The POC and Pilot Management Reboot — 60-Min Training

Direct Answer

Section 1 — Why POCs Quietly Kill Deals (0:00–0:05, 5 min)

Open cold. Ask the room: "How many of your last three POCs closed in the quarter they were scoped for?" Hands stay down. That is the problem.

• The data the AE never sees. Robert Falcone's *Just F\*ing Demo!* research and Pavilion SE community polls put unmanaged POC win rates at roughly 25–35%, versus 65–75% for criteria-locked, time-boxed pilots.
• Root cause is not product. Adam Honig (Spiro CEO, formerly Innoveer) calls it "hope as a sales strategy" — the rep agrees to a POC because the buyer asked, not because qualification demanded one.
• What a POC actually costs you. A 4-week POC consumes roughly 40 SE hours, 8 AE hours, and one engineering escalation. At a loaded $200/hr blended rate that is $9,600 of capacity per pilot. Lose three in a row and you have burned a quota.

Frame the hour: we are not learning to run better POCs. We are learning to run fewer, tighter, paid ones that close.

Section 2 — Paid vs Free: The Debate, Settled (0:05–0:20, 15 min)

Run a 5-minute room debate, then teach the rule.

• The free-POC argument. Lowers buyer friction, beats incumbents on velocity, works for SMB and PLG motions under $25K ACV.
• **The paid-POC argument (Peter Cohan, *Great Demo!*). "If they will not pay for the pilot, they will not pay for the product."** A paid pilot — even $5K–$25K — forces a PO, a budget owner, and procurement engagement *before* you spend SE cycles.
• The Pulse rule. Below $50K ACV free is fine if time-boxed. Between $50K and $150K charge a nominal pilot fee credited back at signature. Above $150K the POC must be a paid Proof of Value (POV) engagement with a signed Statement of Work.

Verbatim script — introducing the paid pilot:

*"We have run this six ways. The pilots that get to production are the ones where both sides have skin in the game. We will scope a 4-week paid pilot at \$15,000, fully credited against your first-year subscription if you move forward.

If we do not hit the success criteria we will write together next week, you owe nothing past the pilot fee. Does that structure work for your finance team, or should we loop them in now?"*

Why this works: it qualifies budget, surfaces procurement, and creates a champion in one sentence. If the buyer flinches at $15K credited-back, they will flinch at $150K real.

Section 3 — Success Criteria Locked Up Front (0:20–0:30, 10 min)

This is the single highest-leverage move in the hour. No criteria, no sandbox. Period.

• The 5-field Criteria Card (John Care, *Mastering Technical Sales*, 3rd ed. Discipline):

1. Business outcome — the dollar or hour number this pilot must prove.
2. Technical proof points — the 3 to 5 capabilities that must demonstrably work in *their* environment.
3. Evaluators and decision maker — named humans, with the economic buyer signing the card.
4. Pass/fail thresholds — quantitative, not "we'll know it when we see it."
5. Decision date and next step — the calendar slot for the Success Doc review, booked *now*.

• Co-author the card live. Do not send a template. Open a shared doc on the call and type while they talk. Cohan calls this "vision generation by the customer, in the customer's words."
• Get the economic buyer's name on it. Even an email reply that says *"yes, this is what good looks like"* is enough. Without that signature you do not have a POC, you have a science fair.

The refusal line, used when criteria stay vague after two attempts:

*"I want to be straight with you — if I cannot get a one-page agreement on what success looks like, the pilot will end in ambiguity and neither of us wins. Let's go back to discovery for one more session, get the CFO's number on the table, and re-scope next week."*

Section 4 — Time-Boxing: 2 Weeks Standard, 4 Weeks Maximum (0:30–0:40, 10 min)

Time is the variable buyers and reps both abuse. Lock it.

• Default: 2 weeks. Sufficient for SaaS pilots where the SE can stand up a sandbox in 48 hours and the buyer has data ready.
• Exception: 4 weeks. Only when there is a real integration (SSO, data warehouse, custom API) or multi-persona evaluation (security + IT + business).
• Never: 6+ weeks. A 6-week POC is a consulting engagement in disguise. If the customer needs that long, you are missing a Professional Services SOW, not extending a pilot.

The kickoff calendar discipline:

• Day 0 — Criteria Card signed, sandbox provisioned, kickoff held.
• Day 3 — First technical checkpoint (15 min, SE-led).
• Day 7 — Midpoint review with the economic buyer (mandatory; if they no-show, the pilot is failing and you should say so).
• Day 12 or 26 — Success Doc draft circulated.
• Day 14 or 28 — Success Doc review, contract handoff, or formal disqualification.

