Developer Tools Product Pitch: English Collocations
Pitching developer tools to engineering teams requires a vocabulary that resonates with both technical practitioners and technical decision-makers. Whether delivering a live demo, building a business case, or running a proof-of-concept, each phase of the DevTools sales and adoption process has specific collocations. This exercise covers the language used in DevTools product pitches, pre-sales conversations, and pilot programmes.
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1 / 5
The DevTools sales engineer was asked to ___ a live demo of the debugging tool's integration with VS Code to the platform team.
Deliver a demo is the standard developer sales and product pitch collocation — demos are 'delivered' as professional, prepared performance events intended to persuade a technical audience. 'Give' is also natural; 'show' is informal; 'run' implies executing a script. 'Deliver' implies a polished, rehearsed demonstration with clear narrative and a call to action.
2 / 5
The product manager worked with the sales team to ___ a compelling business case for the observability platform to the engineering VP.
Build a compelling business case is the standard pre-sales and internal advocacy collocation — business cases are 'built' by assembling ROI data, use cases, and competitive comparisons. 'Present' is what you do with the business case; 'make' and 'develop' are also used. 'Build' specifically implies the assembly of evidence and argument into a persuasive structured document.
3 / 5
The DevTools account executive focused the pitch on how the tool could help the team ___ developer productivity by reducing context switching.
Boost developer productivity is the standard DevTools product pitch collocation — sales pitches emphasise how tools 'boost' key metrics like productivity, deployment frequency, or MTTR. 'Improve' and 'increase' are accurate but less punchy in a sales context; 'raise' implies a more gradual improvement. 'Boost' is the preferred verb in developer tools marketing for communicating a step-change improvement in a key metric.
4 / 5
The DevTools vendor offered to run a free proof-of-concept to ___ that the tool could reduce mean time to detection in the client's environment.
Demonstrate the tool's value is the standard sales proof-of-concept collocation — vendors 'demonstrate' capabilities by showing them working in the client's actual environment. 'Prove' implies an absolute standard of evidence; 'show' is informal; 'confirm' is too passive. 'Demonstrate' is the preferred sales and pre-sales verb for providing observable, contextual evidence of value.
5 / 5
The platform team agreed to ___ the DevTools product on a thirty-day trial before making a procurement decision.
Pilot the product is the natural technology adoption collocation for a structured, time-boxed evaluation — new tools are 'piloted' with a defined group before broader purchase. 'Trial' is also widely used; 'test' implies QA rather than adoption evaluation; 'evaluate' is the analytical step within a pilot. 'Pilot' implies a structured adoption experiment with success criteria, not just exploration.