The Fine Art of Demoing: The 8 seconds rule
The first time I was exposed to the world of presentations and public speaking was back in high school. Back then almost no one had measurable experience in public speaking in my close circle. Youtube and the “Death by PowerPoint” videos were long ahead in the future. Information on how to do it effectively and have an impact on your audience was quite scarce. It took a lot of experimenting to get a grasp on what works even remotely and what doesn’t in the slightest.
Still… I fell in love with the arcane art and have been interested in it ever since. Sure, it hasn’t been my main focus for a long time, but I can definitely say at the moment it is one of the main tools in my bag.
Whether you actually use presentations in your day-to-day life or not, all of the principles in designing and delivering a good presentation translate into everyday conversations and can help you bring your point along more effectively.
In The Art of Demoing blog series, I will explore some of the ways you can improve your presentation skill set.
The eight seconds rule
One of the most important things I learned once I moved to pre-sales was that effectively presenting information is key to being successful in the role. Yeah yeah… Kinda obvious. Sure. But… How do you actually do that? Especially when you can’t normally see your audience and judge their reactions to what you are saying or showing? I’d say once we moved to an exclusively virtual way of doing things it ramped up the difficulty of the presentation game to “Hard”.
The problem is not always obvious and the fact that your audience is not in the same room as you is just a primer to all side effects streaming from that fact. Even if you keep cameras on, it’s not easy following the room to see who’s paying attention and lead them back in if not. Sure it helps, but you can’t police everyone all the time.
It’s much easier to build your narrative into something engaging that keeps their attention on your story instead of looking at their phone. And even then… You have to expect that distractions are always around. Somebody liked a photo on Instagram. An event on Facebook. The baby is crying. The list is endless.
So what do the eight seconds have to do with anything?
Believe it or not, that’s the average attention span of a human. Shorter than a goldfish’.
Of course, it’s debatable whether that’s actually true, but having all kinds of distractions just an arm’s length away makes me trust that. And thinking about it, it’s no surprise that it is so short.
Humans have evolved throughout the years to use their senses to survive.
Imagine you’re a hunter-gatherer in the middle of a tall grass meadow. Something moves in the corner of your eyes.
Is it a lion?
Is it a bear?
Potential lunch?
Something makes a sound behind you while moving in the grass… Same questions…
Immediately, your attention is pointed in the direction of the distraction. It’s a matter of life and death. It’s just our pathology.
Now. Substitute “hunter-gatherer” with “modern-day human”. Change the movement into a notification appearing on their phone and the sound to the chime of a message… Substitute the hunger for food for one for dopamine from the next “like”...
You get the idea…
We have to constantly compete with all sources of distraction around our audience. The way to do that?
Something has to draw their attention to us…
…at least once every eight seconds.
That’s it.
Easy right?
Well, not that easy it turns out…
In the next following blogs, we’ll dig a bit deeper into how to achieve that and deliver an effective demo to your customers.
At the end of the series, you will have the visual, audio, and structural tools to improve your content delivery immensely.
For now, I leave you with one of my favorite engaging sessions. I use a lot of the styles and approaches of the presenter in my presentations and found out they are quite effective. Especially in a virtual environment.
Let me know what you think.