"Can I just see it in action?"
When selling a solution, these five simple words can (unfortunately) throw too many GTM teams completely off their game.
Your prospect leans forward. The AE’s eyes grow wide, while the Solutions Engineer stumbles by trying to start a sentence three different ways. Trying to hail-mary save the meeting, your VP of Sales jumps in with, "Well, first let me understand your use case a bit better…"
The prospect asked the most reasonable question in the world, and yet your entire go-to-market motion flinched – meanwhile, the data actually shows us exactly how to prepare for this exact scenario (more on that later).
While it’s easy to blame the above experience on the product being too complex, it’s really about whether the strategic work’s been done to make that complexity navigable without hand-holding.
When teams haven't done that work, they stall, redirect, or create gates where none need to exist. Every second of hesitation sends a signal to the prospect: We don't trust our product to speak for itself.
The Three Big (And Expensive) Stall Tactics
When teams aren't confident in what the product communicates on its own, they reach for predictable escape routes. You've probably seen all three:
The Gatekeeper approach: "We can't show it until we understand your use case."
What you're telling yourself: We need context to deliver value.
What the prospect hears: We're afraid of what you'll find if you look without supervision.
The cost of this disconnect shows up immediately: every gate is a drop-off point, and every "let's schedule another call" is an invitation to ghost. You're not protecting the relationship, you're testing your prospect’s patience. And most fail that test by simply moving on to a competitor who'll just, well – show them the product.
The Educator approach: "They need to understand the problem space first."
What you're telling yourself: They're not sophisticated enough to appreciate what we've built.
What the prospect hears: You're making me sit through a lecture on something I already know I have.
You're spending their limited attention on context they don't need, while the actual question – How does this solve my problem? – goes unanswered. By the time you get there, you've already lost them.
The Explainer approach: "Our product is sophisticated. We need to walk them through the architecture."
What you're telling yourself: Depth equals value.
What the prospect hears: Sit still for 90 minutes while I talk at you about technical functionality and requirements.
The cost? Conversion rates. You've turned evaluation into homework your prospects have no interest in completing. They may sit through your presentation and listen to the talk-track, but then never return your follow-up emails.
Here's what all three have in common: They're strategies for maintaining control when you're not confident in what happens if you give prospects the opportunity to see the value of your product for themselves. These three approaches feel productive in the moment – you're educating, you're being thorough, you're managing the process – but they're actually symptoms of a deeper problem.
How Well-Intentioned, Strategy-Poor Sales Decks Become a Blocker
That flinch in the room was probably a domino effect that started months earlier in a conference room where Sales, Marketing, and Product were trying to get aligned on "the story."
Nobody sets out to build a 40-slide deck. It starts at 12 slides and feels manageable. Then Sales needs "just one more" for the most common objection. Marketing adds company context because prospects need to trust you're legitimate. Product adds technical architecture because enterprise buyers ask about it. Leadership adds strategic vision for C-level conversations.
Six months later, you're looking at 40 slides that took six people three weeks to build, and nobody's happy with it.
What's missing from all 40 slides? A point of view. A strategic choice. An answer to the question: What does THIS buyer need to understand FIRST to move forward?
The 40-slide deck isn't a complexity problem. It's a symptom of misalignment. When Sales, Marketing, and Product can't agree on the story, the solution becomes "include everything." Everyone gets their slides, everyone protects their turf, and the result is clarity for no one – especially for prospects.
What Happens When Buyers Get Control
The deck becomes a shield because teams haven't resolved the deeper question: What does this buyer need to see to truly understand how our product will deliver value? But there's another way to find that answer – let the buyer show you.
We recently analyzed millions of interactive demo sessions to understand what drives completion, and one pattern emerged: there's a critical early threshold where users decide whether they want to keep going. Users who cross that threshold are 2.3 times more likely to finish the entire experience.
What's happening in those opening moments? Users aren't passively absorbing your carefully sequenced information. They're making rapid judgments: Is this relevant? Does this solve my actual problem? Is it worth my time or not?
That means every interaction needs to build confidence and prove relevance, quickly. Not setting the stage with company background or market context, but getting straight to something that makes them think: "I can see how this might actually work for us.”
What Today’s B2B Buyers Really Want
The behavioral data told us one story, but we wanted to hear from buyers in their own words.
We recently surveyed hundreds of B2B buyers who made a software purchasing decision in the past year, asking what actually moved products forward in their evaluation, what built trust, and what killed it.
When we asked what made them advance a product in consideration, pricing and features mattered. But what stood out: Nearly half said "I understood how it would work for our use case."
Not "I was told it would work." Not "they explained it." I understood.
Truly understanding value requires active participation – it's something buyers do, not something you tell them. The path to understanding isn't longer explanations or more detailed walkthroughs, it’s giving your prospects the ability to explore on their own terms and map your product to their specific workflows.
When we asked what builds trust, concrete examples of how the product works in real situations won.
And what undermines trust most? Exaggerated claims and content that feels scripted or inauthentic.
We'll be releasing the full survey results later this month, but the sneak peek through-line is that B2B buyers are consistent in what they want: Show me how it works. Give me proof, not hype. Let me explore rather than sitting through your one-size-fits-most script.
The question is whether GTM teams are listening.
Back to That Pivotal Sales Moment
"Can I just see it?"
The next time a prospect asks this question, you have a choice: You can flinch and redirect to discovery, launch into context-setting, or explain why they need to understand the problem space first.
Or you can say: "Absolutely. Here's what [specific persona] typically explores first, but you can start whenever it makes sense for you."
That confidence doesn't come from having a simpler product, but from the strategic work most teams avoid: making real choices about what matters most, aligning internally before you build your deck or demo, and trusting that your product – properly framed – can speak for itself.
The 40-slide deck and lengthy explanations are symptoms of teams that haven't done that work. They're control mechanisms deployed when you're uncertain what happens if you let go. And prospects feel that uncertainty immediately.
The teams that handle this moment well are the ones who've done the hard work of translation, no matter the complexity: figuring out what buyers need to understand first, cutting everything else, and building experiences that put buyers in control.
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