He walked into the suite, and immediately said, "Wow. This is really nice. I thought you might have had a booth."
We were in Minneapolis for the NAR AEI conference. I told him no, we don't do booths, and I gave him the line I always give: A booth doesn't honor either side of the equation.
He nodded in agreement. Then he told me a story from earlier in his day.
His View From the Floor
He was evaluating two vendors. Both had booths in the vendor area outside the conference hall. They were right across from each other on the exhibit hall floor. He'd been trying to have real conversations with both of them, the kind of conversation you need to have when you're making an important buying decision.
It wasn't optimal. When talking to one vendor, he could feel the other one watching. He didn't feel "comfortable" having either conversation. And there were others also waiting to have a conversation. The conversation he needed to have, honest, open, and perhaps a little vulnerable, was the one he couldn't have. Not at a booth.
That's the booth experience. It works for a lot of products, but when the decision is big or sensitive, both vendors lose. But the client loses most of all.
The Conversation That Actually Matters
Choosing a new AMS isn't like buying most other real estate technology. It touches your staff, your members, your data, your compliance obligations. It deserves a real conversation. A private conversation. One where you can say, here's what's broken, and here's what we need, without worrying about who's standing nearby.
In addition, we can't demo Tangilla with fake member and subscriber data. It would require a fake association, fake brokers and agents, fake license data, fake M1 data, etc. It requires real data to work. So when we are demoing our product, we need to do so in a private space.
That's why we book a conference room, a WeWork office, or a hotel suite near whatever event we're attending. We don't do it because it looks better. We do it because the conversation demands it.
You can't have a real conversation at a booth, and we can't do a real demo. The environment won't allow it. It's too loud, too exposed, too "transactional." Everyone is in a bit of a fishbowl and performing a version of themselves rather than just talking.
What We're Actually Trying to Do
When your're considering Tangilla, you're already using some other comany's solution. That's almost always true. Your current vendor might be ten feet away. And even if they're not, everyone knows that the conference floor, or the conference lobby, is a small world.
You need a door that closes. You need a table, some water, maybe a few snacks, and the sense that no one is watching. Or listening, other than us.
That's what we give you.
For a decision this big, a booth doesn't honor either side of the equation. It doesn't honor the vendor, us, who can't show up fully in that environment. And it doesn't honor the client, you, who deserves better than a shouted sales conversation between sessions.
The private environment the suite in Minneapolis enabled wasn't a luxury. It was a requirement.
