AKA: The time I realized my PoC needed less feature flash and more political finesse.
At Vectorflow, we were helping LendingTree streamline both their visitor management and employee onboarding processes. Visitor stuff? Easy — we’d done it for Atrium Health. But onboarding? That’s where things got interesting.
The goal: show in our PoC how we could activate a new hire with minimal HR handholding. We were talking background checks, photo uploads, badge provisioning, progress alerts via WhatsApp — basically, a full concierge onboarding pipeline.
Our champion — the Director of HR — didn’t hold the budget. But he did hold sway. I asked him after every planning session:
"Should we include this in the demo? Would this help or distract?"
He always had an answer. And it was always dead-on.
The result? The demo didn’t feel like a tech sprint. It felt like we already worked there.
This PoC taught me more about pre-sales strategy than a dozen trainings:
Want more real-world pre-sales stories?
Because the best demos don’t just land — they speak the client’s language. And sometimes, the translator is your champion.