TL;DR
Your demo has 3-5 moments that will either be remembered or forgotten. Everything else is background noise. The sellers who lose string together feature after feature hoping something lands. The sellers who win engineer specific moments designed to crystallize in memory. This chapter shows you how to build reveals, craft anecdotes, and create value multipliers that give your champion ammunition. Features get compared. Moments get remembered.
Your demonstration needs peaks-moments that crystallize your value and give your audience something to talk about after you leave. These are the moments that transform information into impact.
AI-assisted development has accelerated parity between solutions, resulting in reduced differentiation. With content output increasing 3× due to AI, you must engineer specific moments that break through the noise and give buyers something remarkable to discuss internally.
The Neuroscience of 'I Didn't Expect That'
Your brain is a novelty-seeking machine. When something unexpected happens, your nervous system releases dopamine-the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, motivation, and memory formation. This isn't just interesting; it's actionable.
Neuroscience research shows that surprising information is encoded more strongly into memory than predictable information. Why? Because evolutionarily, surprise signaled potential threat or opportunity-something that required your full attention and needed to be remembered.
In your demonstrations, this means the moments that violate expectations are the moments that stick. When you show a system accomplishing in 30 seconds what they assumed took hours. When you reveal an insight that contradicts conventional wisdom in their industry. When you demonstrate a capability they didn't know was possible.
These aren't just 'cool demos.' They're memory anchors. Your champion will forget your feature list. But they'll remember the moment they said 'Wait, it can DO that?'
Why This Works: Surprise and Memory
The brain is a novelty-seeking machine. Unexpected or novel information automatically captures attention and triggers the release of dopamine. Neurologically, surprise signals that 'this might be important-pay attention!'
Studies show that events which violate expectations are encoded more effectively into memory than predictable events. In evolutionary terms, this makes sense-something unexpected could be a threat or opportunity.
In presentations, leading with a provocative, unusual insight or question will jolt your audience out of passive reception. For example, opening with a startling statistic or a bold claim creates an open loop the brain wants to close.
When used appropriately, surprise elevates attention and also enhances memory consolidation-the brain, being more aroused, 'files away' the info more strongly.
Great presenters structure their talks with a few 'Aha!' or 'Did you know?' moments to keep things lively. These moments are often the ones people remember and talk about later.
- Club Mob neuroscience research on surprise and attention
- Dopamine and novelty research (Behavioral neuroscience)
- Memory encoding studies on unexpected events
- Kensinger & Davachi work on surprise and memory
Creating Peak Moments
Magic - Build Up, Reveal and Reward
What makes magic so special? If you watch a magician progress through their routine, they maintain engagement with intriguing flourishes that hold your attention, building up to something much bigger: the reveal. Are you building toward something when you present to your audience?
Just like a magic routine, you can build toward a crisp reveal that explicitly highlights a stark contrast between the prior and future states of a solution. The reveal is not your product, but should underscore the transformational outcome that your capabilities have made possible. Ideally, use Value Stacking to underscore the collective value and impact.
Why This Works: Anticipation and Resolution
The 'build, reveal, reward' structure taps into fundamental brain chemistry. During the buildup, your audience experiences mild tension (cortisol) that focuses attention. The reveal triggers a dopamine release associated with reward and pleasure.
This mirrors how our brains process stories: tension creates engagement, resolution creates satisfaction. The emotional arc makes the content memorable.
Research on narrative engagement shows that when stories have a clear dramatic structure with buildup and payoff, audiences report both higher engagement and better recall of key information.
In practical terms: don't give away your best moment upfront. Create anticipation, then deliver the 'wow' at the right moment. The contrast between 'before' and 'after' becomes the memorable takeaway.
- Zak, P. on cortisol and narrative tension
- Neuroscience of anticipation and reward
- Storytelling structure research
Stories and Anecdotes
Have you ever stayed at a hotel and seen a sign in the bathroom highlighting towel reuse? Something along the lines of "Please Consider Reusing Towels - 90% of the guests that stay with us reuse their towels and save 1,000 gallons of water per day". It is not about us personally, but comparing someone with others like them can have a powerful effect at quickly creating a relevant conversation.
