Everything I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Demoing SaaS
I&#x27;ve sat through probably thousands of demos in my IT career and I must say this quote featured in the article is bullshit:<p><pre><code>    People don’t buy features, they buy solutions, trust, and relationships. -Rob Gonzalez
</code></pre>
I can&#x27;t count the number of times we (various IT teams) have selected products because <i>they were the only one that had a feature we needed</i>.  I&#x27;m at the point in my IT career where if I&#x27;m watching a demo I politely let them do their little spiel for 5-10 minutes and then I&#x27;m like, &quot;yeah yeah show us feature X&quot; (because I want to see that it works and <i>how</i> it works).<p>What always destroys a demo for me:<p><pre><code>    * Sales people that don&#x27;t know the technical details.
      &quot;I&#x27;ll have to get back to you on that.&quot; (for nearly every question)
    * Irrelevant use cases.  &quot;Schools use our product!&quot;
    * Can&#x27;t actually provide a *live demo*.  Only slides or, 
      &quot;Let&#x27;s watch this 10 minute video after which I probably
      won&#x27;t be able to answer any of your technical questions!&quot;
    * Complete failure to mention anything in regards to security
      or if they do it&#x27;s nebulous bullshit like, &quot;we your data
      in transit!&quot;.  This one is becoming greatest concern lately.
</code></pre>
Everything I&#x27;ve read about this sort of thing says that the #1 thing you can do to improve sales of any software product is to add new features.  At least, that works once your product has been established.  Selling it initially?  No matter how you slice it that&#x27;s hard.