Why are so many presentations meh when we’re so passionate about our products?  How can so much noise deliver so little insight? 

For the past several years, I’ve been a judge for an industry award program.  The companies that enter are passionate about what they do, and justifiably proud of their products.  It’s educational for me to see the innovation they deliver, and rewarding to be a small part of that excitement.

While all the products are pretty cool, fill a need and do it well, presentation quality is all over the map. This year two were great, one good, one okay and one fairly heinous. Each of these products was a true contender for the top prize, but I crossed two of them off the list due to the mediocre presentations – my customer experience, if you will.

All of the stumbles were avoidable.  What are a few easy improvements – and pitfalls to avoid – when presenting a product?

This article was first published on Wheels-Up Innovation

Do I Know You?

Two of these groups, for sure, didn’t look at my LinkedIn profile.  One, for sure, did. Of the two who didn’t, one spent time educating me about a company I’d been an executive at, and the other explained (in detail) a concept that’s foundational to my industry.  The one who did look built rapport by asking me about my move to Austin, and referred to a project I once worked on as an example of how someone could use his product. According to surveys, Americans spend about 15 minutes every day on LinkedIn. If we don’t use 30 seconds to find out our prospect worked for a competitor and went to Faber College, it’s our bad.

This is Soooo Complicated 

If our product is too complicated for us to explain to the people whose problems we’re trying to solve, we should wait to compete in an awards bake-off until we’ve got that knocked.  Actually, we should wait to present it to customers until we’ve got that knocked.

After 35 minutes of yakyak in Heinous Presentation, I finally asked the guy, “So – this tool allows me to do This Specific Thing, which provides This Specific Benefit?”  All that bluster and the answer was, “uh – yeah.”

The thing is – the problem we’re solving is usually not that complicated. What’s under the hood of the solution may be, but how it helps our customers can’t be.

The problem has probably been a pain in the neck of customers forever – which is why they’re buying our offering in the first place. They know what the problem is.  They probably even know what would make it better.  And – yay – we’ve built it for them! It was almost certainly complicated to build, and may even be complicated to deploy.  But customers (and pompous award judges) are never impressed by how complex something is – only how fast-cheap-good it is at solving the problem.

This is Sooooo Complicated Too, Two

The very best demo I saw this year was with a guy who told me what his product did in one sentence.  Our software helps [these people] [do this thing they couldn’t do before] by [eliminating this roadblock our competitors don’t].  “Our software helps self-important judges recommend the best candidate to win This Industry Prize by offering a standard scoring system and 24/7 online chat.”  If you substitute “do this thing” with “gain insights” or “create solutions” or even “drive revenue,” you lose.

Words But No Music

Sometimes we turn ourselves inside out coming up with a presentation that’s custom-designed for our audience.  We look up new statistics, include examples from his industry, maybe even import actual sample data from his company.

The other side of the coin is telling no story at all, but simply walking through the product functionality in a disjointed – and really, really uninteresting – way.  How about presenting me with the pain your customers are having, creating some personas and walking me through a specific Solve Scenario?  “So, Yanek the Product Manager needs to make sure Jane the Engineer knows he wants the sorting feature added in the next build, so he marks it a priority – here – but Jane’s team is already booked – as you can see – and she responds with a flag – like that. Yanek can reply real-time and the prioritization is done without the delay of setting up a meeting.” Is so much better than, “okay now you enter all the detail on each enhancement then go to the next screen to select who to share with then on to the next screen which….” Jim the Librarian, I love ya.

I Know You Are But What Am I?

Every software or data product has weaknesses, even the best.  It’s how you deal with them when presenting that will make the difference.  During one demo I asked whether the software stored historic data.  The answer “No, our customers would like that, but it’s farther down their priority list than X, so we’re not doing that until 2016” was excellent.  Straightforward “no,” market-founded reasoning why – done, let’s move on. Which we did.

Thankya, Thankya, Thankya

Four of the five competitors followed up with a brief “thank you” email, reiterating that I could contact them with any questions.  They even went so far as to say it was a pleasure to meet with me, which should of course get them disqualified for falsification, but won’t.  This effort, plus the LinkedIn lookup I can’t seem topull my teeth out of, would take 3 minutes, tops.  I hope they do it for prospects.

In our world, there aren’t separate prizes for Biggest Brain and Miss Congeniality – it’s winner take all.  So look good, answer well and follow up.  Thank you.

Diane Pierson, our INSIDER Guide to New Product Development, is a leader in product management and marketing to companies including Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis, American Lawyer Media and Copyright Clearance Center. She has built products & services that have delivered over $100 million in revenue and knows what works, and what doesn’t, when executing product plans and strategies. (Read Diane’s full Bio)