As 2025 winds down, I’ve been thinking about all the demos I sat through this year. Probably more than any reasonable person should. And at some point you start to recognise patterns that you wish you didn’t recognise. Patterns that make buyers question their presence in the demo, glaze over, or quietly message me on Slack asking, “Did they really just say that?”
A meme floated past my LinkedIn feed a little over two weeks ago, joking that traditional platforms “lie”. And a screenshot sent by an industry peer from a presentation in which the vendor told the client there was “no upgrade” from their solution. Funny at first glance, sure, but underneath it sat something familiar. That old insecurity (possibly stemming from today’s oversaturated market). The idea that the best way to look strong is to make someone else look weak. High school brawn. Maybe that works when you’re scrappy and unknown, but when you’re well-established and have an ARR that most companies can only dream of? It’s just odd.
Matthew Niederberger
Buyers don’t show up for that. They show up to understand you. How you think. How you solve problems. How you’d deal with the messy reality inside their organisation. Not how loudly you can talk about someone else’s flaws.
And yet, the same jabs and boasts keep showing up in those demos:
- the little digs at competitors
- long monologues about growth, headcount, or fresh office space
- success stories that never connect to the people actually on the call
- grand claims spoken with the confidence of someone who never saw the client’s backlog
A short list of examples I have seen and heard, but you know what I mean.
What vendors sometimes forget is that remote demos changed the dynamic, too. Everyone has a back channel now. Hands up if you have one, too. Clients message me constantly during these calls with questions, confusion, sometimes outright disbelief, and, I’ll be honest, amazement, too. It's not all bad ;)
And I’m there trying, more often than I like to admit, to keep the conversation productive, steering things back to the client’s needs. I’ve jumped in more than once, politely, to interrupt the presenter because the room was losing its concentration. Asking themselves, is this presentation about their company, or how their company can help us? It’s part of how I work. I protect the client’s time, I filter out the nonsense, and I make sure we’re focusing on decisions that matter.
Matthew Niederberger
But here’s the thing… buyers don’t expect magic. It’s not a family trip to Disney World. They don’t even expect perfection. They just want honesty, curiosity, and a sense that you actually listened before you started selling. They want to see how you think, not how shiny your pitch deck is. They want to know how their organisation fits into your worldview, not how many logos you closed this quarter.
Also, and I say this with affection, no one has ever picked a platform because the vendor’s office has designer furniture. If anything, people quietly wonder who’s paying for it. Condescension has no place in a demo.
As we roll into 2026, it feels like the industry is overdue for a bit of maturity and balanced confidence. Less posturing, more substance. Less theatre, more conversation. And the vendors who embrace that change, who speak human, who stay curious, who don’t treat the demo as a competition, show empathy to their prospect’s needs, those are the ones buyers trust. Remember, there is a reason you have been invited to pitch.
Now, if you’re a vendor and you genuinely want to know what resonates in real buying cycles, reach out. I sit in these conversations every week. I see what buyers react to, what confuses them, what quietly kills the deal, and what makes them lean forward. I’m always happy to share what I see from the front lines, no judgment, no brand bashing, just experience amd practical advice you can use.
The bottom line is this, and do with it what you will -> We can do better. And honestly, it would make the whole space a lot more enjoyable for everyone involved.
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