What’s your opinion on that? Should a POC be paid for by the prospect or is free and Part of the Sales process?
Moneymachine
POC - paid or not?
What’s your take?
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Always paid, shows commitment to the deal on their end so you're not wasting time/resources.
Depends on the level of evolvement needed. If they want a hosted environment to do 6 months of intense testing (exaggerated example), yeah I would probably make it a "paid pilot". But for the average POC, we normally do those free because part of our value prop is the ease of use and speed of deployment vs our competition.
It depends on the level of effort we need to support. We've gotten some requests that are low effort, more like guided demo for them to work in. We've gotten some others that are more complex and we charge something, (relatively low). it's a good gut check to see if they're putting skin in the game.
Regardless of which direction we put a lot of guardrails up and talk about success metrics ect to make it as successful as possible and to solidify a move forward if we check the boxes.
Regardless of which direction we put a lot of guardrails up and talk about success metrics ect to make it as successful as possible and to solidify a move forward if we check the boxes.
POC's should be short and sweet. If there's no criteria its test driving a car without a license. If they insist on a longer 'trial' then they need to pay for the PS as those are human hours and not saas hours.
The customer has to show they are willing to put skin in the game. Give to get. Sometimes this does result in a "free" POC, but I always position it with something in return. For example: During a vendor selection process, I lay out specific objectives of the POC and time box it. At the end of the POC, if we meet all of the objectives, we are in agreement to move into contract.
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