As more prospects and customers are embracing BYOD, that means the Surface Pro 4 your contact just purchased won't be able to see your Cisco WebEx.  It is a known issue that WebEx and Windows 10 are not friends.

To boot, the URL link to load WebEx won't work in Microsoft Edge.  Then when Chrome or Internet Explorer launches the URL, it gives a generic error message.  The official response from Cisco: Windows 10 and WebEx don't work together.  No apparent time for a fix either.  Luckily, for most WebEx customers, there's usually an IT department that maintains that Windows 7 Enterprise is the OS of choice so internal meetings are fine.

So what is one to do when a remote viewer exclaims, "Hey! I am getting an error when I try to load WebEx!"

​Sign up for a Join.Me account!  It's a pretty nice (and FREE) service by the folks at LogMeIn.  They'll give you a free trial of their Pro service for 2 weeks, but their free service is enough for Sales Engineers as a backup or parallel app.

After signing up, downloading the app (only those that share have to download), and logging in, you'll have an intuitive interface to work with.

The free user will be limited to a one-time code for the meeting, which is fine.  Just read it out loud over the conference bridge.

Free accounts only allow 10 people (including you) into the meeting.  That's plenty especially if you also have the WebEx meeting running in parallel.

Lastly, the major caveat of the free account is that the host can only share his/her screen.  Yes, you read that right, the host is always the presenter and the only the screen can be shared.

I have gotten around that by running both Join.me and WebEx simultaneously AND I have to be the host of the Join.me.  I will always share my screen with Join.me.

Let's hope WebEx gets their act together, but realistically, let's hope IT departments realize that WebEx is an antiquated product with crazy requirements (i.e. needs an extension in browsers to load meeting URL, installs a file by default [instead of loading temporary application by default] for viewers).

I recently installed SideKick at the recommendations of one of the sales reps that is also an excellent prospector.  While it is catered towards prospectors, sales engineers can use this as well.  Let's start of with the product itself.  SideKick's vision is to facilitate the business development by turning this:

into this:

and they do this in a number of ways.  See this blog.  If I was a prospector, sign me up.  Up to 200 notifications/mo is free and the first month is all you can consume.

For sales engineers, there are a few uses:

• Want proof that the sales rep really isn't reviewing your collateral?  Sidekick can track whether attachments are opened and/or URLs have been clicked.
• Want to make sure that follow up you sent the customer has been read?  Sidekick can track e-mail opens.
• And sometimes, you just want to know...

Aesthetic details matter.  WebEx screws them up on a PC.  Nothing bad ever happens on a Mac so this article is only about PCs.  Don't let it happen to you on your next demo.

Two things happen when you share your screen on WebEx:

1. Window Color changes to "Windows 7 Basic"
2. ClearType is turned off

Mobility is king.  Every prospect will inevitably ask "Do you have a mobile application?"  If your software has a mobile app or even a mobile interface, you'd be doing your product a disservice by showing PowerPoints with screen shots.

PowerPoints are great backups, but that's just it -- they're backups.  Imagine if you mailed in your software demo by showing screen shots?  You really should be working mobile applications into your demonstration.  When I joined NetSuite, I sat in on a number of demos as part of my ramp and mobile was an afterthought and not positioned as a differentiator.  As part of my checkpoints, I demo-ed via WebEx our mobile app directly from my iPhone.  We quickly worked it into our golden demo flow and impressed our panelists.  Technology sells -- Everyone wants to know how you did that.

I will be outlining my preferences for mirroring your mobile screen -- both for iOS and for Android -- on both Macs and PCs.

Oftentimes, a dashboard or a form can be very busy.  This can be our doing (we want to demonstrate our powerful dashboarding capabilities) or it can be the prospect's doing ("I'd like to see the following KPIs...").  The best way to approach this is still to simplify and remember that less is ALWAYS more.

There will still be times we want to draw the viewer's attention to particular parts of the screen.  What we DON'T WANT to do is move the mouse excessively to bring a viewer's eyes to a section of the screen.  What we WANT to do is to create a theater mode by darkening non-critical (i.e. not part of your story) areas:

I use an application called Target (by Nullmass).  It's a portable application that hasn't been updated since 2009 for Windows XP, 7, and 8+.  I have yet to find anything like it for the Mac.

There is no installer.  Simply double click and you'll see the application active in your taskbar.  Now whenever you want to highlight the screen, hit Alt-1 and you'll get cross hairs to draw your rectangle.  There are additional features, but I have found them rather useless -- I do not need to show each click with a ripple so that the viewer counts the number of mouse clicks, outline what I am typing (so when I create some Ctrl-Tab magic instead of a mouse click the viewer won't call me out), or set a countdown timer till the presentation starts (the demo never starts on time, right? -- and if you have time leave the screen on a self-explanatory report instead of the agenda!).

I've checked the Chrome store for an extension that does something similar, but to no avail.  What are some ways you bring focus to a portion of the screen?