Verbatim midpoint check-in script:

*"We are at the halfway mark. By the criteria we wrote together, here is what is green, here is what is yellow, here is what is red. If we hit Day 14 with the yellows unresolved, what does your team need from us in the next 72 hours to move them green?"*

Section 5 — The Success Doc Handoff (0:40–0:55, 15 min)

The Success Doc is the artifact that converts a POC into a signed deal. It is not a deck. It is a 2-3 page co-authored document that the champion will email to their CFO.

• Anatomy of a Success Doc (synthesized from Cohan's "Do It" wrap-up and Falcone's pilot framework):

1. Restated business problem — one paragraph, in the buyer's words.
2. Criteria recap with green/yellow/red — the original Criteria Card with results.
3. Quantified outcome — the dollar or hour value validated during the pilot, with the math shown.
4. Implementation plan — 30/60/90-day rollout, named owners on both sides.
5. Commercial proposal — pricing, terms, and the credited-back pilot fee.
6. Decision — the signature block and the meeting on the calendar to sign it.

• Co-authoring rule. The champion writes section 1 and 3. You write 2, 4, 5, 6. If they will not write their section, they are not your champion.

Verbatim handoff script to the economic buyer:

*"Sarah co-authored the first half of this doc with me — these are her words on the business case. Sections four through six are ours. We are asking for a decision by Friday so we can start the 30/60/90 plan together on Monday. What questions do you have before we move to redlines?"*

Section 6 — When to Refuse a POC (0:55–1:00, 5 min)

End the hour with the hardest skill: saying no.

• Refuse if any of these are missing: named economic buyer, written success criteria, decision date on the calendar, identified champion who will co-author the Success Doc, technical fit confirmed in discovery.
• Refuse if the request is a "bake-off." Three-vendor parallel pilots with no criteria are a procurement tactic to extract free labor. Decline politely and propose a paid POV instead.
• The refusal is a qualification accelerator, not a deal-killer. Honig (Spiro) reports refusing roughly 15% of POC requests lifts overall pilot conversion from ~30% to ~60% because the saved SE cycles go to qualified deals.

Closing line for the room:

*"Your job is not to run every POC the buyer asks for. Your job is to run the POCs that close. Refuse early, scope tight, write the Success Doc together, and the pipeline math fixes itself."*

Assign one homework item: every AE-SE pair reviews one in-flight POC against the 5-field Criteria Card before next Monday's pipeline call. Anything missing gets a written gap or a written refusal by EOW.

FAQ

Q: What if the buyer insists on a free POC for a $200K deal? A: Counter with a paid POV at 5–10% of first-year ACV, fully credited at signature. If they refuse the credited-back structure, you do not have budget authority in the room — return to discovery and find the economic buyer.

Q: How do we handle multi-product pilots? A: One Criteria Card per product, one Success Doc, one decision date. Do not let scope creep into a "platform pilot" without a paid POV wrapper.

Q: What if the champion writes the Success Doc but the economic buyer ghosts? A: That is the moment to invoke MEDDPICC's "Identify Pain" gate. Have the champion forward the doc with a calendar invite for a 20-minute decision call. If the EB no-shows twice, the deal is closed-lost — move on.

Q: How do we measure POC discipline at the team level? A: Track four metrics weekly: % of POCs with signed Criteria Cards (target 100%), median pilot duration (target ≤14 days), POC-to-close conversion (target ≥60%), and refused-POC count (healthy SEs refuse 10–20% of requests).

Q: Does this apply to PLG motions? A: Partially. PLG self-serve trials are not POCs — they are top-of-funnel activation. The moment a PLG account requests a "guided pilot" with SE involvement, it becomes a POC and these rules apply.

Q: When does a POC become a Professional Services engagement? A: When the customer requests custom integration work beyond the standard sandbox, or extends scope past 4 weeks. Hand it to PS with a signed SOW; do not let SEs absorb consulting work as "pilot extension."

Sources

• Peter Cohan, *Great Demo!: How to Create and Execute Stunning Software Demonstrations*, 3rd ed. (Second Derivative Press, 2018) — "Do It" methodology and paid-pilot doctrine.
• John Care and Aron Bohlig, *Mastering Technical Sales: The Sales Engineer's Handbook*, 4th ed. (Artech House, 2022) — qualification gates and Criteria Card discipline.
• Robert Falcone, *Just F\*ing Demo! Tactics for Leading Kickass Product Demos* (2018) — pilot framework and Success Doc anatomy.
• Adam Honig, "Hope Is Not a Sales Strategy," Spiro blog and Pavilion SE Summit talks (2023–2025).
• Pavilion Sales Engineering Community, "POC Benchmarks 2025" working group reports.
• Andy Paul, *Sell Without Selling Out* (Page Two, 2022) — refusal-as-qualification framing.
• MEDDPICC.com official enablement library — "Identify Pain" and "Economic Buyer" gates as applied to POC governance.