I completely agree. When I worked for a company in Florida, they would supply me with the clients house plans and give me a couple weeks to put together a personalized demo based on the system drawings.

They would fly me down in the morning and bring me to a client meeting, and most of the time, I flew back that same evening.

My sole purpose was to sit quietly for hours until the meeting started to get stale. At which point, I would take out the touch panel and set it on the conference table. Once the prospective client asked "what is that?", I would say "oh, let me show you".

Basically, I would show them a whole house controller mock up with their own house plans, their last name in an elegant font (Trajan works great) and a few zones (A/V & audio only) set up to function like they would on a real system via fake feedback etc...

We had a few bake-offs as well. Those were always interesting.... one guy put me up against my own templates. My point is, the UI is really the only part of the system the client sees every day. Hundreds of hours can go into installation and programming, but in the end, all they care about is - does it work? - it is pretty to look at? - is it easy to use? - will my friends be impressed?

They closed 100% of the jobs when a personalized demo was used. It became my specialty, but the final product worked exactly as shown in the meeting and the clients loved it. I would give them my personal contact information so they could request certain themes, graphics, colors etc..