When you can’t show how your product or service works, you could create a story that shows the benefits. Here’s an example of a demo story that I wrote:
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One sunny Tuesday in April, after Ed Wilson finished his morning meeting with senior management, he shook his head and said, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him think.”
Management had shot down another one of Ed’s ideas. We traded horse stories for several minutes until a commotion in the main conference room ended our fun.
Our boss stepped from the room and motioned for us. In the meeting, we discovered that the hardware group purchased the wrong computers for the NeXT Operating System; NeXT needed a fast disk drive and quality graphics card. The specs were available in manuals, available in books, and available in brochures. Someone overlooked the obvious.
What’s more, last week the hardware group told management there wasn’t a problem in sight.
Surprise!
Cathy Cooper, the Vice President of Technology, glared at the hardware team and said, “You all lied to me!” Ed nudged me in time to see the vein in her neck throb as if it would burst. Cathy ranted for five furious minutes, then stormed out.
The storm rocked the good ship hardware. Helpless and adrift, her crew grumbled that they didn’t get a chance to tell their story. A chance to spin their tale of confusion with silky-smooth buzz words — NextStep, OpenStep, distributed object, enterprise object…
The answer was simple enough. Would management, however, see the value of the solution through the muddy waters, stirred by the endless ramblings of technology people? Probably not. Ed and I mused a minute and quick as lightning it dawned upon us.
We called our contact at a local vendor and asked about hardware for NeXT. Having received our help with a sale two weeks earlier, the salesperson was eager to assist.
At 4:07 PM, he delivered a NeXT workstation. We configured it within the hour and positioned the machine in a common work area. We made sure the standard applications were visible and compiled a software demo: The bouncing-red-ball demo. Its eye-catching graphics begged us to let the software run overnight. How could we resist?
The following morning, we noticed several people hovering over our workstation. One influential fellow named Pete (some executives wouldn't make a technology move without him) asked, “Who owns this sleek machine?”
“Oh... that’s ours,” said Ed. “If it’s bothering you, we can move it to another room.”
“That’s okay,” said Pete waiting his turn to test drive the machine. If you looked into Pete’s eyes, you could see the wheels spinning in his head.
After playing with NeXT’s sparkling user interface and gazing upon the bouncing ball demo, employees called their friends and spread the word.
Word spread like wildfire, jumping from cubicle top to cubicle top. Soon the entire company was ablaze with the idea that a NeXT solution was delivered within twelve hours. Like a show under the big top, you knew NeXT’s performance thrilled people by the sounds that filled the air — “Ooh, aah.”
By mid-afternoon, Cathy Cooper had heard enough. She needed to see for herself. She waded through the sea of people lapping against the workstation edges and watched as Pete put the software through its paces.
Unlike yesterday's tempest, Cathy looked calm on the surface, although inside, she felt nervous. She asked several questions. You could see her eyes grow wider with each answer like a light had been turned on in a dark room.
Awakened by the glowing workstation, Cathy pounced on it like a cat on a field mouse. Before the day ended, she ordered fifty-seven new workstations.
Seven days later, when the software got off the ground, beaming faces were seen all around.