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Comment by The_DaveG | Hacker News Reader

This is the most interesting comment. I work professionally in sales and am getting ready to launch what could be classified as SaaS/PaaS product.

As to the need of a specific feature, that's an interesting position. I know people whom show you the work around, and ones that offer to build the feature after they have a signed contract. If you were given the two options and like the person/company which would you prefer?

I completely understand your frustration about sales people not being able to answer any question, but if they actually get back to you with a real answer does this not make the wait worth it?

The other three are completely valid and they should be ashamed of themselves...

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I'm fairly perplexed by your reply. It seems so backwards from the way I experience demos. I never find myself with money laying around, looking for a way to spend it, and time laying around, entertaining demos for the hell of it, when I could be working.

If I'm spending my time watching your demo, it's because we have a problem we need solved, and believe you can solve it. You won't even get in the door without knowing what our problem is, so hopefully you'd be able to speak to solving it -- though of course, having to get back to me on precise technical details is fine.

But I can't fathom purchasing something (signed contract) on the promise that you'll add my feature later, maybe.

I suppose it would be backwards from what you typically experience.

Let me try again: You're looking for a piece of software, you need it, and are ready to buy. Let's call it a CRM and the feature you're looking for the ability to add a new contact from the main screen. (It could be anything and any feature, but just as an example)

During the demo, you love the software, the people instill confidence, and you can see yourself using this everyday. If it takes three extra button clicks to add a new contact (giving you a workaround) would this make you happy?

Or you're really happy with everything, and the choice is to sign the contract and we would have the button before install date (written in the contract.) Would that be a better option?

I'm interested in how you as the person listening to the demo, would take those two options (giving only one option would be presented during the demo) Does this make more sense?

As a reference, The guys at Close.io use the first option ( http://blog.close.io/) patio11 (who is kicking around here) uses the second option (http://www.kalzumeus.com/)

A better example of needing a feature: When I was freelancing, I needed an invoicing software that can generate an invoice in my client's language. I don't care if the backend is English-only, but everything client-facing needed to be translated. Believe it or not, Harvest still doesn't offer it, which made me ditch them.

Interesting, did you find a service that offered it in a language that you needed?

If it was a new service, this should have ruled you out (for Harvest's case) before you became a qualified lead. I was trying to ask about something that you could use with a workaround (like a few more steps create a translation) or offer to write what was needed to translate for an additional commitment from you. Would you have taken one of those options, or was the client facing information needing to auto-translate a deal breaker for you?

Let me clarify: I had clients who only spoke French, and other who only spoke English. I'm in a French-speaking area, so it would have been really bad to send my French-speaking clients invoices in English. On the other hand, it also doesn't make sense to send French invoices to US-based clients.

I actually used Harvest for a while, and I basically changed all invoice labels to make them bilingual.

I ended up switching to Pancake, it actually supports setting a per-client locale, and the client-facing parts are translated correctly. It's still not perfect, though, but at least it's there.

I think perhaps the issue is that I'm not typically evaluating things that do not already exist in the company. My employer is established and most things generally work.

I can think of a few pain points I have around storage vendors, functionality of their interfaces, some virtualization niggles, etc. In that case I already have a functioning product and I'm looking to extend functionality and solve a specific issue I have, so if the new product doesn't have it, I stick with what I have.

I'm trying to put myself in the place of someone who doesn't have a category X product at all and am evaluating a number of vendors who all compete in category X, and I'm coming up blank. So likely it's a peculiarity of my scenario -- or, at least, not the kind of customer situation you're dealing with.

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