Introduction
Compensation software demos are carefully choreographed performances. The vendor picks the roles, the data matches perfectly, the UI flows without a hitch, and everything looks exactly the way it should. That is the vendor's job, and most of them are very good at it.
Your job is different. Your job is to figure out whether the product actually solves your problems, with your data, inside your workflows. Most demos use cherry-picked roles with perfect data matches because those make the product shine. But you do not live in a world of perfect data matches. You live in a world where the VP of Engineering also manages product, where your Denver office competes with Bay Area remote salaries, and where half your jobs do not map cleanly to any vendor's taxonomy.
This checklist is designed to help you ask the questions that reveal what a product actually does when conditions are not ideal. Print it, bring it to every demo, and do not let a polished interface distract you from the answers that matter.
Disclosure: This article is published by SalaryCube, a compensation data platform. Yes, we do demos too. Use this checklist on us — we'd rather win on substance than on demo polish.
Before the Demo: Preparation
The most important work happens before anyone shares their screen. Vendors control the demo environment; your preparation is the only thing that shifts the balance of information back in your direction.
Bring your own roles
Pick five roles that are genuinely hard to benchmark. Include at least one hybrid role (the "Marketing Manager who also runs customer success"), one niche or emerging role (an AI/ML specialist, a sustainability officer, whatever your organization is hiring for that does not fit neatly into standard job taxonomies), and one location-specific role where geography matters to the pricing. Send these to the vendor at least three business days before the demo and ask them to price these roles live during the session instead of their prepared examples. How a vendor handles your awkward, real-world roles tells you far more than how they handle a Senior Software Engineer in San Francisco.
Know your must-haves versus nice-to-haves
Write these down before the demo starts. Literally write them on paper. It is remarkably easy to watch a slick feature during a demo and convince yourself it was something you always needed. If your must-haves are real-time data updates, geographic differential analysis, and Excel exports that do not require manual cleanup, write those down. Everything else is a nice-to-have until proven otherwise.
Bring the actual users
The person who will use the tool every day should be in the demo, not just the person who signs the purchase order. A tool that impresses the VP of HR but frustrates the comp analyst who has to live in it forty hours a week is a bad buy. Comp analysts ask different questions than executives. They notice different friction. They care about different workflows. Get them in the room.
Prepare your current pain points
What specifically is broken about your current process? Is it data freshness? Job matching accuracy? Time spent on manual exports? The approval workflow? Defensibility when employees challenge pay decisions? Write down your top three pain points before the demo, and use them as the lens through which you evaluate everything you see. If the demo does not directly address at least two of your top three, that is useful information.
Questions About Data
Data quality is the foundation of every compensation decision you will make with the tool. A beautiful interface on top of unreliable data is worse than a spreadsheet with good data, because at least the spreadsheet does not give you false confidence. These five questions cut through the marketing language and get to what actually matters.
1. "What are your actual data sources?"
The phrase "proprietary data" is meaningless without specifics. You need to know whether the data is employer-reported (companies submit their own compensation data, generally considered the gold standard), employee-reported (individuals self-report their pay, which introduces bias and accuracy issues), scraped from job postings (reflects what companies advertise, not what they actually pay), pulled from HRIS integrations (actual payroll data, very reliable but coverage varies), or sourced from government surveys like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (solid methodology but lagging and broad). Each source type has different reliability characteristics and different coverage gaps. A vendor that blends multiple sources should be able to explain exactly how they weight and validate across those sources. If the answer is vague, press harder.
2. "What is the sample size for [your specific role] in [your specific geography]?"
Aggregate data quality is irrelevant if the specific roles you care about have thin coverage. A vendor might have millions of data points overall but only twelve observations for your Regulatory Affairs Manager in the Midwest. Ask them to show you the sample size for your actual roles in your actual geographies, not their best examples. If sample sizes are thin for your key roles, ask what methodology they use to supplement, and whether the resulting data point is a direct observation or a statistical estimate. Both can be useful, but you should know which one you are getting.
3. "How often is the data actually updated?"
"Real-time analytics" sometimes means old data displayed on a real-time dashboard. There is a critical difference between when the underlying data was last collected and when the dashboard was last refreshed. Ask specifically: when was the most recent data in this dataset collected from the source? How frequently do new observations enter the system? Is the data aged or trended forward, and if so, what methodology do you use? A platform that updates its interface daily but refreshes the underlying data annually is not giving you real-time data. It is giving you a real-time view of old data.
4. "Can I see the methodology documentation before I buy?"
If a vendor will not show you how the data is collected, cleaned, weighted, and aggregated until after you have signed a contract, that is a red flag. Defensibility is a core requirement for compensation decisions in 2026, especially with expanding pay transparency laws and pay equity regulations across U.S. states. You need to be able to explain to your leadership, your employees, and potentially a regulator why you paid someone what you paid them. That explanation starts with understanding the data methodology. Any vendor confident in their approach will share documentation freely.
