At a school fair growing up, I was running a booth with a game: sort random objects by color and shape under a tight timer. The catch? It was really hard. No one was winning. People stopped showing up.
So I changed the rules. Younger kids got extra time. Older ones got fewer objects. I even added a pay-less-play-easier mode. Suddenly, people were lining up. And winning. And telling their friends.
"I do not sell anyone anything that does not make them want to come back, and bring a few friends too."
Fast Forward to Vectorflow and LendingTree
Years later, I saw the same pattern at work. LendingTree was a smaller client using our employee onboarding module. (Read the full PoC story →) Their request? Auto-generate a Slack invite and company email as soon as a new hire was created in the portal.
We did not have that exact feature, but we had the flexibility. So I worked with a frontend developer and our PaaS admin to connect the dots. Using Zapier, we wired up notifications to trigger IT provisioning steps, including Slack access and email creation. See the full PIAM architecture here →
- 💰Zero new licensing
- 🛠️Barely any dev lift
- ⚡Fully adopted by the client within days
Why It Worked
- 🧠I met them where they were, not where our product roadmap was
- 🔄Reused existing tools (Zapier + existing logic) instead of waiting for new features
- 🎯Delivered value fast, without feature bloat or extra costs
Understanding your client's friction is what lets you adjust the odds and build trust fast.
When the solution sticks, people return. When it delights, they bring others. Whether you are designing a carnival game or an onboarding flow, the principle holds: if the odds feel fair and the reward feels real, people will show up. Again and again.
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