Episode web page: https://bit.ly/408ltw2 ----------------------- Rate Insights Unlocked and write a review If you appreciate Insights Unlocked, please give it a rating and a review. Visit Apple Podcasts, pull up the Insights Unlocked show page and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Below the trailers, you'll find Ratings and Reviews. Click on a star rating. Scroll down past the highlighted review and click on "Write a Review." You'll make my day. ----------------------- In this episode of Insights Unlocked, host Nathan Isaacs talks with Mike McDowell, Senior Solutions Consultant at UserTesting, about his role, his new book Demotainment: The Art of Delivering Demos That Engage, Inspire, and Drive Results, and his approach to crafting compelling product demonstrations. Key Highlights: Role at UserTesting: Mike describes his role as a platform expert, guiding clients on effectively utilizing UserTesting’s tools. He supports sales processes and helps teams maximize value by aligning the platform with their business goals. The Concept of Demotainment: Mike explains how his background in theater inspired him to transform product demonstrations into performances that captivate audiences. His philosophy emphasizes bringing energy, personalizing demos, and engaging customers. Writing the Book: The book stemmed from a popular presentation Mike gave at Demo Fest. Encouraged by the reception, he expanded his ideas into a LinkedIn article and eventually a book. He shares the iterative writing process, from drafting chapters based on his presentation to weaving in anecdotes and pop culture references to make the book lively and relatable. Impact on Sales Teams: The book aims to help sales professionals make their demonstrations more personalized and engaging, ultimately boosting success rates. Mike offers strategies for tailoring demos even with limited preparation. Behind-the-Scenes of Writing: Mike talks about the discipline and creativity required to write a book while managing a busy schedule. He reveals how revisiting his material and getting reader feedback improved both his writing and professional approach to demos.
Chapter 1: What is Demotainment?
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode, we're sitting down with Mike McDowell, Senior Solutions Consultant at UserTesting, to explore his unique approach to product demos, what he calls Demotainment. We'll dive into how he blends energy, storytelling, and personalization to create engaging presentations and hear about his new book on the topic.
Whether you're in sales, UX, or product management, this conversation is packed with inspiration and practical tips. Enjoy the show.
Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, viewers, and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Nathan Isaacs, Senior Manager for Content Production and User Testing. And joining us today as guest is User Testing's Mike McDowell, a Senior Solutions Consultant. Sorry. Welcome to the show, Mike. I know you keep talking over me. Sorry, don't you have to start over or? No, no, no, no.
Okay. Hey, how's it going, Nathan? It really is amazing to be here on the other side of the mic, as it were, for this shorter episode.
Mike, we always say, I always say, senior solutions consultant. What does that mean? What do you do at user testing?
Basically, you can think of me as a platform expert and a thought leader. So I know the ins and outs of everything that user testing's multiple platforms are capable of, whether it's UserZoom, EnjoyHQ, what's coming down the pipe in 2025. All those things, you can lean on me to be the expert in knowing how to apply those to generate value inside of a company.
As a thought leader, because I've been a customer of user testing as well in the past, I also can really envision how to apply the principles, the techniques, things that user testing can do to drive value inside of a company. So people rely on me to make recommendations and help them make a decision about where the best use of user testing is.
So a customer of ours will... You'll be brought in to help them figure out how best to use the platform.
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Chapter 2: How does Mike's theater background influence product demos?
Absolutely. Whether it's in the sales process as they're deciding whether or not it's the right tool for them or after they've onboarded and we're really just trying to help them drive value and get as many people as possible using user testing.
Effectively. As I pay attention every now and then, I'm seeing you post and you're like, you're over at company XYZ's site for an on location kind of workshop or you're doing a call or something like that. Those I only post if they've publicly said they're a customer. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. You're not... I know. I'm not trying to give away any secrets or anything like that.
And I think it's important, you know, kind of talking about what you do and what your role is and how you're being brought into the sales process. You just... wrote and published a book. Can you tell us what it is?
Sure. Actually, it's probably going to get published. I'm going to approve it for publication today, which means in the next couple of days, Amazon's going to actually release it to the world. I actually have the proof right here in front of me. Demotame it, the art of delivering demos that engage, inspire, and drive results.
It's essentially my particular brand of doing an entertaining and engaging product demonstration. Uh, Because of the fact that I have a history going back to my childhood in theater and wanting to be an actor and really turning presentations when I'm up at the podium into more of a performance, I try to bring that to my role as sharing the capabilities of user testing with other people.
