Attn all ATS/HR Technology Vendors – What not to do on a demo…

 

1.  Talk about the company and why it is great.  Mention the leadership team and their prior accomplishments and that you have good funding.

2.  Show other companies logos that use your product so we know you are reputable and that other people that are more important than us use it, so it must be a good option.

3. Show your product.

 

This is the accepted practice and while not rocket science, it works.  However, over the past few months, as more and more companies have asked me to view their product I have noticed a trend – people are doing some funky things in demo’s.  So, I am blogging here to see if anyone else has noticed these things….

 

1.  Telling me that no one else does what you do when I have seen 5 other products that do the same thing.   I have often been able to tell a company that there was a direct competitor in the space that they hadn’t even heard of.   Being “new and different” doesn’t mean that you have icons with pictures instead of words.

 

2.  Wasting time telling me about why everyone else does it wrong when you don’t tell me what you are doing differently.  I really don’t like the fact that a vendor would slam another vendor, but if you are going to do so – tell me the problem they have and then the solution you offer that makes it no longer a problem. 

 

3.  Don’t twist competitors products and present them in a way that is inaccurate or untrue.  All it does is hurt your credibility if the company you are talking too knows (or thinks they know) the right information.

 

4.  Have a “group” demo with people from multiple companies at the same time.   I recently had this happen to me and since there were 4 other companies on at the same time, I couldn’t address the issues that I thought would be relevant to me or my clients.  I also didn’t have the opportunity to say “Can we skip to the demo” as we went through the history of recruiting since 1872. 

 

5.  Forget to DEMO the product.  Yes, I said it.  I went through more than one demo where the “demo” was a couple of pictures of the product at the end of an hour long powerpoint slide.  YIKES!  If I wanted to see the actual product, that was another hour that we needed to schedule.

 

I am positive that I have left off more strange events that have occurred over the last few months in demos – but I think you get the drift.  Owner/Manager from companies should know what types of demos sales people are giving and if you are doing one of these things — look at your reasoning behind it and if you think it is hurting or helping.