UNCLASSIFIED. Open Brief. Surface Cut.
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Field Radar
Buyers Give You 17% Of Their Time
Turn each meeting into a proof planning session, not a polite demo.
🔒 Also Inside
→ Runbook Ready: Turn “Quick PoC” Into 10 Day PoV
→ Proof Kit: Standardise The 10 Day Proof Sprint
→ Trigger Metric: Track Average PoC Duration In CRM
→ Boss Mode: Cap Active PoCs Per SE At Three
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🔒 CLASSIFIED. Operator Brief. Deep Cut.
Field Radar
Buyers Give You 17% Of Their Time
B2B buyers now spend only about 17 percent of their buying time with vendors, across all suppliers, which means each sales engineer (SE) touch has to move a job on the buying side, not just share a deck.
For monthly planning, assume many prospects will try to compress technical discovery into one or two long sessions, then retreat into internal work. Your risk is quiet stalls while procurement, security, and finance discuss you without you. Treat every first meeting this month as a joint planning call: agree the buying jobs you will support, the proof format, and a timeboxed decision date before anyone writes a test plan.
🔗 Closer to Coach: Leading with Product Experience in the Anti-Social Era →
MEDDPICC → Decision Process | Stage → 1. Discovery & Qualification
Runbook Ready
Turn “Quick PoC” Into 10 Day PoV
When a prospect asks for “a quick proof of concept (PoC)”, your job this month is to turn that into a proof of value (PoV): a short test that proves 2 or 3 outcomes tied to money, risk, or time. Supademo describes this pattern as a way to cut scope while still giving buyers hands-on time.
Talk track for SEs and account executives (AEs):
Confirm the decision: “What will this PoV let you say yes to?”
Fix time: aim for 10 working days, with a single business owner.
Fix scope: pick three test cases only, mapped to one metric the economic buyer cares about.
Exit: no build starts until the customer shares their acceptance checklist.
🔗 Proof of Concept (PoC) vs. Proof of Value (PoV) - What's the Difference →
MEDDPICC → Decision Criteria | Stage → 2. Solution Mapping & Validation
Proof Kit
Standardise The 10 Day Proof Sprint
Many teams still run open PoCs that last 30 to 60 days and drain half a quarter of sales engineering capacity. Pepsales sets out a PoC structure that begins with a written objective, risks, and measurable success criteria before access is granted.
For Issue 15, standardise a “10 day proof sprint”:
Day 0: agree test data, success metrics, and decision meeting on the calendar.
Days 1 to 7: customer runs agreed scenarios in a shared runbook.
Days 8 to 9: joint review of results and open risks.
Day 10: go or no-go call with the economic buyer.
Example Technical Win signal → “95 percent of priority workflows complete in under 200 ms with no data policy breaches, witnessed by product owner and security lead.”
🔗 Step-by-Step Guide to Build a Winning Sales POC →
MEDDPICC → Metrics | Stage → 5. Technical Win Secured
Trigger Metric
Track Average PoC Duration In CRM
Track “average PoC duration” in your customer relationship management (CRM) system as the number of days between PoC start and PoC end. Execviva frames this as a core pre sales key performance indicator (KPI) for presales leaders.
Monthly trigger: if the rolling 90 day average PoC duration is above 25 days for an account, treat the deal as at risk of losing urgency. Pull the SE, AE, and customer sponsor into a reset call to either tighten scope to a PoV or end the proof cleanly.
🔗 Pre-Sales KPIs: The Executive Guide to Driving Revenue and Team Performance →
MEDDPICC → Paper Process | Stage → 3. Demo | PoC | Technical Evaluation
Boss Mode
Cap Active PoCs Per SE At Three
Gong’s State of Sales Productivity 2024 report finds that sellers spend only about 44 percent of their week on customer related work, with the rest lost to internal tasks.
🔗 Gong’s State of Sales Productivity 2024 →
Consensus’ 2023 sales engineering compensation and workload report shows presales teams absorbing even more internal load, often stretched across too many live proofs.
🔗 Consensus’s 2023 Sales Engineering Compensation & Workload Trends →
Your 90 day experiment:
Cap “active PoCs per SE” at three.
Any fourth proof needs written approval from the head of sales engineering and a recorded decision plan.
Inspect every PoC in forecast reviews: do we have written success criteria, a booked decision meeting, and a named economic buyer?
MEDDPICC → Economic Buyer | Stage → 4. Objection Handling & Technical Championing
Big Three Takeaways
Turn “quick PoC” into “10 day PoV”. Every proof of concept (PoC) becomes a 10 working day proof of value (PoV) with three test cases, one business owner, and an agreed acceptance checklist.
Standard proof sprint, standard Technical Win. Run a 10 day proof sprint with written success metrics, a booked decision meeting, and a Technical Win signal that both the product owner and security lead accept.
Guard sales engineer capacity and call risk early. Cap each sales engineer (SE) at three active proofs, and treat any average PoC duration over 25 days as a deal risk that needs a reset.
Glossary
Sales Engineering Stages: 1—Discovery & Qualification, 2—Solution Mapping & Validation, 3—Demo | PoC | Technical Evaluation, 4—Objection Handling & Technical Championing, 5—Technical Win Secured, 6—Handoff to Post-Sales / Delivery.
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