I think the best demos are the ones that are flexible enough to allow for some good brainstorming between the company and the vendor.

Which reminds me about one more thing — It’s great if you can find out from the vendor not only WHAT the technology does but also WHY the vendor uses a particular approach. You can learn a lot about new best practices and also discover the vendor’s level of knowledge of the Industry.

Here are some more items to consider:

- Make sure you schedule enough time. If your Sr. Exec tells you to give each vendor 10 minutes, you need to question authority.

- Prep your team to keep questions relevant to the primary objectives and topics at hand. Often there is one person who either gets excited about a side functionality and uses up a lot of time asking peripherally related questions or someone who wants to show how smart they are by throwing out “hardball” (but irrelevant) questions that would be better saved for post-demo discussion.

- Be flexible on how the killer scenario will play out. Allow the vendor to approach it from whatever angle they think is most relevant and helpful. Sometimes with new technology you don’t know what you don’t know. By defining narrow parameters for the demo you may miss out on seeing better ways of approaching things. You will also learn more about how the vendor thinks and what kind of overall, business strategy expertise they have. Anyone can follow a script, knowledgeable vendors can start with an objective and work backwards.

- Last, my colleagues would say that I was remiss if I didn’t add – Offer your guests the use of the restroom when they first arrive and a glass of water (in that order!)

1. Schedule time for everyone to debrief immediately following the demo – while the demonstration is still fresh in everyone’s memory. Discuss, debate, fight over what everyone liked/disliked and concerns

2. Appoint a single individual to serve as the official note-taker. Have this person track all unanswered questions, follow-up/action items, etc. At the end of each scenario – review the outstanding items and assign ownership and due dates right there. Submit the list to all participants at the end of the demonstration

3. Scorecards! In order to allow people to more easily follow along with the demonstration and provide structured feedback I’ve found scorecards to be critical. This helps to provide a formal quantitative analysis of the feedback to support any discussions or decisions regarding product

4. Schedule breaks into the agenda. Seems silly to have to mention this, but I’ve seen this overlooked more than I would care to admit. In addition to the biological needs, responding to voicemail (you did ask them to turn phones off, right?) demos rarely go according to schedule and failure to schedule breaks doesn’t allow for any opportunities to make up lost ground.

5. Always have a whiteboard or flip chart handy. Some demonstrations are best augmented by some “chalk talk”, and not having this available for the demonstrations may result in key concepts being overlooked, misunderstood, etc.