Have you ever sat in one of those sales presentation which has gone so completely off the rails that you have to step in, stop the thing and put it back on the tracks? This happened last week when we had Microsoft in (at short notice) showing off PerformancePoint. We'd allocated 60 mins for product intro and demo so that we could spend 2 hours talking about what we wanted. Well the introductory presentation took 45 mins and we were almost another hour (and maybe 25%) into the demo when I pulled the plug.
After the meeting some of my colleagues were more or less ready to ditch the product there and then.
Fair play to Microsoft though, they took it on the chin, spent the rest of the week and the weekend working with one of their partners - IM Group - and came in on Monday with a presentation that was spot on. They had a fully configured prototype that answered many of our questions and demonstrated that they had listened and learned. They are now in with a good chance of getting the work. Provided the numbers are right, of course....