Technical Go-To-Market · Chapter 3 of 6
Proofs of concept that end
The POC that never concludes is the characteristic failure of this job. It is preventable in writing.
A proof of concept without written success criteria does not end — it gradually stops, having consumed weeks of your time and the customer's, and produced no decision.
The contract to agree before building anything
- What specifically will be proven. Two or three criteria, measurable, agreed by the person who can actually say yes.
- What data will be used, and who provides it by when. Data arriving late is the single largest cause of POC slippage.
- How long it runs, with an end date.
- What happens if it succeeds. If the answer is ‘we will discuss next steps’, you are running an unpaid pilot rather than a sales motion.
- Who does what. A POC where you do everything proves that you can operate the product, which is not the question.
Running it
Scope to the one workflow that matters and cut everything else by name. Use their real data and expect it to be worse than described — that is normal, and how you handle it is part of what is being evaluated. Show progress weekly rather than revealing at the end, because a surprise at the end is a risk to them and a POC with no visible progress gets quietly deprioritised.
The failure that is actually a success
Sometimes the POC demonstrates that the product is wrong for them. Saying so plainly, early, is the right call: it saves everyone weeks, and in my experience those customers come back for a different use case far more often than the ones who were pushed through a bad fit.
It is also the story most worth having in an interview, because almost nobody brings one.