What you feel: Your company is close to getting its first big client, but you’re up against “the 800-pound gorilla.” You’re feeling stressed and worried that something is going to go wrong in the final presentation.

Perspective: In the early days of IncentOne, we created technology that would allow companies to administer their reward and incentive programs in one place and offer all types of rewards, including cash and gift certificates. Our business model was to provide the technology and analytics to administer their reward programs and optimize their business results.

Our solution resonated in the corporate market.  Customers liked letting their employees and salespeople select the gift cards of their choice or cash as opposed to travel or merchandise.  They also liked having a single technology platform to run it all.

We knew we had arrived when we were selected as one of two finalists for NBC’s vendor selection process. At the time, NBC was a multi-million dollar opportunity with incentive programs all over the country. We were going head-to-head with the largest company in the incentives industry.

The day before our finalist presentations, I learned that our competitor was not only bringing 20 people to the meeting, but that one of their senior leaders used to be golfing buddies with the president of a NBC division. We had a total of ten employees at IncentOne.

On the day of our four-hour-long presentation, my head of IT warned me that he needed to monitor our presentation platform, which ran on our internet services, very closely through the demonstration of our product. Since he was going to be back in the office and not in the presentation, we agreed that he would listen in on the presentation on the phone. If I needed to send him a message, I would mention a word that meant our demo platform was freezing, and I could stall to give him a few minutes to fix the platform. The word we decided on was “universal.”

What we didn’t realize was that NBC had just finalized a deal to acquire “Universal Pictures” and were creating a new division called “NBC Universal.”

For the presentation, there were 10 NBC people in the room and another 20 on the phone from divisions around the country. Our presentation was perfect: our solution made sense, attendees were engaged, and there was a solid amount of joking around. Everything we had lined up with what NBC needed.

Then we started our demonstration, and things went perfectly until some of the people from NBC Universal started to ask questions and kept mentioning the term “universal”—the word my head of IT and I needed to use if there were problems with the platform. I was afraid that my head of IT was going to start tinkering with the platform even though it was running fine.

One of the NBC Universal people asked another question, and I started to stall. I asked what NBC Universal was since we had not seen that name as one of the divisions that had sat through the many meetings we had during this process. As she answered my question, I jotted a note to one of my colleagues to tell our head of IT that everything was fine and our new safe word was “China”—the first phrase that came to mind before I realized that NBC did business in China.

Luckily, we made it through the rest of the demonstration without incident. At the end of the presentation, NBC told us that it would take a week or so for them to decide on which of the final two vendors they were going with.

We received a call the next day. The Head of Benefits at NBC told me that we had been selected the winner over the largest incentives company in the US. After we hung up, I asked everyone to go into the conference room, walked in with a big frown on my face, and paused.

“NBC picked us. We beat the 800-pound gorilla.”

After that, people began to notice and some of the nation’s largest companies started to hire us to run their rewards programs. Staying sane and focused in that final presentation with NBC instead of focusing on the fact that something might go wrong helped us in securing the client.

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