Gary Miller here, and I’m starting to think our demo system has a cruel sense of timing.
So there I was yesterday, fifteen minutes into what should have been a straightforward product demo with a potential $300K client. The kind of call where everything’s lined up perfectly – the decision maker’s finally available, budget’s approved, and they’re ready to see our business software in action.
I’m walking through our inventory management features, feeling pretty good about things. The prospect, Janet from a mid-sized manufacturing company, is asking all the right questions. “Can it handle our seasonal fluctuations?” Yes. “Does it connect to our existing accounting system?” Absolutely. “How quickly can we get reports?” Real-time, Janet. Real-time.
Then I click to show her the reporting dashboard, and nothing happens. The screen just sits there, spinning. You know that little loading circle that basically means your day is about to get complicated?
“Just give me one second here,” I say, doing that thing where you click refresh seventeen times like it’s going to magically fix everything. Still nothing.
Turns out – and I only learned this after twenty minutes of troubleshooting while Janet waited patiently on the video call – our demo system was completely overloaded. Apparently, three other sales reps were running demos at the exact same time, plus our marketing team was doing some kind of stress test. The whole thing just buckled under the pressure.
Janet was surprisingly understanding. “These things happen,” she said, though I could see her checking her phone. We rescheduled for today, but you know how it is – that momentum is gone. The magic moment where they’re ready to buy right now? That doesn’t usually come back.
I spent the rest of the afternoon on messages with our technical team, trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening again. Their solution? “We’re working on a scheduling system for demos.” Great. In 2025, we need to schedule time to show our software because too many people want to see it. That’s either a really good problem or a really stupid one.
The kicker? This morning I get a message from Janet saying they’ve decided to “explore other options” and won’t be rescheduling. Fifteen years in business software sales, and I’m still getting beat by a spinning wheel.
My manager asked what we could learn from this. I told him maybe we should invest in demo systems that can handle more than three people at once. He said he’d “circle back” on that. I love how we can build software that manages entire supply chains, but we can’t figure out how to let four sales reps show it off simultaneously.
The worst part? I checked our system usage report, and we’re paying for demo capacity we’re not even using properly. We’ve got the resources; we just can’t coordinate them. It’s like having a Ferrari that only works when no one else is driving.
So now I’m back to square one, looking for another $300K deal to replace the one I lost to our own success. And that’s business software sales for you – sometimes the biggest obstacle between you and the sale is your own product.
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