What should you learn before building the demo?
Separate the customer’s measured effort from the part your product can change.
The question
Northline Manufacturing is evaluating the fictional SignalWorks workflow product. Its support team makes 120 queue-to-queue handoffs each week, each taking eight minutes of staff work. The causes and approval requirements have not yet been checked. All details are invented.
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Handoffs per week | 120 |
| Minutes of staff work per handoff | 8 |
This measures current work, not proven product savings.
An automated routing demo will show how SignalWorks eliminates all 16 hours of handoff work each week.
“What should you learn before building the demo?”
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A strong answer, step by step
Open each step in turn. This is one strong answer, not the only one.
Step 1: Which question should come first?
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Ask which handoffs are avoidable and who owns the required checks.
The strong move. This can distinguish addressable routing work from required review.
Ask only which dashboard color the customer prefers.
Tempting, but it misses something. That does not explain the workflow or its constraints.
Build the full automation demo from the account note.
Tempting, but it misses something. That assumes the product can remove work whose cause is still unknown.
See how a strong candidate says it
“Ask what causes the handoffs and which checks must remain before deciding what the product can change.”
Why it works: The account note is a proposal to test, not a verified customer requirement.
Step 2: What does the current effort equal?
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
16 hours of work, before checking what can be removed.
The strong move. The arithmetic is right and the claim stays within the evidence.
16 hours of guaranteed product savings.
Tempting, but it misses something. That adds an untested claim about what the product changes.
960 hours of work each week.
Tempting, but it misses something. 960 is the number of minutes, not hours.
See how a strong candidate says it
“120 × 8 ÷ 60 = 16 staff hours per week.”
Why it works: Keep the baseline effort separate from a savings claim.
Step 3: What should the first demo prove?
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
A complete product tour proves the saving.
Tempting, but it misses something. Feature coverage does not establish which handoffs can be removed.
A routing example plus an agreed way to measure addressable work.
The strong move. This connects the demonstration to the customer’s actual problem.
The AI draft is enough to confirm the business case.
Tempting, but it misses something. A generated proposal is not customer or product evidence.
See how a strong candidate says it
“Show the relevant routing workflow and agree which handoffs the customer will test for reduced effort.”
Why it works: A focused demonstration can test a hypothesis without promising all baseline work will disappear.
Step 4: How should the new fact change the scope?
The process owner confirms that 90 of the 120 handoffs are mandatory reviews whose existing eight-minute check must remain. SignalWorks can change only the remaining handoffs.
What would you do here? Open the move you’d make.
Keep the 16-hour savings headline because it is mathematically correct.
Tempting, but it misses something. It describes all baseline work, including checks that must remain.
Narrow the demo to 30 handoffs and test a four-hour upper bound.
The strong move. This excludes the required work and labels the remaining saving as a hypothesis.
Stop all discovery because automation cannot remove every handoff.
Tempting, but it misses something. A smaller useful problem can still be worth testing.
See how a strong candidate says it
“Only 30 handoffs are currently addressable: (120 − 90) × 8 ÷ 60 = 4 hours per week. Narrow the demo and the savings hypothesis.”
Why it works: The required checks remain, so the 16-hour baseline is not the potential saving.
The answer, in short
- Decision
- Test the remaining 30 handoffs with the customer.
- Because
- They represent at most four hours of the measured weekly effort; the required reviews remain.
- What would change it
- Verified scope changes or a trial showing a different amount of removable work.
Common traps
- Calling baseline effort guaranteed savings.
- Building from an unverified account summary.
Check your answer
- What does the customer do today?
- Which work must remain?
- What can this demo actually prove?
- Which number changed after discovery?
Last reviewed Nov 10, 2026