What has worked for you in the past to break this inertia? Can you share your experience?
[1] http://a16z.com/2014/05/30/selling-saas-products-dont-sell-themselves/
Neo4j sells an empty database. What I do is take the problem the customer is trying to solve, find the boiled down essence of it, spend about a week building a solution to that problem, and have it ready to show off to upper management by Friday.
It brings the risk WAY DOWN to see that in such a short time I can solve the problem. They know that if they spend the next 3 months building the "real software" from what they learned from the POC, they will be successful.
It's the best job I've ever had. You get 1 day or so to learn "the business", another day to come up with model and create sample data, a day or 2 to write the queries that solve the problem and finally a day to show it all off.
At the end, all the customer cares about is that their problem is solved.
In addition to what's been shared, it's about the relationships and the fact that your solution serves the purpose of multiple stakeholders.
Even if your solution serves me well, if you can't justify to my boss and the other teams we're working with why your software is going to make us all kick ass, it's going to be a tough sell. We also get pitched tons of software every day and large companies throw tons of gifts so your product/message/delivery/service all need to be top class to cut through all the crap.
And realize it takes time. Someone has to want to do this enough to get the wheels moving. So that means that either their job will get easier, their peoples job will get easier, they will save the company money, they will earn the company money, ultimately, they will get recognition and/or a bonus for bringing you in. It's rarely about the product.