And I delivered a session on this at DemoFest earlier in the year. It was a virtual event back in May. And when I came up with the idea for Demo Tame, I thought, all right, this is me. This is my style. And it was really popular. The content really resonated with the audience at Demo Fest. And so I thought, well, maybe this could go a little further.
So I turned it into an article that I put on my LinkedIn profile. And that happened. got me thinking and people have been encouraging me to write a little bit more. And so I thought, well, maybe I could turn this into something more and go a little bit deeper.
And since I'd already done the presentation, I kind of had these 12 to 15 themes, which at the time were just a slide with an image from a movie on it, which has always been my style of presentations because I don't really want people reading when I'm talking. I want them sort of, yeah, get an idea of what I'm going to talk about and then listen to me. And so I thought, OK, now I've got the themes.
Now, how can I turn that into a book? that sort of carries that entertaining concept and content from the presentation and the article. And that's really where Demo-tainment was born and what gave me the idea to do it. Amazon makes it so easy to self-publish a book. It used to take years to do these things. I've probably been working on
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Chapter 3: What inspired Mike to write his book?
The book, like I said, the article was, I mean, the presentation was back in May. I had to come up with the idea before that where it was just germinating in my brain. And then maybe the last four plus months or so, I've been really actively working on the book, getting it approved, getting someone, I'm not getting it approved, but getting someone to read it and say, yeah, you're not crazy.
This is actually, this is really a nice addition to sort of the pre-sales landscape in terms of Not necessarily prescribing methodologies or specific techniques or strategies, but more about the style and the way to engage with an audience and get them inspired by the presentation.
So I want to talk about two things, you know, in a sense. Well, let's talk about the book, but also talk about the process of writing the book. I think that's also something everyone's always kind of interested in learning more about. But aside from both of those, I don't know how you write a book about bringing all the energy
you have into anything i mean that's it right you you may just i may be able to read your book and still not have the same sort of style that you have um but let's get into the book specifically so what what is it um How does the book, you know, what's the end result of the book? What's the end result of having, doing a demo-tainment?
Or what does it set it apart from how people are doing demos and that sort of thing now?
Well, I don't want to say how, I mean, certainly there's probably other people doing very entertaining demos. I'm by no means, I think I'm a trailblazer here. It's more about articulating it. And if you can think about, I'm going to just keep on theme with the book. I'm going to do a little reference to a movie. So I'm sure you've seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off, right?
So the Ben Stein teacher approach, you know, Bueller, Bueller, very monotone, very formulaic and scripted, driving, no real engagement or excitement. People are just like, this is where you get the, you know, ugh. I've got to get on a vendor call and watch this demo for an hour. That's going to really be the highlight of my day.
So it's taking that versus really being full speed ahead, really full of energy. I like to think of one of my favorite actors, Michael J. Fox. There's this movie that he did called Secret of My Success. And he's sort of walking through the office. And everyone's just working. And he's sort of walking on sunshines playing in the background. And he's got this super high energy.
And everything he does is high energy in that movie. And it's sort of that view versus that, or maybe even let's keep it on the teacher theme. Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, you know, he's teaching the class instead of he's teaching poetry and literature.
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Chapter 4: How can personalization enhance product demonstrations?
Even if this is the first time you're talking to somebody, you can still do on the fly what we call discovery, asking questions about their role or what they're hoping to get out of the demonstration, and then really just tailoring on the fly to that. So absolutely great. the success rate of your sales cycle should go up. Obviously, I'm not going to quote a percentage.
I don't have any empirical data based on people that have read the book and then gone and tried it. But from my perspective, I've been very successful at user testing, and I think I attribute that a lot, and my sales reps have attributed a lot to my style and the demo-tainment style, which I didn't always call it that.
I do also want to just preface that this is by no means the only way to do product demonstrations. There's many successful methodologies, techniques,
techniques whatever works for you if you're if you're in pre-sales or an AE or someone else that does a demo or presentation whatever works for you if it's working great this just works for me and I have so much fun with it and you know I just thought why not put this out there and see if I can help some other people or at least entertain them a little bit as they read one more pre-sales book that's trying not to be a carbon copy of all the rest
Well, I look forward to ordering my own copy and give it in a read. I think even I could benefit, I bet, from it. And going to the process of writing the book. So you were at DemoFest, you gave this presentation, and then... it led to an article and then you, what, what made you, you know, say, okay, let's, let's take this one step further than let's start writing a book.
