1. Panasonic – This is poor booth management. A well run booth will greet every prospect, answer questions and provide follow up. The only difference in the way visitors are handled are that show personnel will wind up the conversation after 2 minutes for a tire kicker and continue longer for serious prospects.

2. Harold’s comment – Possible for buyers with leverage such as major media companies, MSOs, telcos, large enterprise, etc., but unlikely otherwise. Hardware companies build to order as much as possible, so providing free trials means they are ordering parts they will have to pay for regardless of whether an order comes through. Software companies are much more likely to provide a free trial because their manufacturing and inventory costs are essentially zero.

3. With the collapse in sales across the board this fall you may find (or already have found) that attitudes have softened to letting you do a free trial. I think 90 days is longer than you need to determine if something works. Can you swing 30? A 90 day trial may look more like vendor financing from the vendor’s perspective. If all else fails you may propose a provisional PO, where the vendor let’s you try the gear for 30 days and if you keep it beyond that point you’ve committed to buy.

Technology companies definitely have an obligation to allow test drives, especially if the solution represents a large investment of money and time by the acquiring entity. If a vendor were not willing to prove their technology before a purchase, then I would be skeptical of that technology’s abilities to perform satisfactorily. As a technology architect for many years in the entertainment industry, I was responsible for several new technology acquisitions. The methodology utilized achieved 100% success, primarily because we insisted on doing proof of concepts (POC’s) with the vendors before we would commit to make any purchases. A new technology may very well be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if it will not work once it is integrated into an existing and mature IT environment, then it is worthless.