Denis,

I started to reply, then I saw Jim's post, and I agree with him. You cannot assume that just because you saw one demo that the product is inadequate. You need to get more facts.

Do you discount the possibility that your software solution could easily be misrepresented by someone who didn't understand the product when demonstrating it? If you believe it could happen, then you've partly answered your own question. More than once, I've seen good software poorly represented by people who were dumber than a bag of hammers.

If you try to solicit a company based on false premises, and it turns out the product you're seeking to replace does more than you realize, you lose credibility that you may never be able to regain. In a vertical market environment, that type of talk hits the streets very quickly.

And even if the product is some type of subset of yours - it *may* do a handful of different things yours doesn't. NEVER talk about a competitor's product in detail unless you understand the feature set. This is a potential recipe for looking royally stupid in a dozen different ways.

Now, I could easily be wrong on all of these...maybe the competing product IS bad. But you need to research it.

Next question - I've been in vertical market products enough to know that when there are a small # of competitors (maybe twenty or less), everyone KNOWS everyone. Is the parent company already aware of you? If not, you need to ask yourself what other things you could be doing to address that.

Kevin