Demo Bingo: SE Edition
​
Check the box if this has ever happened to you during a demo.
☑️ Huge demo scope with coffee-break timing
“Can you show everything in 30 minutes? Just the essentials: finance, inventory, billing, integrations, BI, mobile, security, APIs, and roadmap.”
☑️ The sales brief is completely misaligned with the customer’s expectations
Sales says: “It’s just a high-level overview.”
The customer joins saying: “Today we need to validate 47 mandatory requirements.”
☑️ The demo invite arrives with no context, no objective, and no confirmed audience
Meeting title: “System demo.”
Description: blank.
☑️ The audience changes five minutes before the meeting
It was supposed to be a conversation with users. Suddenly, executives, IT, procurement, legal, and someone who “just joined to listen” enter the room.
☑️ Sales promised a personalized demo without telling the specialist
“I told them you would show exactly their workflow.”
Specialist: “Which workflow?”
Sales: “The one they will explain now.”
☑️ The demo environment works perfectly until ten minutes before the meeting
Universal demo law: everything worked yesterday.
☑️ Access, password, or VPN does not work.
“Your password has expired.”
“Your access has been revoked.”
“This environment is under maintenance.”
☑️ The demo is scheduled without knowing who is the decision-maker, influencer, or user
There are 15 people in the meeting, and none of them knows exactly why they were invited.
☑️ A training expectation disguised as a demo
The invite says “demo.”
The customer joins with a notebook: “Can you teach my team how to operate it step by step?”
☑️ The customer joins thinking this is already system training
“Great presentation, but I’ll need help later to actually use the system.”
☑️ The customer is sleeping, or almost sleeping, during the demo
Slow blinking. Camera off. Or literally sleeping.
☑️ The demo is delivered to the wrong people
“Loved the demo. Too bad the people who really needed to see this are not here.”
☑️ Sales insists live that the system does something it does not do
Specialist: “This point needs to be validated.”
Sales: “But it does that, right?”
☑️ Sales is completely distracted during the demo
Doesn’t take notes, doesn’t support the chat, doesn’t catch objections, and at the end asks: “So, how did it go?”
☑️ Someone asks about price in the middle of the most important workflow
“Before we continue, how much does it cost?”
☑️ The online meeting has its own soundtrack
Dog barking, construction noise, open microphone, echo, aggressive typing, and a “Can you hear me?” every five minutes.
☑️ The specialist asks “Does that make sense?” and gets a generic “yes” — or worse, silence
Which may mean: I understood, I didn’t understand, I want this to end, or I’m answering emails.
☑️ The customer treats the exception as the rule
“But what if this operation happens on a Saturday, without internet, with retroactive approval and a complementary invoice?”
“Does that happen often?”
“No, but it could.”
☑️ The demo becomes the customer’s internal process meeting
They start discussing workflows, department conflicts, internal rules, and who should approve what. You become a spectator with screen sharing enabled.
☑️ Sales answers for the specialist — incorrectly
“Yes, that’s native.”
It wasn’t. It never was. Maybe it never will be.
☑️ Sales asks if they can send the proposal immediately
Even with 12 technical pending items, the wrong audience in the room, and no validated pain point.
☑️ Sales leaves the meeting with a much more optimistic view than reality
Specialist: “We have important risks.”
Sales: “The customer loved it. It’s basically closed.”