Snap Decisions

Occasionally someone will contact me on a Wed afternoon and tell me that they need a demo of my software right away, because they have to make a decision whether to buy it tomorrow. Now, some people are saying this because they think they'll get attention faster, but some people legitimately plan on making a purchase within 24 hours.

These calls scare the daylights out of me. My company provides a 30 day evaluation of our software so that people can try it out and make sure that it works well for them. I can show things off against sample applications, but at the end of the day what matters is that it works with their application. By relying solely on my demo, that second part is completely overlooked.

I liken this to buying a car. Would you walk into a dealership and purchase a new car just based on the commercial you'd seen? No, you want to take it for a test drive. You want to know how well it corners, how loud the engine is, how comfortable the seats are.

So if you have someone on your team who's pushing for a snap decision on a product, do everything you can to keep that from happening. Make sure some time has been spent ensuring that the program meets your needs. Otherwise you could end up in a bad spot where a tool has been purchased, it doesn't work, and now you have no money to get something else in place.