​Presales Leader: “POC scope creep is a major problem for us.”
Me: “Can you show me one of your Evaluation Plans?”
Presales Leader: “What do you mean?”
Me: “Oh boy… let’s chat!”

​The Proof-of-Concept (POC) or Proof-of-Value (POV) is an essential and/or mandatory step in many B2B sales cycles.

If you are not careful, the POC/POV will drag out your sales cycle and cost your presales team A LOT of unnecessary time and effort.

The #1 cause of this: SCOPE CREEP.

The #1 way to avoid scope creep: EVALUATION PLANS.

​At its core, a formal POC/POV Evaluation Plan aligns you and your prospect on:

✅ The use cases that will be shown/tested
✅ The success criteria for each one.

To get started, create a list of use cases based on:
(1) what your prospect wants to test, and
(2) what you know they should test.

These are not always the same. Remember, your prospect does not know the best way to evaluate your product. You do!

Be a trusted advisor. Offer up modifications and alternatives if you disagree with your prospect’s list of use cases and recommend new ones based on what you know about their business challenges and desired future state.

For each use case, define the success criteria. There should be no ambiguity here. Your use cases should be pass/fail.

Before kicking off the POC/POV, get your prospect’s explicit buy-in on the Evaluation Plan. 🤝 

‘Explicit buy-in’ means you heard your prospect say, “If we test these use cases and satisfy the success criteria… you will be our vendor of choice.”

If you haven’t heard that yet, iterate on the Evaluation Plan until you do. 🔁

Once you kick-off the POC/POV, provide a way to digitally track the status of each use case (e.g. In Progress, Completed, or Blocked), highlight and alert on blockers, and document the results. 🖥

Immediately address any blockers and failing use cases. You can recover from these 🤒, but you cannot delay ⏰.

​A well-designed Evaluation Plan with explicit buy-in avoids scope creep and brings your POC/POV to a logical conclusion as quickly as possible with demonstrated success.

Congratulations! 🙌

You are the vendor of choice (VOC)!

Homerun Presales is officially integrated with GSuite / Google Workspace! Sync calendars for automated Activity Tracking 📅. Login via Google SSO 🔐. Link to GDrive folders and docs 📁 . Heyooo!! 🙌

Features and Gaps and Bugs… oh my! Homerun Presales has a two-way integration with Jira, streamlining how presales and product teams stay in sync, unblock deals, and enhance the product roadmap. 🙌

The Homerun-Jira integration lets you:

✅ Link features in your Homerun Feature Repository with Jira issues and sync data back and forth

✅ Search for Jira issues that match the features your prospects need

✅ Create new issues in Jira based on new Feature Requests captured in Homerun

✅ Connect Homerun to multiple Jira Projects

✅ Get automatic alerts when issues are closed in Jira (meaning the feature has been released) so you can re-engage with prospects and give them the good news!

An open and connected presales tech stack is the modern presales tech stack.

Homerun Presales has you covered.

Check out all our integrations (and our REST JSON API).

​The best presales teams UN-LOSE deals by working with their product team. How? Read on… (Hint: You’re sitting on the presales data they need… time to share it!)

First off, UN-LOSE?

Yep, UN-LOSE.

It means you are going to lose a deal, but you do something to not lose it.

​Picture it…

You’re a sales engineer giving demo. 🖥

Your prospect asks if you support feature X.

Your product does not support feature X.

You tell them that, and your prospect starts to cry a little 😢 because they were loving everything until that very moment.

Wiping away a sad little tear, they sigh “That’s unfortunate. Feature X is a must-have for us...”

As a great SE, you immediately tag feature X against this deal in your presales workspace.

You set the severity to Blocker.

Blockers are features without which your prospect cannot or will not buy.

You finish up the demo, hoping they’ll decide they don’t need feature X after all. 🙏

Your prospect ends the call saying, “We’re sorry this won’t work out because of feature X… we really loved everything else!” 😭

​But wait a minute...

Your manager sees a Presales Warning Sign light up on her Presales Pipeline dashboard 🚨 because you just logged feature X as a Blocker for this deal.

She wants to learn more and clicks into this deal's presales workspace to see what you know and what’s been done so far. It's all in one place, so she scrolls through and is up to speed in minutes. 👍

She clicks over to her Feature Request summary report, and she sees that feature X is now a Blocker on over $1 million of ARR across 6 different deals! 😱

She pings the head of product and schedules a quick meeting.

She shows him the Feature Request report.

“See here… we have 6 deals worth $1 million in ARR that we are going to lose. That’s the difference between hitting target and blowing it! These are the 6 deals and their deal sizes.”

The product manager leans forward to get a closer look. 🤔

“Feature X is a Future need on 2 other deals worth $300K. We can close them today, but if we do… they’re expecting you to deliver feature X at some point.”

