Is your federated search vendor boring you?

Have you ever been bored to tears during a vendor demo? Apparently Marcus recently was and he was proud enough of the fact to blog about what he was doing while the demo was happening. No, he wasn’t paying attention.

Marcus’ post got me to thinking - but not too hard, it being Friday - what makes a demo awful enough that I too would rather read “an article about dental caries published in Scientific Monthly in 1931.” So, here’s my list of top 10 demo killers:

1. The person doing the demo has a monotone voice. It doesn’t get worse than that.

2. The demo doesn’t work. I guess that might be worse than a monotone voice depending on how bad the voice is.

3. The demo moves so quickly (or the presenter talks so quickly) that I can’t follow the demo.

4. The demo runs really long, for some value of “really long.”

5. The presenter is boring or doesn’t engage the audience.

6. Related to the last item, the presenter doesn’t allow lots of time for questions.

7. The presenter doesn’t know much more about the application than I do.

8. The demo is too mechanical and scripted.

9. The sources picked for the demo are not relevant to my interests.

10. Lack of free food.

Marcus, what killed the demo for you? Can anyone add to the list?

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Tags: federated search