A classic issue raised once again by Tony Byrne is “Who is paying for what?” (read the comment of Tony) during pre-sales process and the choice of the product through a Proof of Concept (POC). As usual I do not believe so much into black or white answers but I will try to give my ideas.

 First of all, one should remember that quite often, prospects are arguing they should not pay for demos or proof of concept for several reasons such as:

-        "That’s a pure sale cost, so I should not be charged for that,

-        " I have already invested a lot into the preliminary analysis and defining the POC, we should share the burden with the vendors,

-         "Should the product be easy to be customised and fit well with my requirements, the POC should not be costly and is a fine opportunity to the vendor to demonstrate its product’s flexibility, so I will not pay for that,

-         "Some vendors are ready to do it for free, so why pay for the POC?

And all these reasons make sense.

But usually I just disagree and as VP Sales of my vendor, I am very often if not always declining the offer of making a POC for free.

First of all, from the vendor point of view, one should remember that a vendor can’t get rich with POC, so POC paid will only cover some expenses and nothing more than that.

Jon Marks also quoted (read his comment) that “When vendors do these demos as part of "Business Development" and aren't getting any $$$ for their troubles, I've noticed they often don't put together very good ones. The good people are often busy on Billable work. And the vendors that are going through a good patch might not bother to respond to the RFP if the cost of sale is high.”

Believe me, Jon is damn right!

Now let me give my personal position:

Sadly in this world, nothing is really free. So if you get a free demo, do you really think the vendor is paying for it? NO. It is not the vendor who is paying for the free POC, it is its clients already using its products. That’s very basic. What is coming out must come from somewhere and the source of revenue of a vendor is … its clients.

You can turn it in every way, at the end of the day, the already-in-production-client is paying for the free demos.

Frankly I don’t see why… Can the vendor do an effort and take the POC for him? Sure, it will be charged by an extra cost somewhere to those already “feeding” him: its clients. So the vendor will increase something somewhere, or will not start some other investments interesting for its clients, that’s a physic law or a finance law if you prefer.

Recently, we had a very similar experience where a major European administration contacted several vendors (10 actually) and sent a very detailed scenario for a quite complex CMS project (major site factory), which was very relevant and professional btw. The client invited us and we declined to prepare a taylor-made demo but we promised to make a generic demo starting from scratch (product as it is after the download from our website) following as close as possible the scenario. The prospect was fine with this approach. It went well because the scenario was well aligned with our product capability. Should the product be not well aligned, it would have been very obvious during the not-prepared demo. It would also have been quite stupid to send for a round trip day 2 senior sales people in Europe to visit a prospect with so few chances to win but that another story about “efficiency of sales team” and is off subject of this post.

Of course for very complex scenarios, this approach may not fit so well. But for very complex scenarios, why the existing clients should pay for the next clients likely to use the product through very expensive projects? Please let me know. And I will not believe a client cannot find additional budget for this (Does not want, yes, I understand why again, but can’t find, no sorry I don’t believe that).

So this looks to me a good compromise when a client demands a POC but don’t want to pay for it: if you, as a vendor, is really confident on your product’s alignment with client’s detailed scenario, propose a generic demo aligned as much as possible with the scenario and prove how well you can answer the clients’ requirements and explain you don’t want to charge your existing clients what the potential future ones are asking for. And of course, get the approval of the prospect about this approach.

Usually, the prospect would choose a couple – if not only one vendor – and will pay for a POC with the finalist(s), just to check as much as possible if the project can really be done by the chosen product.

Of course you will not please every prospect, and as a matter of fact no vendor can win any project. You can't be liked by everybody as a sale person, and as a vendor your product cannot be the right one for every project.

And if my sales pipe is not big enough, I will do my best to find more leads, this is a big market, still highly fragmented but I don't see where I would accept to work for "free" and deny the commercial policy my other clients have chosen.

A vendor should be proud of its commercial policy and remember that the best way to win a project is not to do what a client demands, but to focus at those your product has been designed for and to take care of the people ready to understand and approve its commercial policy.