If you work in presales long enough, you start noticing a strange pattern.
Teams are eager to report metrics, but many of the numbers they track have nothing to do with actual deal progress.
I often hear teams proudly talk about the percentage of features they managed to cover in a 60-minute call.
Or they highlight the number of questions the customer asked, as if volume equals interest.
Some teams even count how many questions they successfully answered.
Others pay attention to how many people attended or how long they spent explaining the technical details.
These numbers might look impressive when you write them down.
But they say very little about whether your demo helped the customer make a real decision.
I hear this type of reporting almost every week, and it always follows the same pattern.
It sounds good on the surface, but something is missing underneath.
It usually starts like this:
Me: “How was the demo?”
SE: “Great. They had a lot of questions and we could answer all of them.”
On paper, that looks like a success.
But then I ask the next question.
Me: “What are the next steps?”
SE: “They will get back to us within two weeks.”
And that is the moment where the excitement stops.
Because “they will get back to us” is not a next step. It is the beginning of being politely ignored.
This type of update repeats itself with small variations.
Someone will say, “We touched almost all parts of the platform,” as if range matters more than relevance.
Another person will say, “We had twenty people attending and they said it was interesting.”
That does not tell you if anyone is committed to change.
Or you hear, “We covered all items on our demo agenda.”
Which often means you prioritised your agenda over the customer’s.
These are vanity metrics.
They create a sense of achievement without moving the opportunity forward.
So the question is: what should you actually measure?
The first indicator of a successful demo is simple.
A follow-up meeting is already scheduled before the call ends.
If the customer has no reason to meet again, the demo missed the mark.
A good demo creates momentum, and momentum shows up in the calendar.
The second indicator is a clear confirmation that your solution helps solve the challenges the customer shared with you.
Not a vague “interesting,” but a concrete statement where they recognise the impact.
Third, check whether you created urgency.
Did the customer walk away understanding why this matters now, not next quarter or next year?
If there is no urgency, the deal will slow down.
And once a deal slows down, it usually dies quietly.
The fourth indicator is whether you quantified the problem.
A customer needs to agree that the issue is worth solving and that doing nothing has a cost.
If you cannot put numbers behind the problem, the customer will not put budget behind the solution.
This step is often skipped, and it makes the biggest difference.
Finally, a real sign of progress is getting access to a decision maker or the next-level stakeholder.
If your demo earns you that conversation, you did something right.
This is the moment where deals become real.
The rest of the metrics only make you feel busy, but not effective.
A demo should not be judged by how much you covered.
It should be judged by how much the customer understood, believed, and committed to.
Everything else is noise that feels productive but does not help you win.
