Run a 45-Minute Discovery and Demo That Closes Out a Competitor
Company: Meridian Data — a Series B data observability platform ($28M ARR, 180 employees) that helps mid-market data teams detect pipeline failures, trace data lineage, and monitor SLA adherence across their entire data stack. Product:…
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What You'll Be Doing
Company: Meridian Data — a Series B data observability platform ($28M ARR, 180 employees) that helps mid-market data teams detect pipeline failures, trace data lineage, and monitor SLA adherence across their entire data stack.
Product: Meridian connects to any cloud data warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks) and BI layer (Looker, Tableau, Power BI) via pre-built connectors. It surfaces anomalies, broken pipelines, and stale dashboards in a single pane of glass. Pricing: $40K–$120K/year depending on data volume and connector count.
The Prospect
Account: NovaBuild — a mid-market construction technology company (350 employees, ~$60M revenue) that builds project management software for commercial contractors.
NovaBuild's Head of Data Engineering, Priya Sharma, reached out after seeing a Meridian case study. She booked a 45-minute discovery + demo call. You have the following context from the SDR's pre-call notes:
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NovaBuild runs their data stack on Snowflake + dbt + Looker. They have 14 active dbt models feeding 40+ Looker dashboards used by the sales, finance, and operations teams.
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Three times in the last quarter, a broken dbt model caused stale data in Looker dashboards — twice the sales team made pricing decisions based on outdated revenue figures before the issue was caught.
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Priya's team has no systematic monitoring. They find out about failures when a downstream stakeholder complains.
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NovaBuild's CTO has approved a $50K budget for a data reliability solution. The CFO wants to see ROI framing before approving anything over $35K.
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Priya has also been evaluating Monte Carlo, a direct Meridian competitor.
The Call Context
You have 45 minutes with Priya. The first 20 minutes are discovery; the final 25 minutes are a demo and Q&A. Priya has confirmed that Monte Carlo has already run a discovery call and is preparing a proposal.
At the 35-minute mark, Priya raises two objections:
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Objection 1 — Price: "Monte Carlo came in at $32K. You're showing me $45K. What am I getting for the difference?"
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Objection 2 — Fit: "Our data team is two engineers, including me. I'm worried Meridian is built for larger teams with more operational overhead to manage it."
Your job is to run the discovery, deliver the demo, and handle both objections without losing the deal.
How Your Work Will Be Scored
What to Submit
Discovery & Solution Brief
Format: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, .md
Produce a written Discovery & Solution Brief that contains:
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Discovery Summary: A structured summary of the technical problem you diagnosed from the pre-call notes. Include: root cause, downstream impact, and at least one implicit constraint Priya has not explicitly stated.
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Solution Narrative: A written walkthrough of how you would demo Meridian to Priya — structured around her specific pain points, not Meridian's feature list. Include the before/after state and at least two demo elements customised to NovaBuild's stack (Snowflake + dbt + Looker).
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Objection Responses: Written responses to both objections. Each response must be grounded in a specific Meridian capability or measurable outcome — not a generic reassurance.
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README
Format: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, .md
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Section A — Deal Assessment: In 150–200 words, assess whether you would advance this deal and why. What is the single biggest risk to closing? What is the next step you would propose to Priya at the end of the call?
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Section B — Internal Handoff Note: Write a 100–150 word technical handoff note to the Account Executive summarising: the customer's confirmed technical requirements, the key objections and how you handled them, and the competitive situation with Monte Carlo. This note should be usable without your verbal context — the AE should be able to read it and know exactly where the deal stands.
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Section C — AI Usage Log: Document how you used AI in this challenge. For each AI interaction: (1) the task you assigned, (2) what the AI produced, (3) what you changed, added, or rejected, and (4) why. Minimum two documented interactions. Entries with no process evidence — 'I used AI to help draft the brief' — score the same as no AI use.
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Video Walkthrough
Format: .mp4, .mov, .webm
Record your walkthrough as an MP4 or MOV file and upload it directly on the Provn platform as a separate file.
Your video must address:
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Discovery reasoning: Walk through the technical problem you diagnosed. What did you identify beyond what was explicitly stated in the pre-call notes, and why does it matter?
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Demo structure: Explain the choices you made in your solution narrative — specifically why you structured the demo around those pain points in that order.
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Objection handling: Take us through your response to one of the two objections and explain the reasoning behind it.
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Mandatory AI question: Walk me through one specific moment where you redirected the AI — what did it produce, what was wrong with it, and what did you do differently?
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