A Datos Solutions Story
The slide had exactly 7 words on it.
And it changed how we sell forever.
Last year, a fintech company in Riyadh invited us to pitch for their platform rebuild. Budget: $200,000. Timeline: 8 months. Competition: three agencies, all bigger than us.
We showed up with 4 slides. The other agencies had 50+. We went last.
Slide 1: The Problem They Told Us
Standard stuff. Slow platform. Users complaining. Transactions dropping. They needed a rebuild.
Every agency in the room would have said: "We'll rebuild it better, faster, prettier."
Slide 2: The Problem They Didn't Know They Had
We spent 3 days before the pitch analyzing their public-facing platform. We found that 62% of their user drop-offs happened on one screen — and it wasn't the one they thought. Their checkout flow had a 4-step verification process that competitors handled in 1 step.
The room went quiet. Their CTO leaned forward.
Slide 3: What We'd Actually Build
Not a rebuild. A strategic reconstruction. We proposed keeping 40% of the existing codebase (it was fine), completely redesigning the transaction flow, and adding real-time analytics so they'd never be blind to drop-offs again.
Cost: 30% less than a full rebuild. Time: 5 months instead of 8.
Slide 4: The One That Won It
"What will your users feel?"
Seven words. That was the entire slide.
We didn't talk about tech stack. We didn't mention React or Node or microservices. We asked them to imagine their user — a small business owner sending money to a supplier — completing a transaction in under 30 seconds and smiling.
"Everyone else showed us technology. You showed us our customer."
— Their CEO, in the follow-up call
What We Learned
Research Wins
3 days of research beat 3 weeks of slide design
Show The Gap
Tell clients what they don't know — that's where trust is built
Sell Outcomes
Nobody buys code. They buy what it does for their people
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4 Comments
I run a small agency in Austin TX and this completely changed how I think about proposals. less slides more insight. thank you for sharing
hired datos for our project here in Amman and they did exactly this. came knowing our pain points before we even explained them. thats rare
I sit through vendor pitches every week in Dubai and the ones who do their homework always win. most agencies just show up with a generic deck
everyone else showed us technology you showed us our customer - this line alone is better than any sales course wallah
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