Can you talk about, um, you've decided to write a book and then how you outlined like the work you needed to do to get it done?
Well, and that's again, where I was very fortunate that I'd already done the presentation and had a transcript of my presentation to work with. So I already had broken it down in terms of, I just thought of like slides from the presentation as chapters. And so it was a really great start point. And then because I had content that, you know, I'd already delivered a bunch of content for this.
So I was able to take the transcript and use that for each of the segment areas, the chapters and start there and say, okay,
let's come up with a structure for this where am I lacking where did I maybe I I was too heavy in one area or others I need to like elaborate here and then just coming up with the format you know once you establish the format you know how it's gonna be you know there's gonna be and actually at the very end I would say there's a thing at the beginning of every chapter these directors notes and that was something that was added very late in the process where it's like oh there may be a little bit missing let me just do this introductory thing and it actually worked out really well but once
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Chapter 5: What key strategies does the book offer for engaging demos?
Fortunately, I mean, you know, I think you know this about me, Nathan, is that I don't really sleep as much as the average person. So sometimes I'll just be up writing until 2 a.m. and I'll make myself go, ah, I should probably go to bed now.
It's just a matter of having that time in the evenings and even on the weekends, just going, yeah, I'm gonna just bang out a bunch of stuff here and write for a while. I never really understood how authors could do this. How can you sit down and write like this? But I really love the content and I love what I do. And I think that helped a lot.
I wasn't trying to manufacture something, like looking for a problem to solve, as they say, or trying to jump on the bandwagon of some kind of content. You'll see, there'll be some buzzword and all of a sudden there'll be four books about it and people just knocked it out. I don't know how they do that. But because I'm really passionate about it and I've lived a lot of this,
it was me trying to share and just writing stories, just writing these anecdotes of things that happened to me in demos or meetings and things. So it just made it easy, but it did take time. I mean, I've told a couple people this recently, just aligning it, doing the alignment for the, to get it to fit into a book.
Like I spent like 10 straight, like 5 p.m., I just started working on it, and then the next thing I knew it was 3 a.m. And I was like, all right, I finally am done with it. And then of course,
I got the proof and it was a little bit off and so I had to redo it and I just showed, I just got the newest proof this morning and it's all good so I'm gonna hit that approve button this afternoon and by the time this goes up, it should already be out there on Amazon so yeah, you can just look for it.
Well, and why don't we wrap up and you can tell us. But before you do, I did have one question. Sure, please. Did it change how you think about, you know, like sitting down and thinking about your structure and all this kind of stuff? Have you evolved or learned something about what you what is Demotainment?
I would say the thing that I've learned the most about the book is some things that even I could be doing a little bit better. These are my techniques, but I look at where maybe I didn't use them as much as I should have and maybe I didn't engage as much.
Sometimes you get in a situation where you're going and then you forget to stop and ask questions and to talk about what you're showing them and get their feedback. So, I would say I've evolved more as a professional and an author and the ability to share information.
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Chapter 6: What makes an engaging product demo?
And we kind of always wrap up and I want to do the same with you is, you know, I appreciate all your time today. But if I want to learn more about you and your thought leadership and how I can get a copy of the book, what should I do?
Definitely the best place to go is find me on LinkedIn. I'm going to be, you know, just. search for Mike McDowell on LinkedIn. I should come up pretty easily. Mike McDowell, user testing, something like that. It'd be the easiest way to find me. I have my YouTube channel, at MikeDropVideos, M-I-K-E-D-R-O-P, videos, all one word.
That's another place where I put out a lot of information, not just about user testing, but also about UX in general. I put up a video about the book. I'll probably put another video about the book and some stuff there. That's the easiest place. You won't really find me on X or anything like that. LinkedIn is the place to go for me.
Excellent. Mike, I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much.
This was amazing. It was so fun and interesting to be a guest on the podcast as well. You know, on the spot with a couple of questions. But, you know, I think I was ready for them.
Yeah. No. Perfect. All right. Well, we'll talk with you soon. We'll see you next season in your other role as a host of an episode. Looking forward to it. Talk with you soon.
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And until next time, this is Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from Usertesting.
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