The product manager starts to smirk. 🙂

“And finally, feature X is a Nice-To-Have for 1 deal worth $250K. While we don’t need it to close them, it would really boost our chances of winning them.”

The product manager smiles big, ear to ear. 😄

He says, “Between you and me… I’m usually GUESSING at the market potential when I’m prioritizing features in the roadmap.”

“You’re giving me Deals and Dollars… the real data that I need to justify squeezing feature X into our next release, which is coming out in 4 weeks.”

They exclaim in unison, “Let’s go UN-LOSE those deals!” 🙌

​We had a demo this week with a presales leader who said that 2023 needed to be a year of Responsible Growth and Operational Excellence for his company. Love that! But what does that mean for a presales team? Let’s break it down.

PART 1: RESPONSIBLE GROWTH

Up until last year, the modus operandi for many companies, especially VC-fueled startups, was to Grow. At. All. Costs.

There was fast and furious hiring across the org. 

Within sales leadership, the thought was: Just throw more sales engineers at the pipeline so we can give more demos, run more proof of concepts (POCs) / proof of values (POVs), and close more deals… more. More. MORE!

But today is today.

Budgets are tight. 

Headcounts are frozen (or decreasing with layoffs). 

The new modus operandi is ‘responsible growth’.

Management still wants more, More, MORE in terms of performance… but you don’t get more to help you achieve it.

Every presales team is now looking for ways to do more with what they have.

That means finding ways to be more EFFICIENT.

✅ More efficient presales processes.
✅ More efficient use of presales time and effort.
✅ More efficient presales tooling.
✅ More efficient cross-functional collaborations between presales and other teams.

RESPONSIBLE GROWTH = PRESALES EFFICIENCY

PART 2: OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
​PART 2: OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
 
Up until last year, business was BOOMING.

[If you’re old enough to remember Oprah…] YOU get a lead. And YOU get a lead. EVERYONE is getting LEEEEeeeads!!

But today is today.

Sales pipelines are smaller, both in Deals and Dollars.

Top of the funnel (TOFU) lead flow is dwindling, so there are fewer deals.

Buyers have reduced budgets of their own, so your Average Contract Value (ACV) is smaller (either your prospect buys less or they negotiate deep discounts).

Every deal matters now more than ever.

Therefore, every presales team is looking for ways to boost their win rates now more than ever.

That means finding ways to be more EFFECTIVE.

✅ More effective discovery.
✅ More effective demo prep and delivery.
✅ More effective POCs/POVs.
✅ More effective relationship building.
✅ More effective problem solving.
✅ More effective solutioning.
✅ More effective transitions to post-sales / customer success (because you also need happy, vocal customers right now and eventually renewals!)

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE = PRESALES EFFECTIVENESS

If 2023 needs to be a year of RESPONSIBLE GROWTH and OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE for your company…

Then 2023 needs to be a year of PRESALES EFFICIENCY and PRESALES EFFECTIVENESS for your team.

BREAKING NEWS: Homerun Presales is live on the Salesforce AppExchange! 🙌 🥂 🍾 😃
 
Our new Salesforce App automates your presales workflow and data syncing between Salesforce and Homerun.

As Opportunities move between Salesforce Stages and require presales resources, our App kicks into action:

✅ New Homerun Evaluations (aka, our famous ‘presales workspaces’) are created and linked automatically to Opportunities 

✅ Presales resources are assigned directly or by team managers

✅ Assigned resources are alerted of new activity

✅ Data is two-way synced ​between Salesforce and Homerun to keep presales and sales teams aligned and in sync

​Our new App streamlines our existing Salesforce integration and improves the setup experience. One of our customers connected Homerun and Salesforce in under 5 minutes! 🤯

We’re excited to be rolling this out to Homerun customers who use Salesforce as their CRM. It boosts their presales performance, reduces friction in their presales/sales motion, and makes their ‘systems integration’ lives a lot easier.

Check out Homerun Presales on the Salesforce AppExchange!

Hey sales engineers… want an instant engagement boost in your demos? Change your demo language from “Click here to do XYZ…” to “If this was YOUR system, YOU would click here to do XYZ…”

❌ The goal of your demo isn’t for you to show off your software.

✅ The goal of your demo is to get your prospect to imagine themselves using your software.

This subtle change in your demo language helps makes that happen.

​The best sales engineers ASK before they SHOW.

At some point in every demo your prospect is going to ask: “Does your product do XYZ?”

What you do next can make or break the deal.

​Story time!

SCENARIO 1

You are giving a demo and your prospect asks, “Does your product support role-based access controls and permissions?”

Your product does support RBAC, so you excitedly say, “Yes! Let me show you!”

