How Vaulttree Turns Demos Into Their Entire Sales Strategy

How Vaulttree Turns Demos Into Their Entire Sales Strategy

A CISO from a major bank joined the Vaulttree sales call without saying hello. His opening line? “This is not possible.”

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Ryan Lasmaili, Co-Founder and CEO of Vaulttree, shared what happened next. The team showed their demo. “In the end we showed a demo and he was tipping out. He was sitting on the edge of the seat. We were seeing that because he was tipped back and forth the whole time, but he fell off his chair,” Ryan recounted.

For most companies, the demo is a supporting act. For Vaulttree, it’s the entire show.

Why Traditional Sales Doesn’t Work for the Impossible

Most B2B sales follows a predictable pattern: discovery call, pitch deck, demo, proposal. The demo comes third or fourth in the sequence.

Vaulttree discovered this approach fails when you’re selling technology that challenges fundamental assumptions.

The challenge isn’t that prospects don’t understand the value. It’s that they don’t believe the technology is possible. No amount of messaging can overcome decades of knowing—with certainty—that you cannot process encrypted data at scale without decrypting it.

“The biggest challenge definitely is the educational element,” Ryan explained. “Every organization that we are talking to, at the beginning, the conversation could be like, oh, we have no use case, or we don’t know, or this doesn’t work, right? But it’s mainly because they don’t understand really that their data and everyone’s data is vulnerable.”

When skepticism runs this deep, traditional sales sequences don’t work. You can’t qualify interest in something prospects don’t believe exists.

The Two-Minute Transformation

Here’s what makes Vaulttree’s demo-first approach effective: the transformation happens almost instantly.

“After literally two minutes, it’s like, oh wow, okay, you do this, okay, we can do that, we didn’t even know,” Ryan said.

Two minutes to shift a prospect from “this is not possible” to “we didn’t know we could do this.”

This speed changes everything about sales efficiency. Traditional enterprise sales involves weeks of education. Vaulttree collapses the entire education and conviction phase into one two-minute demonstration.

The result? Exceptional conversion. “Basically every conversation usually we have with an organization ends up in us moving this along to either a pilot, a POC and a customer,” Ryan explained.

When you can demonstrate proof within minutes, sales scales without proportionally scaling headcount.

What Makes a Demo Strong Enough to Carry Your Strategy

Not every demo can bear the weight of being your complete sales strategy. Vaulttree’s demo works because it has specific characteristics.

First, it proves the impossible. The demo doesn’t show features—it demonstrates that something prospects “know” can’t be done actually works.

Second, it shows rather than tells. “How you overcome that is by, first of all, demos understanding and bringing a very clear value proposition very quickly to a customer to make them understand,” Ryan explained.

Third, it works with their reality. “Any organization can use this utilizing their existing tech stacks, utilizing their own databases. We don’t hold any data, we don’t have another, let’s say proxy or workaround solution,” Ryan said.

Fourth, it’s fast. Two minutes means prospects see it in a first call. No separate technical demo or weeks-long proof of concept.

How to Structure Your Sales Process Around the Demo

If you’re building breakthrough technology, here’s how to reorganize your sales process.

Start with the demo, not discovery. Traditional wisdom says understand customer needs first. But when you’re solving a problem customers don’t know can be solved, discovery is backwards. Show them what’s possible, then discover which use cases matter.

Make the demo the filter. Let the demo qualify prospects. Those who don’t immediately grasp the implications probably aren’t ready. Those who react like Vaulttree’s CISO—moving from skepticism to excitement in minutes—are your ideal customers.

Build infrastructure for volume. This might mean self-serve environments, demo specialists, or technology that makes demonstrations easy to deliver remotely.

Design for the “show me” objection. When prospects say “this is not possible,” your response should be “let me show you.” Build your scheduling and technical setup to make showing easier than explaining.

The Educational Challenge Becomes an Advantage

The educational burden that makes traditional sales difficult becomes a competitive advantage when you lead with demos.

“The challenge really, I mean, to give you an idea, is that perception, right, of, okay, I don’t need this technology, I have everything else. I have, let’s say 100 security solutions,” Ryan said. “But the educational element here is, yeah, it doesn’t matter how many onion layers you have, your data is still in readable form, so you literally just cut right through the onion.”

This metaphor captures why demos work where decks fail. You can explain that existing security layers don’t solve the fundamental problem. Or you can show encrypted data being processed without decryption. The demo makes the concept instantly tangible.

The education challenge also creates defensibility. Every prospect Vaulttree educates becomes harder for competitors to reach. Once a CISO understands that processing encrypted data is possible, they evaluate all future security solutions through that lens.

When to Adopt This Strategy

Demo-first selling works when specific conditions align.

Your technology must challenge fundamental assumptions. If prospects already believe your approach is possible, traditional sales works fine.

Your demo must be fast. Two minutes works. Two hours doesn’t.

The value must be immediately obvious. If your value requires explanation after the demo, you still need traditional sales.

You must have volume capacity. If demos require massive technical resources per prospect, you can’t scale this approach.

You must have volume capacity. If delivering demos requires massive technical resources per prospect, you can’t scale a demo-first approach.

The Broader Principle

Strip away the specifics and Vaulttree’s strategy reveals a principle for any category-creating technology: when you’re selling something people don’t believe is possible, proof must come before persuasion.

Traditional sales assumes prospects believe your claims and are evaluating whether your solution is best. Category-creating sales assumes prospects don’t believe your claims and need evidence before they’ll even consider evaluation.

This isn’t about having a good demo. It’s about recognizing that for breakthrough technology, demonstration isn’t part of your sales process—it is your sales process.

Vaulttree’s journey offers a clear framework: if you can prove the impossible in minutes, structure your entire GTM around that proof. Skip the deck. Lead with demonstration.

After all, if a CISO can fall off his chair in two minutes, you’re probably onto something.