The last time I put together a demo video, I submitted it for review by the folks on Business of Software forum on the Joel on Software web site.

Some of their feedback included:

• Audio required post processing, since background noise interfered with the spoken voice.
• Video was too long, and less than 3 minutes in length would be best.
• Transitions from one screen to the next were abrupt and obtrusive.
• The last slide showing the URL for more info disappeared too quickly.
• Wear a plain-colored dress shirt instead of a striped dress shirt, which will help video compression.

With their feedback in mind, I set about creating demo videos showing a nifty feature of the Spring Server platform: If you lose network connectivity to your virtual private server, you can log in to springconsole.com with any SSH client, and get an out of band console connection to your server to fix the network problem. Essentially serial console access to a VPS with an SSH client.

Originally, I prepared a single demo video, but after review with some in-house folks, came to the conclusion that this would not be a “one size fits all” situation. Some people knew what serial console was and how it could be used, and just wanted to learn how to use it here. Others would have no idea what I was talking about.

Accordingly, two videos were put together. The first is a “I’ll show you on the whiteboard” informal introduction to what serial console is and what it’s used for. The second is “I’ll show you on my laptop” informal demo on actually using it.

Whiteboard Intro: What is Spring Console?

VPS Serial Console Demo

We’re going to put these in a DynDNS-branded Flash player and on the DynDNS content delivery network before they go live on our site, but wanted to get some initial feedback from folks here on the blog (even though they’re just hosted with veoh.com above).

We’re in a fairly benefit-intangible business. Selling WebReboots is a lot like selling insurance; buying one won’t make you any prettier, nor will it spice up your love life… but when you have a server failure and you aren’t nearby to directly handle it, you’ll be darn glad you have one!

To combat this intrinsic intangibility, we have a two-fold strategy:

1. Convey the benefits through story-telling.
2. Make the features and functionality as tangible as possible.

We have a pretty interesting story to tell of how we came to be. We were a small hosting company trying to make it in a big industry. We had a need for a product that would make us more competitive that wasn’t available at the time, so we made something that met our needs. Turns out, other folks had the same need, and wanted to buy the product from us. Voila! WebReboot!

Building upon the core “how we got here” story when face-to-face with potential customers, I try to add one or two customer-relevant stories to convey the pain that I felt when I was in a role similar to the customer’s… a pain that the customer would likely share. Once on common “Man, I hate that!” ground, I tell a story of how I alleviated the specific pain, and what I can do to alleviate their pain. It certainly makes for more interesting and productive conversation, both for me and for the potential customer, than the naive product-centric “here’s what the widget does” sales technique I used when I first started. But telling a good story about alleviating pain is only part of the process.

We have very, very smart customers. They know snake-oil when they see it. Firing back “we have the solution to that” to each of their voiced problems, pains, and concerns will be heard by increasingly deaf ears. They don’t want to be told what a new widget does, or how it’s all-that-and-a-bag-of-potato-chips; they want to be shown. They want to see their pain alleviated before their very eyes.

Unfortunately, that makes it very, very difficult to sell something with an intangible “you’ll be glad you have it when you need it” benefit. While we could have a successful sales experience by hacking into our customers’ datacenter the night before a meeting, crashing their servers, and then showing up all bright and chirpy the next morning with a welcomed opening line of “Ever have a server crash in the middle of the night?” as they stare bleary-eyed up at us, still wearing their slippers and ducky-pajamas from the all-nighter they just pulled… I can think of one or two legal and technical reasons why that may not be feasible.

Instead, I bring a computer I can crash and reboot with us to each customer meeting. This computer also happens to be covered in well-lit viewing windows that shows how all of the WebReboot magic works.

I’ll save the technical details behind this setup for another post, but for the those on the edges of their seats, it’s a custom-built small form factor PC running Ubuntu with a WebReboot Advanced Server Card installed inside, as well as an LCD control panel on the front showing the hostname, IP address, and uptime of the PC, and I can “crash” the PC at-will from a menu option on the LCD control panel (really, it runs a script that sends Linux into single-user mode, but it LOOKS and BEHAVES like a crash from the perspective of a remote user).

You may now return from the edges of your seats. Read the Servprise Demo Computer Overview if you’re truly captivated.

When we visit with customers, we always bring our demonstration gear with us. Always, always, always! With it, I can demystify everything about the WebReboot. I can show crashes and recoveries. I can show overheating alerts, temperature monitoring, and automatic reboots with Nagios. I can show how customers won’t accidentally reboot the wrong server when cables get crossed. I even turn control over to customers and let them play with it.

Once it became tangible, it not only became easy, but it also became a lot of fun. One customer once connected a monitor and keyboard to the demo computer, and through some holy knowledge of Linux that far exceeds my own, actually crashed the computer much more severely than my meager “go into single user mode” script… and then became truly impressed when the reboot was successful.

We’ve had requests for quite a while to roll all of this into a video, and that’s what some of my recent efforts have been focused on. I’ll follow-up in a few days for some more details on my first experiences creating a video like this, but without further ado, I present… the Servprise WebReboot Enterprise Demo Video: