Tips to Avoid Demo Drama - Tip 15: Feeling nervous is normal

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Actually, I’ll go further than ‘feeling nervous is normal’. If you are not feeling nervous before your demos, then something is wrong.

If you don’t feel nervous, it is probably because you are doing the same thing over and over again. This has made you feel completely comfortable with what you are doing.

This sounds good, but the danger is that you are starting to get bored. This, in turn, will mean that you are slowly losing energy. You are therefore likely to be much less engaged in your demos and this will also affect your audience. They will see that you are not really that interested in them, or in the software—and this will make your demo much less likely to be successful.

I’ll be straight about this. A demo is showtime and you really need to love what you are doing.

When I find that I’m not feeling nervous anymore, I simply change things. I might alter my slides or my demo script—but something, anything, to make things that little bit different, and bring back a bit of interest.