Good news, the trap has been avoided !

Do you remenber the post "the demo trap" I wrote a few weeks ago about a demo I collapsed due to a dubious question I was asked by my customer ? "Do you confirm me Xavier that your software support this given feature" and as i tough it was a customer requirement I answered with a positive answer. Unfortunately my software demonstration turned out to be a dead end as my customer actually didn't want a tool that would allow this particular feature..
In this rapid demo scene I am asked by my customer "Xavier could you confirm me that any sales representative will be allowed to see all the opportunities of the others ? " It sounded like a a requirement and so i was tempted to say "Yes we can" (oh sorry for this bad joke, i can't help not doing it...) but I didn't actually and instead I carefully answered his question by another question "well that depends on some system options, how are you working right now ?" or as a variant "it depends on system customizing, would you mind telling me what your preference is ? " And so i got round the trap and I could go on successfully with this outstanding demo.Enjoy this little demo scene and improve may be your french understanding as this video is in french language.

Squee ! We won SAP Ease of Use's Best Presentation Contest

The demo I and Dominique Trigaud did to our customer France Telecom last month (in order to convince them to work with us for their Fiber To the Home application ) was selected in France to be candidate to the "best demo 2008 regarding usability" worldwide contest. On thusday the 17 th of December we presented what we have done and how we won the France Telecom deal with simple and visual slides, with an engaging message and with the Dominique's outstanding screen design work.

Below you can find our presentation, thanks to Bruno Lemarchand and Dan O'rourke for their help and support

Ease Of Use Presentation

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The "Tell Show Tell" Technique, What else ?

If you are working in the software environment You may have heard about the "tell show tell" technique that apply in a software demonstration and that is described in Robert Riefstahl's book "Demonstrating to win". What this technique is about ?
It's a very simple method you can use in order to make your software's features simple and easy to understand for your prospect point of view. Basically all what you have to do before showing one feature of your software is to :

1. Tell the prospect what they are going to see
2. Show them into the system what you have just told ( and only what you have told about)
3. Tell them finally what they just saw

It is very simple indeed but i can assure you it is actually very efficient. I really tried out a significant change the day i started to apply it. It is easy to understand for your audience, it gives rhythm to you presentation and avoid you to go somewhere else in your software once you entered into, and furthermore it gives you the opportunity (once you did the whole "tell show tell") to explain why such specific feature is important and why this feature will provide them benefits.
In my current company we are all convinced by the "Tell Show Tell" technique but the problem is that we are using different meaning under the words ( "Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings". LZ)

1. Tell has a lot to do with rather identifying the pain points and telling the prospect what are their objectives ans strategic goals
2. Show means hopefully the same
3. Tell (the second) means adding and proving the unique value that our software will provide to the customer accordingly to their goals

Is that's bad ? No of course ! But it is not the same technique Robert Riefstahl described in his book. I think we are misleading a tactic trick that is very useful for software demonstration (Tell Show Tell) and the strategic value proposition we need to provide to the customer. As a matter of fact we need to read again "Demonstrating to Win" and to apply properly the "Tell Show Tell" technique.

Tell Show Tell, what else ?

Thinking out of the box for demo

"Seeing the big picture" and "Thinking out the box" are the main qualities that are regarded by the companies today. It is somehow a cliche that is used by the advertising campaigns of many consulting companies : they say "our consultants think out of the box" even though they come from the same business school and are left-brain-minded like the others. Nevertheless it's important to think differently sometimes and to be able seeing in other direction when you have on your hand a tricky software demonstration to prepare. So let's revisit the famous nine-dot puzzle i read today about in the Benjamin Zander's book "the art of possibility" As you may or may not know the puzzle asks us to join all nine dots with four straight lines, without taking pen from paper. So go ahead and have a try at it :

If you have never done it before Benjamin Zander explains that you are going to have an hard time solving this problem because your will probably classify this nine dots as a a square even though there is no box or square at at all in this page. Unconsciously you will create a square in your mind and therefore you will miss some others possibilities. It is likely that your brain will add another not relevant instruction to the original problem that is "join all nine dots with four straight lines, without taking pen from paper within the square formed by the outer dots"

And, unfortunately there is no solution within this framework. However, we can now help you by saying this additional comment "Feel free to use the whole sheet of paper" and now you can see the same problem through new eyes and a new possibility !!!So have a try again and keep in mind to use all the space, you get it ? congratulations ! here you will get the solution :

thinking out of the boxes

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Mostly the reason why we fail to solve a problem it that we try to solve it within a particular frame or point of view :
" Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish while new opportunities appear" Benjamin Zander

So you know what i learnt at reading the book "The art of possibility", additionally I encourage you too to watch below the benjamin Zander presentation that i got from the presentationzen blog

Pareto's law and the 80 % maxi rule

You probably have heard about the Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) that states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.This principle was named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of income in Italy went to 20% of the population.It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., "80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients."

We can apply this principle to the software demonstration : 80% of the deal you win are the result of 20 % of the demo and presentation you give, 80 % of the impact you have on the demonstration audience is a result of 20 % of the message and features you provide to them. That means 20 % of your preparation work will cause this 80 % emotional impact that at the end will drive their decision and your revenue.
And as 20 % of your work provides 80 % of the result you get, the corollary of this for software demonstration is that 80 % of the work preparation is generally enough for success. In the majority of the cases, once you have done the 80% of your work ,all the 20 % stuff you are going to add in order to be "perfect" won't be necessary,this additional work will be probably useless and may be boring with too much details.
Many time software demonstrations and presentations would have been better if their authors have stopped their work at the 80 % of their home work. Very often, the additional 20 % time turns to be not only a wasting time but a destructive one.

