Enterprise Playbook: How to Structure a POC (Including a POC Agreement Template!)
It’s no secret that CEOs and CFOs are under enormous pressure to ensure their investments will deliver value. Unfortunately, this means signing upfront, long-term contracts with vendors can be hard to justify.
For this reason, Proof of Concepts (POCs) have become a norm for many SaaS startups looking to conquer enterprise sales. It’s a great way to get a foot in the door at a large enterprise, establish your business champion early on, and showcase that your product will succeed and solve a problem within the business before they’ve signed a formal contract.
In short, POCs are a trial period where prospective customers can “try before they buy” and ideally convert to a paying customer. At the same time, it provides startups the chance to gain critical customer feedback on the product itself and to win customers over with a terrific product experience and prove out product ROI.
Here at Work-Bench, we know that enterprise sales is a complex and often a long sales cycle, and POCs are often similar. That is why we put together an Enterprise Playbook that outlines how to structure a POC, including a step-by-step framework and a POC Agreement template, answering:
- How do I determine if a POC is the right fit for my product?
- What is the best pricing strategy?
- How do I define POC success?
- What is the typical POC timeline?
📩 Download the full Enterprise Playbook on How to Structure a POC, including our POC Agreement Template here.
If you’re an enterprise startup thinking through the POC process, we would love to hear from you! And for more tactical guides, check out our Enterprise Playbook Series, which provides founders with the tactical knowledge needed to successfully go-to-market and build a world-class enterprise software company.
