Sales demonstrations: when does a trial count as evidence?
In high-value-added selling, offering a trial often seems more persuasive than extending the sales pitch. Yet the managerial question is precise: how can a trial be organised so that it can change a judgment, rather than simply reinforce the seller's and the customer's existing convictions?
What the literature establishes
Charles G. Lord, Lee Ross and Mark R. Lepper (1979, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) studied how people with opposing views on capital punishment evaluated conflicting research findings. Participants tended to respond more favourably to evidence consistent with their initial position and to scrutinise opposing evidence more critically. Within this experimental setting, the finding establishes that exposing people to the same information is not enough to make their judgments converge.
Examining what might contradict a judgment
Charles G. Lord, Mark R. Lepper and Elizabeth Preston (1984, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) tested an instruction to consider the opposite of one's initial judgment. In their experiments, this approach reduced certain judgment biases more effectively than a simple instruction to be fair and impartial. For a sales demonstration, the mechanism suggests a preparatory question: what result would genuinely lead us to revise our assessment of the offer?
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that asking customers to look for counterarguments is enough to make their decisions objective. These studies justify neither that promise nor the use of contradiction as a persuasion technique. A reasonable application is symmetrical: sellers must also specify what would lead them to acknowledge that their offer does not meet the need being tested. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What a demonstration cannot establish
These experiments concern judgment, not complex B2B purchases; they measure neither contract signing nor the value achieved after implementation. In commercial practice, a trial may also succeed because conditions are favourable, support is exceptional or the scope excludes everyday difficulties. A positive result therefore remains difficult to interpret without documented trial conditions and evaluation criteria agreed in advance.
A practical check in Sion
As part of SHR's « Vente à forte valeur ajoutée » programme, an exercise applicable in Sion would involve preparing a trial record with the customer that specifies the need, representative conditions, the success criterion and the result that would lead to rejecting the offer. Depending on the project, the check could concern a hydropower maintenance intervention, an administrative workflow in healthcare, a wine traceability operation or booking management in Alpine tourism. Across the sales trials monitored during the chosen period, the team would calculate the proportion with a dated record approved by both parties before launch, then document the decision against the stated criteria. This indicator checks evaluation discipline, not sales growth; discrepancies between the stated criteria and the final decision become material for the training. To go further: explore the High-Value Selling training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: High-Value Selling in Sion
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