A new Product Manager needs to demonstrate expertise in a product to gain respect and trust from others in the organization. A great way to prove this expertise is by giving a product demo to a set of internal key stakeholders and SMEs for feedback. This important audience will be able to see that the PM understands the product features, how those features contribute to an effective sales message, and get a chance to give the PM feedback for when they need to demo the product for customers. These key stakeholders are typically folks from the development team, marketing, support, and other product managers. The demo can take anywhere from 30-60 minutes depending on the product, and can be formatted however the new PM wants, as long as there’s time for questions and feedback. Since Jenni is helping manage 5 products, she’s doing three of these demos to cover the various product lines.
Whether the new Product Manager has given demos before or not, hopefully the tips below will help them be successful for their demo to gain the trust they’ll need to be successful.
- Do your research – Talk to key stakeholders ahead of time to get their views on the product. This especially goes for Sales and Marketing where hearing a sales pitch or up-sell message will give great material for this demo.
- Tell a story – A story helps give a foundation to your demo as well as win interest from the audience. Tell a compelling problem that brings users to your product, and how your product relieves user pain.
- Use real data – Partner your story with screenshots or a live demo that shows a user’s account in action. This makes the story real and tangible. Screenshots remove any complication from technical, but for this demo a live account gives more opportunity for the stakeholders to give feedback or ask questions.
- Focus on benefits instead of features – As the demo shows off the product, focus on the customer benefits and advantages in the marketplace rather than features. This shows understanding of how the customers use the product as well as mastery of what’s really important to customers.
- Leverage analogies – Having analogies for various product concepts can help communicate what a product does and set up a quick foundation for product concepts. There are likely several analogies that Sales and Marketing use when describing the product to new prospects, and the PM needs to be aware of how they’re used.
- Strike the right level of complexity – A great demo knows the audience, and sets the complexity at the right level. For this demo the complexity will be more than a real customer demo, but don’t get too distracted by details during the demo or the demo will easily take too much time.