You immediately proceed to show how to set up user roles and teams and data permissions.

You log in as a user from EMEA and show how they only can see data for EMEA.

You log in as a user from APAC and show how they only can see data for APAC.

You then log in as the Global VP user and show how she can see all the data.

Ta-daaaa!

You ask, “Now that I have showed you our RBAC capabilities, can you see how they would help you restrict access to your data across your teams?”

Your prospect responds with a frown, “That doesn’t work for us. We are an open team and everyone should have access to all data. Looks like a lot of complexity that we do not need nor would want to pay for.”

You sadly realize that you:

❌ Wasted 10 minutes of valuable demo time

❌ Made your product seem more complex than it is

❌ Got your prospect thinking that they are going to be overpaying for features that they don’t want

SCENARIO 2

You are giving a demo and your prospect asks, “Does your product support role-based access controls and permissions?”

Your product does support RBAC, but you calmly say, “I’m curious about that. Can you tell me more about your RBAC needs?” Then you wait…

Your prospect responds, “We are an open team and everyone should have access to all data. I want to make sure that my team doesn’t have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get access to the data they need.”

Knowing the reason behind their question, you confidently say, “The default setting in our product is that everyone has access to all data. No hoops. No jumping. No configuration required. Just instant access for everyone to all data.”

Your prospect replies, “That’s perfect. Exactly what we need right out-of-the-box! I looked at one of your competitors, and their product seemed really complex. Lots of configurations that we don’t need. You seem like a much better fit so far.”

You smile as you realize that you:

✅ Showed how your product meets your prospect’s needs (without even showing anything)

✅ Saved 10 minutes of valuable demo time

✅ Got your prospect thinking how easy your product is to use

✅ Created a competitive differentiator (even if your and your competitor’s products have the exact same RBAC features)

​
​ASK before you SHOW! 🙌

Need an open presales workspace or one with RBAC for data protections across teams? Talk to one of our presales experts about how Homerun Presales supports both. Click here to get started!

Sales forecast calls tell your sales leadership:

• What is going to close and when?
• Will we be over our revenue target (and if so, where are our risks)?
• Will we fall short (and if so, what can we do to make up the gap)?

 
On every forecast call, the sales teams contributes 4 core Sales Data Points about each deal:

1. Opportunity Stage,
2. Deal Size,
3. Close Date,
4. Forecast Category (e.g. Commit, Best Case, Pipeline).

 
With this sales data, CROs run through various revenue scenarios to try and predict upcoming performance.

Historically presales teams have been excluded from forecast calls with the thinking “What could presales contribute that my AEs don’t already know?” 

Using modern presales management solutions, like Homerun Presales, presales teams are now generating new and varied Presales Data through their regular day-to-day activities. 
 
As a result, presales teams have extremely valuable data that no one else has, but everyone wants. 

Bring these 3 Presales Data Points to your CRO to earn your seat at the ‘sales forecast’ table. 

#1) Presales Warning Signs

Presales warning signs can take multiple forms, but they are how a presales team raises their hand and says “We are concerned about this deal…”

Common Examples:

• Presales Sentiment = Concerned
• 1+ Product Gap / Feature Request Blocker
• 1+ Evaluation Plan Blocker (e.g. stuck on a step in our process; failing test/use cases in a POC/POV)

Your CRO will SIT UP and LEAN FORWARD the moment you start sharing a Presales Report that shows all deals that are in Commit, but have at least one Presales Warning Sign. 

Once seen, your CRO will never be able to live without it!​

​Homerun Presales' shareable Evaluation Plans and interactive Customer Portal are a winning combination for running POCs/POVs.

​Here are our 7 steps to POC/POV success.

STEP 1: Create reusable Evaluation Plan Templates in your Homerun Template Library that include your standard steps/tasks, POC/POV test/use cases, and success criteria. 🔁

STEP 2: Assemble a specific Evaluation Plan for each POC/POV by copying in the relevant Templates and customizing the Plan as needed along with any team/task assignments, due dates, and supporting materials/documentation. 📋

STEP 3: Decide which parts of your Evaluation Plan that you want to share with your prospect and invite them to view and interact with the shared Evaluation Plan. 📨

STEP 4: Collaboratively track POC/POV progress with your prospect via the Homerun Customer Portal. Document status, message back-and-forth, manage files, and capture notes. 🤝

STEP 5: Respond to alerts about Blockers for unexpected POC/POV issues or failing test/use cases and work with your prospect to resolve them. ❌

STEP 6: Conclude the POC/POV with demonstrated success when you and your prospect achieve 100% 'green complete' on all test/use cases. ✅

STEP 7: Celebrate the Technical Win and being named Vendor of Choice (VOC)! 🙌