Stop Paying the Demo Tax: How AI Is Transforming Presales with Justin McDonald

Dec 16, 2025

Justin McDonald, Co-founder and CEO of Saleo, shares his extensive SaaS experience as he dives into the transformative impact of AI on presales. He discusses the inefficiencies of demo preparation, coining the term 'demo tax' to highlight hidden costs. Justin emphasizes the importance of high-quality, personalized demo data for engaging storytelling. He also predicts a future where AI streamlines automation tasks, allowing solutions engineers to focus more on building relationships with buyers instead.

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INSIGHT

Pre‑Sales Is Now A Respected Profession

The pre-sales profession has gained real respect and structure over the last 20 years.
A whole market of tools now exists to support pre-sales that simply didn't before.

INSIGHT

Buyer Time Is Shockingly Low

Pre-sales teams spend very little time with buyers, often far less than 17% of their work time.
That lack of buyer time makes relational capital and in-person interactions critical to win deals.

ANECDOTE

One In‑Person Meeting Opened Doors

Justin recalls an in-person meeting that unlocked many doors and relationships for Saleo this year.
He says face time created opportunities that would never have happened via Zoom.

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The State of Presales and Demo Technologies, and What's Coming in 2026

In this episode, Jack Cochran and Matthew James are joined by Justin McDonald, Co-founder and CEO of Saleo, to discuss how demo automation technology is transforming the presales landscape. They explore the evolution of presales over the past 20 years, the hidden costs of demo preparation (the "demo tax"), and how AI is revolutionizing how solutions engineers create and personalize demonstrations. Justin shares insights on building relational capital, the importance of in-person meetings, and why the future of presales lies in leveraging technology to spend more quality time with buyers.

Thank you to Saleo for sponsoring this episode! Visit Saleo.io to learn more.

Connect with Jack Cochran: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackcochran/
Connect with Matthew James: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewyoungjames/
Connect with Justin McDonald: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-mcdonald-21a3aa6/

Links and Resources Mentioned

Join Presales Collective Slack: https://www.presalescollective.com/slack
Saleo: https://saleo.io/
Mockaroo (dummy data generator): https://mockaroo.com/

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome

04:24 How has presales evolved over 20 years

09:20 Demo tax

13:37 The importance of in-person meetings

15:55 Breaking down the demo tax components

24:47 AI and Demo Data Agents

26:42 Trends reshaping presales in 2026

Key Topics Covered

The Evolution of Presales Technology
- From manual data creation with tools like Mockaroo to automated demo environments
- The rise of presales as a respected profession with executive leadership
- Shift from multi-week prep and constant travel to efficient Zoom-based demos
The Demo Prep Tax
- Multiple departments impacted: DevOps, product, engineering, and SEs
- Hard dollar costs: hosting demo tenants can cost millions at scale
- Demo data degradation: perfectly prepared demos degrade over time
- SE time is expensive, and hours spent on manual data preparation adds up
Building Relational Capital
- Only 17% of sales time is spent with buyers (even less for presales)
- In-person interactions unlock opportunities that Zoom calls cannot
- EQ and relationship-building will separate good from great in the age of AI
AI-Powered Demo Automation
- Demo Data Agent: generates personalized demo data with a single prompt
- Token-based customization for industry, vertical, and use case adaptation
- Data injection technology allows real-time demo personalization
The Future of Presales
- AI will expand automation across the entire sales cycle
- Agentic and asynchronous AI tools will support SEs 24/7
- SEs won't be replaced, their time will be used differently
- The demo data is the story: great storytelling requires great demo data