The vendor demo is not the product

Early in my career I gave software demos for a living. I want to be fair about this: I was not lying. I was walking a rehearsed path through clean data, avoiding the two screens that were slow and the one that was ugly, and I was good at it. Everything a buyer is actually worried about lives off that path.

So the first thing I ask for now is our own data in the demo. Not a sample, the real export, including the records with missing fields and the customer whose name has an apostrophe in it. How a vendor responds to that request tells me nearly as much as the result does. The good ones say yes and ask for a week.

The second thing I ask is what happens when we leave. Which formats does an export come in, does it include attachments and history, and has anyone on your team actually done it for a customer. A vendor who has helped someone leave gracefully will tell you so, and it is a good sign rather than a bad one.

The last two are duller and matter more. Who does the configuration, and what does a change cost after go live. And I want a reference at our size who bought more than eighteen months ago. Recent references are always delighted. The useful conversations are with year three.

MMB