This is a guest post from John Fishback of 154 Consulting, the firm that helps us coach the innovative fintech companies selected for Finovate on their demos.
Titling this post was difficult.
"Actually demonstrate your product," "Remember why your company
exists," and, most simply, "Don't read a script" were all in contention.
The
titling difficulties were because this post focuses on how to avoid
some of the problems that plague less successful Finovate demos --
those that lose the audience early or leave them wondering why the
presenting company came to the conference.
The
classic examples are those demos that feature a presenter using their
seven minutes to give a short speech about the industry or about the
history of their company, only occasionally rambling near to what's
being shown on the screen, and stopping only when they reach their time
limit and their microphone is mercifully cut off.
At the other extreme, and almost as difficult for the audience, are the presenters that are so worried about their time and message that they read closely from an over-worked script, leaving the Finovate auditorium feeling stuffy and dull.
These two problems feel very different. But they come from the same root cause, and can be addressed by the same three tactics.
The root cause of both problems is that the presenter failed to let the product tell its story. If your product is compelling enough to have been selected for Finovate, there is something about it that will move the audience. Putting that powerful thing, rather than your view of the industry or even the details of your company, center stage is the first step towards a solid demo.
Continuity
Control got this right at Finovate this spring in San Francisco. CEO Andy
Greenawalt did a great job of putting his product in context, and then
got right to the demo. Compliance is a complex and inflammatory issue;
he could have spent three or four minutes framing out the challenge.
But he didn't. He started showing off the product, and wove detail
about his customers' challenges throughout the demo. 
The
worst demos show amazing technology that's hunting for a problem to
solve. The best demos help the audience understand a customer problem
and demonstrate how the product solves that problem. Expensify's FinovateSpring 2010 demo centers around the manager that approves expenses. CEO David Barrett explains the frustrations of the approving manager, and then shows how Expensify's whiz-bang technology makes those frustrations disappear.
I'd like to be very clear on this. Carrying a word-for-word speech text onto the stage at Finovate is a bad idea. Nothing will kill audience interest more than your reading from the page in front of you.
At the same time, thinking through what you are going to say is crucially important.
To break the compromise, start by thinking about the customer's problem - solving that situation is why your company exists. Then choose the key screens you need to show from your product to explain how you solve that problem.
For each screen, you need to do three things: navigate the audience to the screen, describe what they see on the screen, and then explain the importance or meaning of what they've seen. For example, you might say "Let's look at our login screen" (navigate), "Here customers enter their username and password" (describe), "We do this because everyone else in the entire world does login this way, so it is familiar to the customer" (importance/meaning).
A better example of this kind of scripting is the Scripting in this way ensures that the product remains the audience's main focus and prevents you from wandering off topic, while avoiding over-scripted stuffiness.
(There are exceptions to the rule. iPay technologies did a great job of showing how their product works through a tightly scripted demo, but they put in a great deal of rehearsal time to make that work, and the script remained focused on the customer problem.)
For Finovate demos, it is the product that matters most. Failing to put the product first creates a variety of problems, and is the shared characteristic of the least effective demos. Successful demos follow many different approaches, but all focus clearly on the presenter's product.
This is a guest post from John Fishback. John is the principal of 154 Consulting and directs 154's Financial Services Product Group, which combines message development and presentation advice services with financial services industry experience to help financial services companies, startups, and vendors develop and market products that speak clearly to customers' needs. He can be reached at john@154consulting.com.
