Over the last few months, I've noticed a trend. Prospects are expecting to see a simplified or 'dumbed-down' approach to the scenarios that I play out during demos. In fact, I've heard the comment 'iMIS looks too complicated for my needs...'. Ouch!

Let me explain more fully.

I've been doing major demos to large prospects, you know the ones. Full day demo with 10 staff in the room, and I'm supposed to show everything under the sun, and respond to questions throughout the entire time. I call these "Due Diligence Demos", the 3 D's, or Due Dili Demos. So here's the dilemna. (Say that alliteration fast!)

I've been reading a great magazine called productmarketing.com and it had a new article about going viral with your marketing efforts. The author, David Meerman Scott (www.WebInkNow.com) shared his success in marketing an eBook using only online tools. This is a fascinating story about how PR has changed because of the Web.

Bottom-line? In 6 months, he's had over 60,000 people download his eBook, and 15,000 did so in the first three days!!!! Even more impressive is how quickly his blog was threaded to by other bloggers. Even some negative blog had a huge impact on the download of this piece.

Over the last 4 weeks, I've been using the new 10.6 Virtual Machine for all my major demos, and I've been very, very pleased with the performance and the full functionality I can now adapt for every single demo. Kudos to Fernando Carreon and everyone else who helped configure the latest VM, I know it was a major challenge and all I can say is Wow!

For example, you've gotta check out all the new types of opportunities available in the 10.6 VM. Sarah Hoddinott has added some incredible new ways to do business. Some examples:

I've been wrestling with how best to get input on large custom demos for about 5 years now. As a Reseller Executive and now as Product Marketing Manager, I've always felt in isolation when it comes to creating, delivering and following up on Great Demos. I've always felt it would be so much easier and effective if I had a group, a forum, do I daresay a Community?!?!!?

And then the dream began...