A premium cultural experience operator had never sold their flagship product online. They didn't think it was possible. It took months of relationship-building, a smaller ask, and one very good season of results to prove otherwise.
As a Technical Account Manager, I tried to get under the hood fast. When I took over this account, I spent the first few months doing exactly that: solving real problems, learning the business, building rapport. By the time I spotted a bigger opportunity, they trusted me.
That trust mattered, because what I was about to suggest made them uncomfortable.
They were on FareHarbor, but only partially. General inventory was online. Their flagship product, a premium cultural experience that represented a significant share of the business, was sold entirely offline. Manually. The way it had always been done.
When I asked why, the answer was straightforward: they'd never thought it was possible. The premium experience was high-touch and carefully curated. Putting it on a booking widget felt wrong. Their specific fears were overselling, operational chaos, and cheapening something they'd built their reputation on.
I made the case for going online. I walked through the friction in their funnel, the manual work their team was absorbing, the bookings they were probably losing. They listened. They said no.
So I changed the ask. Instead of a full launch, I proposed a limited test: bring a small fraction of the premium inventory online, keep everything else the same, and see what happens. Nothing to lose.
It still took a few more conversations and a few more weeks before they said yes. Not because I kept repeating myself, but because I gave them time to sit with it and kept showing up with answers to every concern they raised.
The test worked. The premium seats sold out. No overselling. Less manual entry. The team had more time, not less. They were surprised and, honestly, relieved.
That first win changed everything. We weren't debating philosophy anymore. We were reading the same results together and deciding what to try next. More premium inventory online. Then more. Then the affiliate blocks started coming down too. Each step validated the one before it.
This wasn't a clever pitch. It was patience, trust, and a willingness to start much smaller than I wanted to. I focused first on their stated needs, the problems they already knew they had. Only once I'd built real credibility did I pivot to the need they hadn't realized they had. That ordering matters. Push too early and you look like you're selling. Wait until you've earned it and you look like a consultant.
Every fear they had, overselling, operational headaches, brand dilution, either never materialized or was solved in practice. The upside they couldn't see turned out to be very real.