The way teams buy SaaS is broken by design, and both sides know it.
Vendors optimize demos for emotional impact, not accuracy. Pre-loaded data, happy-path workflows, SEs trained to redirect hard questions. The entire format is built to close and not to inform.
Buyers sit through 4-6 of these performances, take random notes, and then pick whoever gave the best presentation, not whoever has the best product. Half the team skips half the demos. The "comparison" is a spreadsheet one person fills in from memory two weeks later.
Software mis-purchases cost companies anywhere from $100K to $2M when you factor in implementation, migration, switching costs, and lost productivity. And it keeps happening because vendors have no incentive to change it (the theater works for them) and buyers don't realize the process failed until they're already locked in.
The closest analogy is earnings calls, where everything is structured, recorded, and analyzed against specific criteria. Nobody evaluates a company's financials by vibing through a presentation. But that's exactly how most teams evaluate six-figure software decisions, and then act surprised when the implementation goes sideways.