Your calendar is full of demos. Your demo-to-trial conversion rate is 45%, which feels amazing. Prospects light up during sales calls. They tell you exactly how they'll use it. They say things like "This is exactly what we need" and "When can we get started?" Then reality hits. Within 90 days, 60% of them have churned. Some ghost you after the first week. Others use it sporadically for a month, then disappear. You've revamped onboarding twice. You've added automated email sequences. You've created video tutorials. You hired a customer success person who does white-glove onboarding calls. Nothing changes the curve. Your team says you need better onboarding. Your advisor says you need to add more features. Your investors ask about your activation metrics. But deep down, you're starting to wonder if something more fundamental is wrong. **Decision Lens** This is a classic pivot signal, but it's one founders resist the hardest because the initial validation feels so good. Here's why high demo interest with fast churn is actually worse than low demo interest - it creates false hope that you're close to product-market fit when you're actually far from it. **Why demos convert but customers churn:** There are three primary patterns, and recognizing which one you're in determines your next move: **Pattern 1: You're selling a vision, not a product** During demos, you're showing prospects an idealized version of how your product could work in their environment. You're filling in gaps with "we're building that" or "you could use it this way." You're a great storyteller. They buy the vision. Then they log in to the actual product and reality doesn't match the story. The feature you said was "coming next month" isn't there. The workflow you described requires workarounds. The integration you mentioned doesn't exist yet. They feel deceived, even if you were honest about timelines. *Signal you're in this pattern:* * You spend 40+ minutes on demos explaining context and possibilities * Customers ask "Where's that feature you showed?" in their first week * Your demo environment is significantly different from production * You find yourself saying "technically you can do this if you..." * Churn feedback includes words like "not ready" or "not what we expected" *What this means:* You're selling futures, not current capabilities. The gap between demo and reality is too large. **What to do:** This requires the most brutal honesty. You have two choices: *Option A: Stop selling and build (Persist)* * Put new sales on pause for 60-90 days * Ship the capabilities you've been demoing * Only restart sales when demo = reality * This works if the gaps are closeable in a reasonable timeframe *Option B: Change what you're selling (Pivot)* * Strip your demo down to ONLY what exists today * Rebuild your pitch around current capabilities * If the product you can demo today doesn't excite prospects, pivot to building something that works completely, not something that half-works broadly * Better to solve one use case completely than five use cases partially The test: Can you make demo = reality in 90 days? If yes, persist and build. If no, pivot to a narrower problem you can solve completely today. **Pattern 2: You're solving a "vitamin" problem** Your product makes something easier, faster, or slightly better. During demos, prospects intellectually understand the value. It sounds nice. But when they get back to their day-to-day work, your product doesn't solve an urgent, painful problem that's actively hurting them. They can live without you. When things get busy, your product is the first thing they stop using. There's no compelling event that drives them back. No crisis you're preventing. No revenue you're protecting. No compliance requirement you're fulfilling. *Signal you're in this pattern:* * Prospects say "this is cool" more than "I desperately need this" * Usage drops after week 2-3, not week 1 * When you ask churned customers why, they say "just didn't have time" or "got busy with other things" * No one is urgently trying to get their team to adopt it * Customers describe your product as "nice to have" when explaining to colleagues *What this means:* You're not solving a problem that hurts enough. Your product improves something that was already tolerable. **What to do:** This is the hardest pill to swallow: no amount of onboarding or feature development will fix this. You need to pivot to a more painful problem. Here's the framework: *Interview your most engaged users (top 10% who didn't churn):* * What problem were they solving that made them stick around? * What would happen if they stopped using your product tomorrow? * What other problems are they dealing with that are more urgent? Often you'll find that your "sticky" users are using your product for a different, more painful use case than what you're selling. Pivot to that use case. *If you can't find a more painful problem in your current space:* * Look adjacent. What are your customers' actual urgent problems? * Interview 20 prospects about their top 3 priorities this quarter * Find where budget is already being spent urgently * Pivot to solving one of those problems instead The key insight: People will tolerate significant friction and learning curves for painkillers. They'll abandon products with perfect onboarding if they're vitamins. Fix the problem severity, not the onboarding. **Pattern 3: You're selling to the wrong persona** The people who take your demos love what you're building. But they're not the people who need to change their workflow to use your product daily. Or they're not the people who feel the pain you're solving acutely enough. You're demoing to managers who think it's great for their team, but the team doesn't want to change tools. Or you're demoing to executives who assign it to their staff, who then ignore it. Or you're selling to IT when the real users are in marketing. *Signal you're in this pattern:* * Demo attendees are different titles/roles than your most active users * People sign up but a different person (or no one) actually uses the product * You hear "I'll have my team start using this" and then... silence * The person who bought it isn't the person who churned - they never really started * When you ask about usage, buyers don't know; they delegated it *What this means:* You're optimizing for buying personas instead of usage personas, and they're not the same people. **What to do:** You're selling to buyers but building for users (or vice versa). This requires a GTM pivot, not necessarily a product pivot. *If buyers love it but users don't adopt:* * You need to add user-facing value, not just management dashboards * Interview the actual users (not buyers) about what would make them want to use it * Consider: are you solving the buyer's problem or the user's problem? Pick one and commit. * May need to pivot to a different buying motion (bottom-up instead of top-down) *If users would love it but you're demoing to the wrong people:* * Change your outbound targeting to reach actual users, not their managers * Offer free trials directly to end users, let them bring it to their boss * Rebuild your positioning and demo for the user's language, not the buyer's language This is often a persist situation - same product, different sales motion. **The 90-day test:** Give yourself one quarter to implement the appropriate fix for your pattern. Set clear metrics: * **Pattern 1 fix:** Does day-7 engagement improve when demo = reality? * **Pattern 2 fix:** Are churned customers saying the problem is more urgent now? * **Pattern 3 fix:** Is the right persona using the product consistently? If after 90 days of focused effort you don't see meaningful improvement in 90-day retention (should improve from 40% to 60%+), pivot to a different problem or market. **The founder psychology trap:** High demo conversion feels like validation. Your brain gets a dopamine hit every time someone says "yes" on a demo. This makes it incredibly hard to see the pattern. You keep thinking "just one more feature" or "just better onboarding" will fix it. Here's the reality check: If customers aren't horrified at the thought of losing access to your product after 30 days, you're not solving a painful enough problem. No amount of optimization fixes that. **Takeaway** High demo interest with fast churn means you're good at selling but not solving a problem that's urgent enough, real enough, or positioned correctly. The decision framework: 1. **Are you overselling in demos?** → Persist but stop selling vaporware; only demo what exists 2. **Are you solving a vitamin problem?** → Pivot to a more painful problem in the same space or adjacent space 3. **Are you selling to the wrong person?** → Pivot your GTM and positioning to match actual users The most dangerous response is to double down on customer success, onboarding, and activation tactics. Those are optimization moves for a product with product-market fit. When you don't have PMF, optimization just helps you burn cash more efficiently. If 60% of customers can walk away after trying your product, the problem isn't how you onboarded them. It's what you're offering them.