5. "How do you handle roles that do not match your job taxonomy?"
Every vendor's demo roles match their taxonomy perfectly because they picked those roles specifically for that reason. Your real roles will not match as cleanly. Ask them to price your weirdest hybrid role live during the demo. Watch the process. How many clicks does it take? How much judgment is required? Do they blend multiple job matches, and if so, how? Can you customize the match, or are you locked into their algorithm's first suggestion? The workflow for imperfect matches is where you will spend most of your time, so it needs to be efficient and transparent.
Questions About Workflow
Features are only valuable if the workflow to use them is fast and intuitive enough for daily use. A tool with powerful capabilities buried behind a clunky interface will collect dust.
6. "Can you walk me through the full process of pricing a new role, start to finish?"
Demos love to show the end result: a beautifully formatted compensation report with percentile breakdowns and geographic comparisons. But you need to see every step that leads to that output. Ask the vendor to start from zero. Watch how they create a new role, select the market match, choose the geography and industry cuts, configure the compensation elements, and generate the output. Count the clicks. Note where they hesitate. Pay attention to any steps that seem manual or require specialized knowledge. The full end-to-end workflow is what your team will repeat hundreds of times per year.
7. "How long does a typical market pricing project take for fifty roles?"
This question forces the vendor to quantify what "easy" and "fast" actually mean in practice. Fifty roles is a reasonable mid-sized project for most compensation teams. Some vendors will tell you it takes an afternoon; others will quote a week or more. Ask whether that estimate includes the job matching step (which is almost always the bottleneck), and whether it assumes their team does the matching or yours does. If the vendor's estimate assumes a consultant does the matching for you, ask what that costs and how long it takes for the consultant to turn it around.
8. "Show me what an export looks like."
You will spend more time working with the data in Excel, PowerPoint, or your HRIS than you will spend inside the platform itself. Ask to see an actual export, not a screenshot of one. Is the formatting clean enough to share with leadership without manual cleanup? Are the column headers clear? Does the export include the source data, sample sizes, and methodology notes you need for defensibility? Can you customize which fields are included? If the exports are ugly or incomplete, you are signing up for hours of manual reformatting every time you pull data.
9. "What does onboarding look like? How long until we are productive?"
"Intuitive" is subjective and almost always overused in software demos. Get specific numbers. How many days or weeks from contract signing until your team is independently using the tool? Is training live, self-paced, or a combination? How many hours of training are typical? Is there a dedicated onboarding specialist, or are you handed documentation and pointed toward a help center? Ask to speak with a customer who onboarded recently and get their unfiltered perspective on how long it actually took.
10. "What integrations do you have with [your specific HRIS]?"
"We integrate with major HRIS platforms" might mean they have a fully built, maintained connector that syncs data automatically on a schedule. Or it might mean they have an API that your IT team will need to build against, maintain, and troubleshoot. These are very different things. Ask about your specific system by name. Is the integration out of the box or does it require custom development? Who maintains it when your HRIS vendor pushes an update? What data flows in which direction? If the integration requires IT involvement, make sure you loop in your IT team before committing.
Questions About Pricing and Contract
Compensation software pricing is where vendor creativity really shines, and not always in your favor. Ask these questions to understand the full financial picture, not just the year-one number the salesperson is quoting.
11. "What is the total cost in year one, year two, and year three?"
Year-one pricing almost always includes introductory discounts, waived implementation fees, or promotional pricing that disappears at renewal. Ask for the full three-year cost, including any price escalators built into the contract. If the vendor says pricing is locked for the term, get that in writing. If there is an annual increase clause, find out whether it is a fixed percentage or tied to some index. The total cost of ownership over three years is the number that matters for budget planning, not the year-one promotional price.
12. "What happens when we add more users, roles, or geographies?"
Growth penalty pricing is common in compensation software. A tool priced at fifteen thousand dollars per year for one hundred roles and five users might jump to forty-five thousand when you double your headcount or expand to international geographies. Ask for the pricing tier structure in writing. Understand where the breakpoints are. If you are growing rapidly, model out your likely usage in two years and ask for a quote based on that scenario, not your current size. A cheap tool that gets expensive as you grow is not actually cheap.
13. "Are there per-report, per-export, or credit-based fees?"
"Unlimited reporting" means very different things to different vendors. Some platforms charge per analysis run, per export, or use credit systems where each action consumes credits from a pool that can run out mid-year. Ask specifically: is there any action inside the platform that costs extra beyond the base subscription? Can I run as many reports as I want? Can I export as many times as I want? If there is a credit system, what happens when credits run out — does the platform stop working until the next billing cycle, or can you buy more at a premium?
14. "What is the contract term and cancellation process?"
