mediumScenarioBehaviouralEntryMidSenior
You are mid-demo and the product fails in front of the customer. What do you do, and what do you do afterwards?
6 min readUpdated 2026-08-15
Answer
Short answer
Name the failure out loud immediately, take one narrated attempt at it, then route around it to keep the meeting's purpose intact. Afterwards, send a same-day written note saying what broke and what you are doing, tell the truth about whether it was a defect or a gap, and re-demo on a named date.
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Likely follow-ups
- It turns out the feature does not work at all, not just in your environment. What goes in the follow-up email?
- How do you handle it when the failure is obviously your own mis-click and a competitor is demoing next?
- What do you build into your demo preparation so that a failure costs you two minutes instead of the meeting?
- Your account executive wants you to blame the customer's VPN. How do you handle that in the room?
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