That's the 80% maxi rule that works for outstanding demo but also for many aspects of life : Never exceed 80 % of your time or 80 % of your own capacity !!!!
it is true for food because it is healthy to eat only until 80 % full

it is true also for running : each time you go beyond the 80 % of your own cardiac capacity, not only you do not improve your stamina but on the contrary you decrease it.

In order to be more efficient and to avoid negative improvements, we need to learn how to identify when we have reached our own 80% level of capacity and we have to learn to stop a work when the result is enough : that means when we already have made 20 % of the job that will drive 80% of the expected results and furthermore we have made a 60 % additional work for the other 20% upcoming results
ps : slides above comes from the presentationzen website

How to convert an average product into something outstanding ? A lesson given by Zinedine Zidane

Astonishing is probably an inadequate word to describe the quality of Zidane's goal in european final cup in 2002 that is one of the most beautiful goals in UEFA champions league history. At the 45 minutes Zinedine Zidane received a high, arcing cross from Roberto Carlos on the edge of the penalty area, volleying a left-foot shot that streaked into the top corner.

But what is inspiring for any of us is that the balloon Zinedine received from Roberto has nothing to do with a gift, it sounds rather like a product for which no added value could be made, there is indeed no dynamism, no strength, no accuracy in the cross from Roberto.

And the only option Zinedine had to create value is the perfect execution of his gesture and being a little bit lucky. May be he didn't see this cross as a bad product but as an opportunity he had to support his team and he took his chance. Thanks !

Have a look to my funny slides about the comparaison betwwen great goals and outstanding demos !

How To Change Bad Product Into Something

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here's the video of this great GOAL GOAL GOAL GOAL

Learning from a young french stylist in New York

Following the idea that the best lessons often come from unusual places and unexpected situations, I watched a few days ago a great TV program on "Filles TV" show broadcast called "New York, New York" whose host is a young french designer, Juliette Longuet, who shares with us her knowledge about the urban, fast paced and trendy New York lifestyle. In this TV show concept Juliette is delivering tips and tricks about fashions, shops, people and parties in new york that are topics i don't care usually but that my daughter does ! And so, as i watched the TV with Melisande (strange first name isn't it ?) i focused my attention on Juliette's art of presentation and i wondered why i was suddenly interested in and not bored by what she was saying ! And indeed, Juliette was not boring because she was enthusiastic about New York ( her enthusiasm is indeed contagious a lot) and she used a friendly, warmly and conversational tone. Basically Juliette put on the table all the 5 elements of a great "demo" in order to electrify her audience :

First she set the theme of her presentation " I am going to show you some incredible addresses in New York that you can't find in the travel books"

Second she provides a clear outline of what is going on and about what we will learn and see, she gives us all the section and destinations of our travel in New York give a reason to listen

Third she closes and opens each section with a clear transition, she always make easy for us to follow her story

In the fourth place, she demonstrates enthusiasm, she uses words like fantastic, incredible, awesome.. she wants her audience to wow and she is passionate and exited.

And the Fifth element is that her program is visual, simple with fun musics and rhythms . Juliette gives us a show that is the secret of the outstanding demos which are not boring for the customer and deliver BOTH contents and shows.

Here, you will find a link to enjoy the TV program, Juliette and the city that never sleeps.
http://www.juliettelonguet.com/blog/category/juliette-longuet-tv-show/

Lost review : why did we lose Lavoisier ?

'Les Editions Lavoisier" are a main professional and scientific book actor in France as a leading professional bookseller but also as a leading science and technology Publisher . Moreover this company is the french leading supplier of professional databases. This year, they decided to replace their old legacy information system and they asked us for a RFP and some demonstration of our software. The presentation (outstanding demo?) went well, with fun and with additional values and benefits they could get through our solution and i am convinced that actually we had a fully integrated and complete solution for them. (Above a Lavoisier's portrait who was a French 18th century scientist who revolutionised the study of chemistry through his systematic methods)

But but but but but ....

We lost the deal !!!

So i called to the customer in order to learn from this failure and i asked them the reasons why we lost against the competition... That's the kind of things we should always do even when we win because sometimes we can win not for the reasons we believe...

An indeed i learnt some interesting lessons from this call, and i can share with you 2 of them ( not all OF THEM ) :

• Fist we were too many participants (5) for the demo presentation : To this medium size company we appeared as an heavy company. Moreover this situation has been highlighted by the fact that i was the main guy who actually talked and ran the demos so that my colleagues seemed unnecessary. Surely i didn't enough make them participate and prove their value of being here. Indeed at the demo preparation phase we should exactly identify the role and the value of each participant. No one should attend a demo ( apart from the customer ! ) without having an important part to play in it.
  


• Above all, we have completely stopped the sales cycle after this demo, we though that it was good enough and we denied to Lavoisier an extra software demonstration by remote about a specific marketing feature they needed and they have asked us for. And eventually we get paranoid : we accused more or less ADONE (the consultant company that helped Lavoisier to choose their new system) to influence badly Lavoiser for the sake of our competitor !!!!

So we never succeeded to get rid of this image of a big and arrogant company and so we lost this interesting deal. Nevertheless i hope all the best for Lavoisier's team regarding their new project

Good luck and congratulations to our competitor. Anyway you deserved it, i am sure you will make a good job. Have fun with publishing business, it's great.