Immediate’s Ten-Minute Implementation: How Product Design Became Their Sales Closer

Immediate’s Ten-Minute Implementation: How Product Design Became Their Sales Closer

HR teams have heard “seamless implementation” before. They’ve sat through demos promising easy rollouts. Then they’ve spent eight months in implementation hell, fielding angry calls from employees who can’t access the platform and executives questioning why the project isn’t live yet.

Matt Pierce knew this when building Immediate. He understood that in B2B software, particularly HR tech, the biggest competitor isn’t another product. It’s the accumulated trauma from implementations that failed to deliver on their promises.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Matt Pierce, CEO and Founder of Immediate, revealed how his team designed their financial wellness platform around a single constraint: employees must complete their first transaction within ten minutes of receiving a welcome email. That design decision became their most powerful sales weapon.

Understanding the Real Objection

Most founders hear “no” and assume they haven’t explained the value proposition clearly enough. Matt heard something different.

“I get asked a lot, who’s your biggest competitor?” Matt explains. “And I always say our biggest competitor is priorities.”

When HR and payroll teams say they’re prioritizing other projects, they’re really saying: I don’t trust this will be as easy as you claim. I’ve heard “seamless” before, and it wasn’t. I have limited political capital, and I’m not spending it on another implementation disaster.

“When you’re in HR or payroll and you’ve worked with a lot of different vendors over time and time tracking payroll or some of the other benefits that are out there, when people tell you that this is a really seamless, easy thing to roll out. Red flags go off in a lot of cases because they go, I’ve heard that before. And then went through an eight month implementation process with so and so,” Matt notes.

This insight shaped everything. Immediate couldn’t win by claiming their implementation was easier. They had to design it to be so obviously, demonstrably effortless that skepticism dissolved on contact.

The Ten-Minute Standard

Most companies optimize implementation for their own operational efficiency. Immediate optimized for time-to-first-value measured from the employee’s perspective.

“It’s a really straightforward process which is obviously by design,” Matt explains. “The less barriers you can put in place when you’re rolling out a new benefit like this, the better.”

Here’s the complete flow Immediate built:

The employer signs a two-page agreement granting access to time tracking and payroll data. Not a twenty-page master services agreement with procurement reviews—two pages.

Employees receive a welcome email with a unique activation code that ties their account to their company. No complex provisioning or IT involvement required.

A five-minute video teaches them how to download, install, activate, add a wallet, and complete their first transaction. Not a 45-minute training webinar—five minutes of essential information.

“And the really cool thing here is that we’ve seen people in as little as ten minutes from the time they open that email, log in and start making their first transaction,” Matt emphasizes.

Ten minutes from email to first transaction. That’s not an average—that’s the minimum they’ve observed. The standard most companies achieve is likely even faster.

Implementation as Sales Collateral

The ten-minute implementation didn’t just improve customer satisfaction. It became Immediate’s most powerful sales tool.

“It’s made it a really good scalable way to roll a business out and get a lot of people on board and utilizing the platform,” Matt notes. But the real magic happened in prospect conversations.

When prospects expressed skepticism about ease of implementation, Immediate’s sales team had an answer that went beyond promises: customer testimonials about actual implementation experiences.

“We actually have a quote from one individual who said, this was the easiest software that I’ve ever rolled out my entire career,” Matt shares. “Which obviously makes me really happy.”

That’s not a satisfied customer—that’s a sales closer. When an HR leader says Immediate was easier than anything in their entire career, the priority objection evaporates. The conversation shifts from “should we do this?” to “when can we start?”

The Design Decisions That Made It Possible

Achieving ten-minute implementations required specific technical and design choices that many companies wouldn’t make:

Decision One: Minimize Employer Burden

“When we go sit down with companies that we’re partnering with to explain that to them and say, you’re not going to get an influx of your employees calling and asking how to make this work or how to download and saw, we do all that for you,” Matt explains.

Most HR tech companies push support burden onto the employer’s HR team. Immediate absorbed it. This increased their own support costs but eliminated a major adoption barrier. The trade-off: higher unit costs, but dramatically faster implementation and enrollment.