Multi-year lock-ins with auto-renewal clauses are standard practice. Know what you are signing before you sign it. Ask about the minimum contract term, the auto-renewal notice window (often 60 or 90 days before the term ends), and what happens if you want to cancel mid-term. Is there an early termination fee? Can you negotiate a shorter initial term with renewal options? If the vendor pushes hard for a three-year commitment, ask what the one-year price is so you can make an informed trade-off between commitment and flexibility.
15. "Is implementation and training included or extra?"
A platform that costs twenty thousand dollars per year but requires fifteen thousand dollars in implementation fees and five thousand dollars in annual training is a forty-thousand-dollar platform in year one. Ask for a line-item breakdown of every cost: platform license, implementation, training, data migration, custom configuration, ongoing support tiers, and any professional services that your team will likely need in year one. Some vendors bundle everything; others unbundle aggressively. The sticker price is not the real price unless you know exactly what is and is not included.
Questions About Support
After the contract is signed and the sales team moves on, support quality determines whether your investment pays off or becomes a source of frustration.
16. "Who is my point of contact after implementation?"
The person running your demo is almost certainly not the person who will help you when something goes wrong six months from now. Ask specifically who your day-to-day contact will be. Is it a dedicated customer success manager, a shared support team, or a ticketing system? How many other accounts does that person manage? Can you meet them before signing? The quality of your post-sale relationship is one of the strongest predictors of whether you will renew, so evaluate it before you buy, not after.
17. "What is your typical response time for support tickets?"
"We have great support" is not a measurable claim. Ask for specifics. What is the average response time? What is the average resolution time? Is there a published SLA, and what happens if they miss it? Is support available by phone, email, chat, or only through a ticketing portal? Are there different support tiers, and does the tier included in your pricing actually give you access to timely help, or do you need to pay for a premium support tier to get responses within a reasonable timeframe?
18. "Can I talk to a current customer in my industry and size?"
Customer references are the most valuable signal in any software evaluation. Ask for a reference at an organization similar to yours in industry, employee count, and use case. If the vendor cannot provide one, ask why. If they provide a reference, prepare specific questions: how long did onboarding really take, what surprised you after going live, what would you do differently, and would you buy it again? References who hesitate on that last question are telling you something important.
Red Flags During Demos
Not every warning sign comes from the answers to your questions. Some of the most important signals come from what happens during the demo itself. Watch for these patterns:
- The demo only uses pre-loaded sample roles. If the vendor did not price the roles you submitted in advance, or deflects by saying they will "follow up after the call," they may be hiding thin coverage for your specific needs.
- Vague answers to methodology questions. Phrases like "our proprietary algorithm" or "our advanced AI" without any explanation of what that actually means are not answers. Defensibility requires specificity.
- No published pricing. "Let us discuss pricing after we understand your needs" for standard packages often means the price is whatever they think you will pay. Transparent vendors publish at least a pricing framework.
- The platform requires consulting support for routine tasks. If pricing a new role or generating a standard report requires you to contact a consultant, the platform is not self-service regardless of how it is marketed.
- "That feature is on our roadmap." If a vendor says this about anything on your must-have list, treat it as if the feature does not exist. Roadmaps change. Only evaluate what is live and working today.
- They cannot provide customer references in your industry. Established vendors should have references in most major industries. If they cannot match yours, it may indicate limited penetration or retention issues in your sector.
After the Demo: Evaluation
The best time to evaluate a demo is immediately after it ends. Memory fades fast, and the emotional impression of a polished presentation can overwrite your analytical observations within hours. Score every vendor on your must-have criteria within thirty minutes of the demo ending.
Compare notes with everyone who attended. The comp analyst, the HR director, and the IT liaison will all have noticed different things. Synthesize those perspectives before they fade. If you had different people attend different demos, schedule a debrief where everyone shares observations.
Run the same five roles through every vendor you are evaluating. This is the single most important apples-to-apples comparison you can make. Same roles, same geographies, same compensation elements. Compare the results side by side: are the data points in the same range? Are sample sizes adequate? How different is the workflow experience?
Weight your scoring criteria by what actually matters to your team. For most compensation teams, data quality and methodology transparency should carry more weight than UI polish or flashy features. A tool with solid data and a plain interface will serve you better than a tool with thin data and beautiful dashboards.
Finally, ask for a trial period before signing a contract. Any vendor that is confident in their product will give you a window to test it with your own data and your own workflows before you commit. If a vendor will not offer a trial, ask yourself what they are worried you will discover.
Conclusion
The best compensation software demo is not the slickest one. It is the one that honestly shows you how the product handles your real problems — the hybrid roles, the thin geographies, the messy exports, the edge cases that define your actual day-to-day work. A vendor who welcomes hard questions is a vendor who believes their product can withstand scrutiny.
If you would like to run this checklist against SalaryCube, request a demo and bring your hardest roles. We will price them live.