 8:15 AM Breakfast & Registration
- 8:30 AM Workshop begins
- Noon Lunch & De-brief
- 1 PM Wrap up
Seating is Limited These are intensive sessions and we ask that you arrive at least 15 minutes before 8:30AM start time to ensure you will have a seat and won’t disrupt the session once it is underway.
PM Session: Advanced Topics
In response to requests for assistance on demo delivery we have added an afternoon session to our Great Demos workshop. If this is your first exposure to the Great Demo come for the morning and get a great overview of the methodology and stay for the afternoon if you would like an opportunity for more interactive training on advanced topics such as multi-solution, multi-player demonstrations, and vision generation demonstrations. The advanced topic session as covers real life issues like handling bugs, crashes, and time challenges.
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan is only available to people who have already attended the morning session or a previous Great Demo session.
When: Wednesday March 17, 2010 1:00 – 5:00 pm
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129
Cost $200 Register for the Advanced Topics
Advanced Topics Agenda:
- 1 PM Advanced Topics
- multiple solution demos
- presenting to a mixed audience with different needs or information requirements
- vision generation demonstrations
- handling bugs, crashes, and time challenges.
- 5 PM Wrap up
For more information: Theresa Shafer 408-252-9676 events@skmurphy.com
April 23rd, 2009
Some output formats to consider your application, they each have different properties and affordances and are not easily substituted for each other :
- Screen
- E-Mail
- Projector
- Print
- Fax
Screen
- Most common way that users will interact in everyday use.
- This is how many prospects will view the product.
E-mail output options
- Simple hypertext (e.g. URLs as footnotes)
- Text in monospace Font with 60 character line limit
Projector / PowerPoint or HTML that drives presentation at lower resolution
- The developers typically design and develop on high resolution monitors, most of your demos will be given at a lower resolution on a projector. Make sure both look good.
- Your users may want to run your application on the projector during a group meeting, test this.
Print – color or gray scale
- Many senior managers are most concerned with how this looks, as it is the way that they are used to consuming information.
Fax – true black and white
- Test this, some patterns create problems, many shades are indistinguishable when printed in black and white.
January 5th, 2009
- Focus on establishing your team as trustworthy and dependable. The biggest question in a prospect’s mind is how your team will you perform when things go wrong.
- Stress earlier engagements with the problem you help your customers solve. Make this “phase two” of efforts to solve these problems, building on earlier relevant experience and accomplishments. Early customers want to know that you have an affinity for the problem domain.
- Don’t stress how smart they are or how many merit badges your team has accumulated (e.g. degrees and certificates) or your collective years of experience the team has–what does it mean when a team has collectively 60 year of experience, much less than you might think. Focus on projects that you have delivered and value they have created for former partners, customers, etc..
- If you have a backgrounder or presentation that is being used to raise investment–e.g a fund-raising pitch–don’t start from it as a basis for your prospect oriented backgrounder. Investors and prospects are two fundamentally different audiences with very different needs and distinct questions about your team and your offering.
- Keep it to between one and two pages: put it on your website and print it double-sided if it runs over one page when you include it in proposals or as part of a leave-behind package from a demo or presentation.
November 21st, 2008
Interesting web site demo at http://nextgenerationelectronicsdesign.com/ by the folks at Altium. Unlike any PCB demo I have ever seen and an interesting use of self-deprecating humor to talk about the challenges of linking FPGA, Board, and Mechanical design. Two time coded remarks
- at 2:25 “We did what any traditional EDA company would do, we denied and avoided the problem.”
- at 2:50 “After offering the same thing as everyone else for a while, we decided to grow some bollocks and actually solve this properly.”
- Followed by a sequence of 3D views of PCB design–not the traditional a birds eye view–that allow you to more easily judge height interaction issues.
Altium is an Australian company–you may know them as Protel–that does about US$50M in revenue. I caught this link on the Mentor communities site in the comments by “pcb_man” on a post by John Isaac “Collaboration Across the Product Development Process.”