Decision Two: Seamless Data Integration

The two-page agreement grants access to existing time tracking and payroll systems. Immediate integrates with what’s already there rather than requiring new systems or manual processes.

This technical investment—building integrations with dozens of time tracking and payroll platforms—was substantial. But it removed the integration burden from customers entirely. They didn’t need to change workflows or train employees on new time tracking systems.

Decision Three: Self-Service Activation

The unique activation code system lets employees self-provision without IT intervention. This seems simple but requires sophisticated backend systems to securely tie employee accounts to employer data without manual verification steps.

Most enterprise software requires IT provisioning because it’s easier for the vendor. Immediate chose the harder technical path because it made the customer experience effortless.

How Implementation Speed Compounds

The ten-minute implementation created advantages beyond initial customer satisfaction:

Faster Sales Cycles

When prospects can speak with reference customers who report career-best implementation experiences, deals close faster. Immediate’s recent quarter—60 deals in 100 days—reflects this acceleration.

Higher Enrollment Rates

Implementation friction directly impacts adoption. Employees who struggle with setup abandon the platform. Immediate’s 24% average enrollment (reaching 25-35% in target verticals) reflects how eliminating barriers drives usage.

Zero Churn

“To date, knock on wood, we haven’t lost a single customer,” Matt emphasizes. “So hundreds and hundreds of customers, we haven’t lost a single customer.”

Implementation experience sets retention trajectory. Customers who have smooth implementations develop trust. Customers who fight through difficult implementations start with resentment. That initial experience compounds over time.

The Organizational Commitment Required

Easy implementation for customers meant hard work for Immediate. This isn’t just good design—it’s organizational commitment to absorbing complexity.

Matt’s team built and maintains integrations with multiple time tracking and payroll systems. They created and constantly refine training materials that work across diverse employee populations. They staff support teams that respond “round the clock” to make sure users are taken care of.

These investments increase Immediate’s operational costs compared to pushing burden onto customers. But they create a moat that’s difficult to replicate. Competitors can’t match the implementation experience without making similar commitments—and those commitments only make sense if you recognize that priorities, not competitors, are what you’re really competing against.

The Framework for Implementation-Led GTM

Immediate’s approach suggests principles other founders can apply:

Identify Your Real Competitor. If buyers delay rather than choose competitors, you’re competing against priorities and implementation trauma, not rival products. Design your onboarding to obliterate those specific fears.

Measure Time-to-First-Value From the User Perspective. Immediate tracks from email receipt to first transaction. Not from contract signing, not from implementation kickoff—from the moment an individual user encounters the product.

Absorb Complexity, Don’t Shift It. Build integrations, create training, staff support—whatever it takes to remove burden from customers. Yes, it increases your costs. It also creates defensibility.

Turn Implementation Into Sales Collateral. One customer saying “easiest implementation of my career” closes more deals than ten case studies about ROI. Optimize for creating those quotable implementation experiences.

Accept Higher Unit Costs for Faster Growth. Immediate could operate more efficiently by pushing support onto customers. Instead, they invested in white-glove service that drives referrals, shortens sales cycles, and eliminates churn.

When Product Design Is GTM Strategy

Immediate now serves six figures of eligible employees with zero customer churn. They’re closing 60 deals per quarter. They’re achieving 25-35% enrollment in target verticals.

None of that came from better messaging or more aggressive outbound. It came from designing a product so effortless that implementation became impossible to object to.

“The less barriers you can put in place when you’re rolling out a new benefit like this, the better,” Matt notes. That principle—removing barriers—became the foundation of Immediate’s entire go-to-market motion.

Most founders treat product and GTM as separate functions. Immediate understood they’re the same thing. When your implementation is your closer, product design becomes your most important GTM investment.

The question isn’t whether to prioritize product or sales. It’s whether your product eliminates the objections your sales team encounters. If it doesn’t, all the sales process optimization in the world won’t matter. If it does, every customer becomes your best salesperson.