State of POCs (trials, evals, etc.)

In a lot of our recent meetings with prospects, customers, and partners, we’ve had the opportunity to dig into the pre-sales process and put some definition around what it means to them. If there is one thing we’ve learned its that there are all kinds of semantics but the difference in opinion is scant. Pre-sales exists to prove value, start cultivating a partnership with the customer, and create a plan for longterm success. For many companies, the POC (POCs include trials, evaluations, and pilots) is the best way to achieve the desired outcome.

https://www.techjini.com/blog/proof-of-concept/

Ross Fulton of Valuize Consulting extrapolates this a bit further in an article called, “Stop Pitching SaaS Product and Start Prescribing Outcomes”. For him pre-sales is very much about prescribing outcomes to your prospects that:

1. Deliver measurable value to your ideal customer
2. Link together to deliver measurable achievement of your ideal customer’s strategic goal or vision
3. Your Adoption strategy is designed to scalably and efficiently deliver with your ideal customer

All of this is great and in the age of feel good, ‘human-first’ sales the POC phase’s ability to facilitate the type of dialogue required to deliver long term success makes a tremendous amount of sense, perhaps even more than it has in the past. So why do I keep hearing from companies that they’re “trying to move away from trials and POCs”?

There are a couple of reasons that I’ll surface here:

1. They’re expensive. If you’re in the business of hardware (think a storage appliance), its a cumbersome and expensive process to implement, manage, and maintain a POC. To top it off, if the end user decides to purchase a competitor, you then have to coordinate the retrieval of the equipment. Logistically it can be a nightmare.
2. Kicking tires. We see this more often with SaaS products that don’t have a paywall or any barrier to entry. Someone, usually an individual who can’t make a decision, requests or signs up for a trial of a product. Typically, its for no reason other than they heard about it from a friend or conversely they might actually be working on a small project but only seeking some automated assistance. To give you an example, at my previous company, CloudHealth, a cloud management company that automatically optimized your cloud infrastructure and reduced your monthly bill, an end user would utilize our Reserved Instance Calculator to determine what they should purchase from AWS or Microsoft and then disappear at the conclusion of a trial, with their optimizations and reports in hand.
3. They can last for a long, long time. This is a profound issue with a lot of companies and it doesn’t matter what you’re selling. It’s the outcome of a sales team who probably doesn’t have all of the right decision makers involved or started the process outside of a buying cycle.

I’m sure there are several other reasons and I’d love to hear from you with additions but these are the three we consistently hear. That said, I don’t think they justify eliminating a POC or trial.

As a former colleague and friend of mine, and now sales leader in EMEA said resoundingly, “they’re not going ANYWHERE, especially if its a B2B business”. He expanded on the value side of the equation, “They enable you show an ROI, if only over a short period of time.” I’d add that in the current, hyper-competitive world we live in, feature parity between competitive SaaS companies is almost always guaranteed. The POC provides an opportunity to really differentiate your team and the value you’ll deliver over the customer’s lifecycle.

So how do we solve for these three challenges? Dial certain things back, set expectations, and automate as much of the logistical or administrative side of the process.

1. If you’re running a hardware business, shift to a virtual appliance or sandbox for 95% of your POCs.
2. Eliminate tire-kickers by forcing a paid trial, or create additional checkpoints from day one. “Hey we’d love for you to trial our product however there are few things we need to know before you can start.” Are they in a buying cycle? Does that person have the ability to make a purchase? If someone drops off, they weren’t the right candidate.
3. And train your sales team to set expectations early. “When do you typically make purchases?” “We need an executive sponsor. Who will that be and can you connect us?” And don’t be afraid to shut off a trial or POC.

At the end of the day, POCs are here to stay. Without an existing relationship, they’re the most effective way to deliver value and set expectations for a long term relationship with your customer. Done right, most of them should run smoothly and with a predictable cost model.

About:

Currently, Edward and the Mergeable team are building the first Customer Performance Platform.

Previously, he spent almost a decade at the forefront of business development, sales, product management, and customer success for leading enterprise startups including Actifio and CloudHealth. His contributions led to millions of dollars in revenue and numerous strategic partnerships. Most recently, he worked directly with Fortune 500 senior IT executives as the General Manager of the Velocity Network (General Catalyst & CRV), a forum for connecting emerging technology companies to the enterprise.

Mergeable better aligns pre-sales, onboarding, and customer success. For pre-sales, they’re software makes the POC process more efficient by ensuring continued success for your prospects, starting in pre-sales and extending into post-sales.

You can easily measure a prospects health or engagement and automate behaviors and responses, allowing you to focus on the relationship.

Shoot me an email (edward@mergeable.co) if you want to learn more about how we’re doing this for some of the largest technology companies in the world.