I am a bit paranoid about disclosing details, but basically our SAML IDP was down, so the sales person couldn't log in at all. I was messing with the demo server to convince myself that it is 100% IDPs fault and we can't do anything about it, and discovered to my surprise that the form-based authentication was not disabled on it (normally our servers are in one mode or the other, but not both, even though this is an artificial separation). So I gave them the direct link to the form based entry point and most of the demo could be done.