Guest Blog by FiveSix Consulting's Tamara Austerlade - 6 Tips for a Successful SharePoint Demo

Little did I know when I volunteered to be the site owner for our organization's SharePoint pilot that I would also be assuming the roles of SharePoint trainer, public relations officer, and chief evangelist. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know what SharePoint was and how my team was using it.

But, the conversation never stopped there - they also wanted to see it in action. SharePoint can be hard to understand when you first encounter it, but there is nothing quite like a live, visual demonstration to convey the meaning and possibilities behind what might otherwise simply be bullet points in a list of features.

So I became an accidental expert. I tried to show people what SharePoint looked like and what it could do. After many trials and much error, over time I developed a few tips on demonstrating SharePoint to a group that's new to the platform that I think might help others:

1. Don't do it! (Or, at least don't try at the first meeting.) If possible, arrange for a meeting where you can learn how the group works, the challenges they face, and their level of Office and SharePoint expertise. No projectors, and please, no darkened rooms. A twenty-minute open discussion in a staff meeting before you schedule your demo may end up saving you significant preparation time, and will help ensure that your audience will get the information they are looking for. You'll know exactly which areas of SharePoint to focus on, and they'll spend less time trying to decipher new terms and ideas, because you'll be presenting the tool in a context and manner they understand. No time for a meeting? Cruise the company intranet to get whatever background on the group that you can find. Even a little bit of research can help you avoid gaffes such as assuming basic Office 2007 proficiency when everyone in the room is a die-hard Mac user.
2. Make it concrete. Before presenting the demo, take a look at your site. Think of an example where a definable problem is being solved. Keep it simple as you articulate the problem, e.g., "we never knew who had vacation coming up," or "we needed to reduce our legal risk by tracking who approved which purchase order." If several problems are being solved with your site, choose the one that requires the least the amount of explanation to demonstrate. Avoid scenarios where more than 2 roles or actors are needed. Even if you have the test accounts, constantly logging in and out or switching between windows can quickly become confusing both for you and to your audience.
3. Provide some context. At the start of the demo, describe in your own words what SharePoint is and how it relates to both the audience and what you will be showing the audience. Paradoxically, the more you know about SharePoint, the harder this becomes. If you are demonstrating a collaboration site to a group of help desk managers, you might say, "SharePoint is like a Swiss army knife. It can solve many different problems. Today I will show you how it can help teams share documents and ideas. One way you might use these features is to draft help documentation and solicit input from your support team." This isn't a pop quiz to see how close you can come to Microsoft's description of SharePoint. This is your opportunity to describe the value of SharePoint based on your own experiences and, more importantly, to explain how your experiences apply to the audience at hand.
4. Demonstrate only the relevant features. What specific SharePoint functionality was used to solve the problem? Don't go into content types if they weren't critical to helping you solve the problem. Limit the major features you discuss to no more than three. It is more important to present fewer features and allow time for questions than it is to pack in a checklist of ten features and rush out of the room.
5. Illustrate with the interesting. Try to include one or two "minor" features that you think your audience would just love (e.g., time stamps for compliance auditors) or are just plain cool. Work these in where it is natural to keep audience interest and/or save one for the end to spark the imaginations of those in the audience.
6. And finally, make it personal. People want a story, not a list of features. Tell them how through hard work, ingenuity, and a little help from Microsoft, you were able to wrestle the file share to the ground or finally have meaningful KPIs. Being a SharePoint evangelist doesn't mean sugar-coating the work involved in making SharePoint useful. Sharing the challenges as well as successes makes for good drama and sets realistic expectations.

I was initially resentful of the unanticipated time demands associated with the SharePoint presentation circuit; every hour spent preparing or delivering a demonstration meant one fewer hour for those responsibilities that were part of my job description. While my professional network was definitely expanding, and my knowledge of the organization was growing, it wasn't until I realized that the demonstrations provided access to that rarest of commodities - organization attention - that my attitude changed. Thanks to SharePoint, I was able to raise awareness of the work my team did, publicly express my gratitude to a colleague who'd spent all night fixing a particularly vexing issue, and share some of the common process challenges discussed during other presentations. The ultimate reward? When people started asking for a demonstration of SharePoint features not from me, but from the aforementioned colleague who'd spent all night getting SharePoint lists to roll-up successfully.