How to Run a Perfect Proof of Concept | Deren Rehr-Davis

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1. 1:10

   how to make sure that you manage that POC so that it doesn't run wild from a scope perspective, and so you actually get your deal closed when you are forecasting it. All right, Deren, welcome to the show. We start every single episode with your top three actionable takeaways, so let's get your three. My first one is the call prep. “Always know what the business does, what the buyer and champion does, where the lead comes” from, essentially every detail, because later on in that deal cycle, when you need to get your executive involved, I see a million times that that executive is not properly prepared, and so really you're preparing for the next few calls and to drive that deal forward by

   In Account research checklist

2. 1:44

   and so really you're preparing for the next few calls and to drive that deal forward by making sure every single detail, every relationship has been identified, and how to best connect with the individual or what the public reports might say on a business, how they're growing, “what their funding is, will help you move forward.” Beautiful. What's number two? The POC Disco. The POC Disco is essentially a success plan or mutual success plan that allows you to prevent things like scope creep, reduce churn, and increase value. This is best done by identifying the key business outcomes.

   In Funding and financial signals

3. 3:39

   you. That is the type of person who's peeking around your deal and might sneak up to kill the deal at the finish line, and Align's AI surfaces it before it's too late so you can multithread to them. We built a full multithreading playbook powered by Align. It's free in the show notes. Round us out. What's number three? Number three is the technical sign-off and the business sign-off. “You typically can break this down into two different personas.” As you move into mid-market deals or enterprise, or if you have a very technical solution or very just solution-oriented product that's complex, trying to identify who is going to make the decision from a technical perspective, oftentimes that might be your super admin

   In Buying committee and personas

4. 15:26

   How do you handle that situation? When you think about the outcomes that you're trying to drive, this is where not only understanding your business, your solution, and your product is important, but also understanding the actual businesses that you're selling to become so important. “Because if you can dive in and say, in that exact scenario, hey, I know I'm going to be able to do those recall blitzes and I'm going to double the amount of calls that you're making, but are you calling the same exact type of prospects or are you adding new lists to this POC?” Because if you can start asking questions like that, then you can start to figure out or try and identify, look, do you have certain conversion rates? Are those conversion rates going to stay steady?

   In Prospect list coverage

5. 26:32

   It sometimes can take longer too, which is an unfortunate thing for us And something that we run into in terms of deals getting dragged out is it's outside of our control Getting some of those numbers registered But if we can push them through, the next portion of that three or four days Is really trying to ensure that that number is working properly “Sometimes we'll test that number, we'll do a couple test calls” Sometimes for the registration, it will actually take a couple days for it to work But you want to ensure, yes, if you're going to go through this process There's no point in testing a number, again, that's going to go to spam and you're going to get zero pickups on And for us, that's just a really easy way to go straight to an unsuccessful POC

   In Phone number validation

6. 27:13

   Now, there's some tricks and tips that we can use specific to our business On how to get around those or speed them up at times for the right use case But that's during that first three or four days Are we integrated with your platform or your CRM, your help desk, your ticketing tool, whatever it might be “And then are your numbers registered and have we tested them?” And that way you can go and start actually testing the platform yourself confidently Pro tip here, use meetings as milestone deadlines I will oftentimes set that first integration meeting and say At this meeting, we will review all of your integrations to make sure that you've set them up the right way

   In Phone number validation