Many sales organizations refer to the POV (or POC or pilot) as one of the most critical steps in their sales process as it both allows them to prove who they are and what they can do for their buyers and because that bring them into the environment of their buyer, therefore removing a big potential blocker off the board.
Sellers in organizations that typically do not have a POV as part of the sales process are better off as they can eliminate the time and efforts associated with the POV. Sales organizations that must typically conduct POVs must proactively manage a tight technical and business POV process. The technical parameters that are required for the setup and the successful execution of the POV should be identified and validated (typically by the sales engineers) ahead of the Economic Buyer meeting, so that POV plan, objectives, timeline and success criteria could be defined based on the technical feasibility of the various elements that could be executed as part of a POV.
The POV objectives and success criteria should be designed to cover the minimal required list of operational parameters that can prove the most critical differentiated capabilities of the offering and in turn, support the strategic and business impact that are presented in the business case.
Sellers should not allocate the resources and effort to a POV without fully understanding the pains, the strategic and business impact, the POV plan, objectives, timeline and success criteria, as well as the closing process after the success of the POV.
As discussed in the previous chapter, it is critical to have the Economic Buyer meeting ahead of the POV. Sellers should not allocate the resources and effort to a POV without fully understanding the pains, the strategic and business impact, the POV plan, objectives, timeline and success criteria, as well as the closing process after the success of the POV. Not doing so will often result in endless POVs without clear conclusions that would lead to frustration on both sides.
Some sales organizations manage to turn the POVs into Try & Buy, where buyers actually sign a contract which is automatically binding if the POV meets its (minimal) success criteria or becomes void otherwise. This approach makes sense especially if the POV itself triggers the security approval, vendor qualification, Master Service Agreement and other similar procedures on the buying side. If the POV does not trigger such procedures, it is advised to get to the verbal commitment by the Economic Buyer before going through those steps.
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