Based on a number of efforts to foster collaboration between Mechanical and PCB design teams in the past, I suspect that there will be significant cultural issues to be worked out to enable real time MCAD/ECAD integration and it’s attendant quality and time to market benefits. Loosely coupled toolsets in both domains allow groups to work more autonomously, even if the schedule impact is negative. Anytime you see a new tool that can redraw decision making and political boundaries, the barriers to adoption have more to do with changes in perceived level of control than shortcomings in the actual solution.
I have developed a rule of thumb for introducing new systems: the difficulty is proportional to the cube of the number of “silos” or distinct team/administrative boundaries you had to cross to get to an initially viable solution. For example
- 0 boundaries crossed: only adjust the workflow within a singe team or work group, leaving external inputs and outputs unchanged (except that you hope they have fewer errors or lower latency or can handle more complexity).
- 1 boundary: both sides have to want to change or one group has to be convinced to either supply a new input or accept a different output. This gets attempted unilaterally a lot in the form of
- “if you will only give us this new input our jobs will be easier” If the two groups don’t share a common reward structure there is always a sense of “What’s in it for me?”
- “You have to use our new form/system to make requests” You mean I can’t pick up the phone or send e-mail? Let’s see what kinds of crises get manufactured.
- “We can no longer give you this data or output, our new system doesn’t support it” Well then you may be spending a lot of time doing manual work-arounds until you get that fixed.
- 2 boundaries: 23 = 8 times harder. There are several different ways that three groups can merge together. If you can turn this into two pairwise transactions it’s much easier. Only possible if all three unhappy and willing to change.
- 3 boundaries: 33 = 27 times harder. I have only seen four groups come together in response to things like a corporate commitment to pass an ISO 9000 audit or satisfy SOX. Even then it’s much easier to focus on pairwise changes in the context of an overall plan for evolution.
November 8th, 2008
The closing slide in our Idea to Revenue Workshop says
In The Beginning…
The Founders Are The Business.
To Keep The Business Viable,
Learn Faster Than the Competition.
Successful Entrepreneurship
Is a Self-Improvement Project.
When it’s your idea you have to act as if you believe in it and avoid continually seeking validation. Instead ask for criticism and suggestions for how to make it more useful, more valuable, less painful or cumbersome. The hallmark of a serious commitment to a product or service is an active and ongoing search for ways that it could be improved to create more value for a prospect or an existing customer.
As founders you normally select the features and then personally develop the first product. In addition–in early days in particular–you may need to wrap your product in a thick protective coating of personal service to prevent your customers from cutting themselves on “the rough edges of tomorrow” (believe me they can leave some jagged cuts as well as a few dents in a customer’s career).
Either of these situations, whether it’s hearing that your baby is ugly or that you performed unsatisfactorily, can make it difficult to appreciate criticism and ask for more detail. If you can, mentally “stand next to yourself” and pretend that the customer is talking about your twin brother’s mistakes or your co-founder’s product. This may allow you to avoid the trap of explaining to the customer why they have mis-assessed–how many times have you left a demo wondering “I don’t understand, we won the argument: how come we didn’t get their business?“– before you have encouraged more feedback and fully understood their critique.
September 1st, 2008
I checked out some software demos on Youtube. There are all types. But here are a couple I want to talk about.
First the bad … Nokia N800 Internet Tablet … Reggie Suplido of Internet Tablet Talk takes a look at the software that comes pre-installed on the new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet
Next the good … Bling! It Photography Software … A quick look at how to use Bling It to remove unwanted backgrounds in your photographs by Cindy Shebley.
A couple of difference worth talking about.
- The bad–even worse than the video quality–is the litany of features. Reggie starts at one end and just goes with no thought to his viewers. Also, while the side by side comparison was interesting, instead of holding the tablet, why not down lay it flat and get the focus fixed and steady.
- The good: Cindy spends time up front on who should watch the video and why. Then she walks you through how you would use her product to get something done. She does not list product features because she understands that customers are buying her product to get something done.
Before you make a software demo for YouTube, check out Peter Cohan’s Great Demo Webinar If you are interested in an interactive class with him, space is still available for the class on Saturday September 13, 2008.