When researching your audience, think through what examples relate to your content and could help them rapidly understand the value on their own terms. Small, relatable stories have a unique ability to tap into our shared understanding, a shortcut for conveying a large amount of information in a small package.
Additionally, stories and anecdotes have a unique ability to actively transport your audience to another place as a group and cause them to naturally engage and process the situation - unlike a video clip that is a passive viewing experience.
Science Behind Stories
Stories are not only engaging, but can help compress complex topics into easily understandable bites. If they are emotionally engaging, retention is significantly increased.
Why This Works: The Identifiable Victim Effect
Psychologists call this the 'identifiable victim effect': one vivid example often motivates action more than a sea of statistics. Hearing '800 million people suffer from hunger' is abstractly tragic, but our brains struggle to grasp it. Hearing about one child who goes to bed hungry-their specific struggle-triggers empathy and makes the issue concrete.
In B2B sales, this translates to: One detailed customer story beats ten generic logos on a slide.
Stories trigger what researchers call 'transportation'-we become hooked and emotionally invested in the story's outcome. Berkeley researchers found that 'study after study finds that stories are far more persuasive than just stating the facts.'
A narrative approach was shown to be more effective in convincing people to adopt healthy behaviors, compared to simply giving them statistics about health risks. The same principle applies to B2B buying decisions.
- Identifiable victim effect research (behavioral psychology)
- Berkeley News (2015) on story persuasion
- Narrative transportation theory
- Comparative effectiveness of story vs. statistics
Value Multipliers & Callbacks
This is an advanced, but extremely powerful concept.
In an age where products offer similar capabilities, how can you underscore the unique benefits of your solution? The answer lies in a technique used in stand-up comedy routines.
Callbacks are jokes that refer to one previously told in the routine. How does this relate to demonstrations?
Let's imagine that you are selling to an automotive company that manufactures SUVs. For the sake of simplicity, let's imagine that our demonstration contains 3 scenes.
scene_1: In the first scene the customer is driving their vehicle and because it is connected to the internet and sends its data back to your organization, we can get a sense of how they drive. As they lower the ride height and change suspension modes, we can get a sense of the type of driving they are doing.
callback: Toward the end of our demonstration, we are sending a service update based on some recent work done on the vehicle. Within that message, we could include details of a new off-road specific package and off-road school for drivers that they may be interested in. This moment showed not only the resolution of a support issue, but added value with relevant offers - specifically due to the information that was captured in the first scene, creating a 1 + 1 = 3 type moment.
Within your demonstration flow, find downstream moments that you can amplify the value of based on prior interactions or data points relevant to your solution. This helps highlight how your customer can receive more value from their potential investment in your solution.
Why This Works: Cohesion and Compound Value
Callbacks work because they reward attention. When an audience member recognizes a reference to something earlier, they experience a small 'aha' moment-a dopamine hit from making the connection.
This technique also demonstrates system thinking and integration-you're showing how different parts of your solution work together in ways that compound value rather than just adding features.
Callbacks create narrative cohesion, making your demonstration feel like a unified story rather than a series of disconnected features. This coherence makes the overall message more memorable.
In cognitive terms, callbacks create additional neural pathways to the same information, making it harder to forget. Every time you reference an earlier concept from a new angle, you're building memory architecture.
- Cognitive psychology on retrieval practice
- Narrative cohesion research
- Memory consolidation studies
Workbook: The Peak Moment Planner
Before any demonstration, ensure you have engineered moments that will be remembered:
Ask Yourself
If No, Then...
Do I have at least one "Wait, it can DO that?" moment?
Engineer a surprise that violates their expectations
Am I building anticipation before my reveal (not giving it away upfront)?
Create buildup with tension before delivering the payoff
Do I have a specific customer story with a named person?
Replace generic logos with one detailed, relatable narrative
Have I planned callbacks that reference earlier moments?
Connect later demonstrations to earlier data or context
Will they remember this moment tomorrow?
Test for emotional impact and distinctiveness
Does my demo feel like a unified story or a feature tour?
Add narrative cohesion through callbacks and transformation arcs
References
Behavioral science research supporting this chapter