What you'll get
- 3 copy-ready blocks
- 5 min read
- Part 1: What to know, the day before
- Part 2: What to check, the hour before
- Part 3: What to ask in the first minute
A demo checklist that only covers the screen share misses where demos actually die: in front of an audience you did not understand, answering questions discovery already answered, with a next step nobody prepared. This one has three parts: what to know, what to check and what to ask in the first minute.
Part 1: What to know, the day before
THE AUDIENCE
[ ] Every attendee named, with their committee role
[ ] Who called this meeting into being, and why now
[ ] Who is missing: which role is NOT attending, and what that means
[ ] One fact per attendee you can use: their words, their post,
their question from the last call
THE ACCOUNT
[ ] The problem in their words, quoted from discovery notes
[ ] Their current workaround and what they tried before
[ ] What they have already seen: past demos, competitors in play
[ ] The one question that decides this deal, written down
THE DEMO
[ ] Which scenes run, in what order, for which faces
[ ] Their terminology loaded: names, sites, data shapes
[ ] The two limits you will volunteer before anyone finds them
[ ] The proposed next step, with a date, ready to say aloudIf the audience section cannot be filled, the fix is not better guessing; it is an email: "So I show the right things, who is joining and what does each of you want out of it?" Buyers answer that question. The scene structure the demo then follows is the demo script by committee role.
Part 2: What to check, the hour before
[ ] The environment is the demo one, with their terminology, not
yesterday's client's
[ ] The path you will show, clicked through once, today
[ ] Notifications off, tabs closed, bookmarks bar clean
[ ] Backup for a dead screen share: PDF of the key screens, dial-in
[ ] The meeting link works from a device that is not yours
[ ] Recording consent decided: asked for, or not recording
[ ] Water, notes sheet, and the next-step sentence on a sticky noteTen minutes, every time, no exceptions on Tier 1 accounts. The checklist is boring precisely so the meeting can be interesting.
Part 3: What to ask in the first minute
However good the prep, the room changes things: someone new appears, someone key drops, the agenda moved. Three questions reset it:
"Before I share my screen: anyone joining I have not met?"
"Since we spoke, has anything moved on [the problem]?"
"Same as agreed: if this is worth continuing, we book the next step
at the end?"The third one plants the close while the meeting is still friendly. Closing is easier when it was announced.
Worked example (illustrative, not a real company)
Dana Whitfield preps the Calder Cold Chain demo the evening before. Part 1 surfaces two things: the finance lead who killed a similar project last year has accepted the invite, and nobody from IT has. Dana adds a cost scene with conservative arithmetic for the finance lead and emails the champion: "should your IT manager see the integration part separately?" Part 2 catches that the demo environment still shows last week's retail data; twenty minutes fixes it to depots and routes. The first-minute questions reveal a new attendee: the finance lead brought an analyst. The demo survives all of it, because none of it was a surprise by the time it happened. All names are invented.
Five mistakes to avoid
- Prepping the product instead of the audience. You know the product; the variable is the room. Part 1 is three times longer than Part 2 for a reason.
- Ignoring the missing role. No budget holder in the room changes what the demo is for: its job becomes earning the meeting that has one.
- First click of the day in front of the buyer. Data moves, features flag off, sessions expire. Click the path the same hour.
- Treating a new face as furniture. An unknown attendee is an unmapped committee member delivering themselves to you. First-minute question one exists for them.
- Prepping everything except the close. The next-step sentence, with a date, written before the meeting, is the single highest-value line on the checklist.
Why this works on named accounts
Common questions
How do you prepare for a software demo?
Three layers: know the audience and account (who attends, their roles, the problem in their words, what they already rejected), check the mechanics (environment, path, backups, their terminology), and scope the room in the first minute. The knowledge layer decides the deal; the mechanics protect it.
What should you ask before giving a demo?
Who is joining and what each person wants out of it, what has changed since discovery and whether the agreed next-step-at-the-end still stands. Asked by email beforehand or in the first minute, these three turn a performance into a meeting.
What if the demo goes wrong technically?
Have the backup ready before you need it: a PDF of the key screens and a story that does not depend on live software. A seller who switches calmly to slides mid-crash often earns more trust than the demo would have; what kills credibility is treating it as a catastrophe, because the committee is watching how you handle failure too.
More from the Academy
Demo Script by Committee Role
For sellers demoing to a mixed room.
You leave with a script in five scenes, one per committee role, the order that keeps everyone awake and the lines that hand the demo back to the audience.
Discovery Call Agenda and Notes Sheet
For sellers who run discovery on instinct and lose what they heard.
You leave with a five-part 30-minute agenda, a notes sheet whose fields feed the account plan and a list of the six things to leave the call holding.
Second-Meeting Plan
For sellers whose first meetings go well and then go quiet.
You leave with a close for the last five minutes of meeting one, three things to change before meeting two, a 25-minute agenda and an honest parking rule.
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