I saw a great prop yesterday in a Great Demo! Workshop: one of the participants used his laptop as the prop, holding it up for audience view while saying, “it’s like having mainframe in your laptop!” (They provide software to support mainframe emulation and some very cool related capabilities).

Props are interesting and energizing – they capture audience attention and reinforce concepts. They help bring life to demos – both for the audience and the presenter!

I typically use a range of props in Great Demo! Workshops, such as:
- CD
- Cell Phone
- Newspaper
- Book
- Telescoping pointer
- Stack of papers
- Customer collateral
- Raft of razor-sharp pencils…

What props could be used in your demos?

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/.

Peter Cohan is the founder and principal of The Second Derivative, focused on helping software organizations improve the success rates of their demos. In 2004, he enabled and began moderating DemoGurus®, a community web exchange on software demonstrations. He is the author of the book Great Demo! - how to prepare and deliver surprisingly compelling software demonstrations.