Years ago, a colleague introduced me to the concept of “Controlled” vs. “Uncontrolled Vocabulary”. Watching a series of demos recently reminded me of the importance of this concept. Very simply, with Controlled Vocabulary, everyone in the meeting has a mutual understanding of all words and phrases used in a presentation or demo. Uncontrolled Vocabulary are words and phrases that are introduced by the vendor that are NOT understood by the customer.

Uncontrolled Vocabulary includes (but is not limited to!) words and phrases such as:
- Company-specific acronyms
- Company-specific terms
- Product feature names

Don’t use these in demos and presentations if you want to be most effective in your communications!

For more tips and articles on demonstration effectiveness skills and methods, email me at PCohan@SecondDerivative.com or visit our website at www.SecondDerivative.com. For demo tips, best practices, tools and techniques, join the DemoGurus Community Website at www.DemoGurus.com, or the Great Demo! LinkedIn Group, or explore our blog at http://greatdemo.blogspot.com/.