Presales Best Practices: Shareable Evaluation Plans
Picture this common presales scene:
You just kicked off a POC with a major new prospect, Big Deal Inc.
You spent the last week setting up their POC environment, and you finally gave them access.
On the next sales pipeline call your CRO unexpectedly calls on you as the sales engineer assigned to Big Deal Inc. and asks “How is the POC going with Big Deal Inc.? Where are we?”
All eyes look to you, but you don’t have an answer because you don’t have visibility into what Big Deal Inc. has done so far.
Are they stalling out? Are you headed to a technical win?
Awkward...
Hoping that your prospect is making progress on their POC is not a smart presales strategy, and certainly it is not how you win deals.
Now, picture this alternative and far better presales scene:
You have Homerun and all of its embedded presales best practices.
You just kicked off a POC with a major new prospect, Big Deal Inc.
You spent the last week setting up their POC environment, and you finally gave them access.
On the next sales pipeline call... Let’s first back up a few days…
In prep for kicking off the POC with Big Deal Inc., last Thursday you went to the Evaluation Homepage for Big Deal Inc. in Homerun, and you created the perfect Evaluation Plan for their POC.
With a couple of clicks you added all of the relevant test scenarios from your Homerun Template Library based on the products and modules that they are evaluating.
Being the smart sales engineer that you are, you know that every company is a little different.
And so following your sales engineering best practices, you tailored a few of the test scenarios based on Big Deal Inc.’s exact technical requirements and pain points, and you even threw in a few additional use cases that you knew would showcases your competitive advantages against Key Competitor X (with whom you knew you were competing because of Homerun’s Competitors Attribute).
You attached three documents to the Evaluation Plan that the Big Deal Inc. team asked for, including a 'quick start' guide and some technical specifications.
Using Homerun’s Shareable Evaluation Plan feature, you marked the relevant test scenarios to be shared and added the Big Deal Inc. team members that are participating in the proof of concept.
They immediately received emailed access to the shared POC Evaluation Plan.
Now let’s fast forward back to your kick-off… You just kicked off a POC with a major new prospect, Big Deal Inc.. You spent the last week setting up their POC environment, and you finally gave them access. And now… you know exactly what is going on.
In fact, that same day you checked the Evaluation Plan Status in Homerun and saw that the Big Deal Inc. team already made progress and completed the first few test scenarios.
The next day you were alerted that the Big Deal Inc. team was blocked. You investigated and saw that you just needed to give some quick guidance. You hopped on a remote screen share meeting and walked them through the steps they needed to get unstuck.
A few minutes later you saw the status of the blocked test scenario change from Blocked to Complete. Success! They were back on track.
In your weekly pipeline meeting today your CRO unexpectedly asks “How is the POC going with Big Deal Inc.? Where are we?” All eyes look to you…
You already have Homerun open, so you pull up the Big Deal Inc. Evaluation Homepage and tell her that as of right now Big Deal Inc. is 73% of the way through their POC Evaluation Plan, that they got blocked yesterday but you worked through it and they are back on track, that the POC is expected to complete in 10 days, and it looks like you are headed to a technical win.
If this were a movie, your CRO would give you a special nod of approval, your manager would smile proudly knowing that he trained you well, and a fellow sales engineer would start a slow-clap that would build into a furious applause because you absolutely nailed your big moment.
This is not a movie though. You are a fast growing enterprise software company in a competitive market. You still get the nod of approval from your CRO because your POC is the reason you are about to close Big Deal Inc. and get her that much closer to her revenue target.
You still get the proud smile from your manager because you are following presales best practices and his investment in Homerun is paying off.
And, you still get the slow-clap from your peers, albeit silently in their minds, because you made everyone look good by showing the strategic value of the presales team.
Summary: Align, Engage, and Impress
Homerun’s Shareable Evaluation Plans are key to you getting technical wins more quickly, efficiently, and successfully.
1. Align with your prospect
Shareable Evaluation Plans define success for your POC and document the agreement between you and your prospect on what that looks like in the form of use cases and test scenarios. A well-designed Evaluation Plan bookends your POC and brings it to a logical conclusion as quickly as possible with demonstrated success. Congratulations, that is the very definition of the technical win!
2. Engage your prospect
Homerun’s Evaluation Plans promote engagement by your prospect, and an engaged prospect is more likely to buy. Remember that your prospect is already busy with their own day-to-day work and now they are squeezing in participation in a POC evaluation. You make their lives easier with Shareable Evaluation Plans. They know exactly what they need to test and the definitions of success. They can track their own progress so they always know where they left off and what they still need to do. You also can monitor their progress and intervene to re-engage them if their progress is stalling out or to quickly jump in and assist if they are blocked for any reason.
3. Impress your prospect
While other vendors are sending prospects confusing spreadsheets full of test cases, dense PDFs, or nothing at all, Homerun’s Shareable Evaluation Plans shows that you are professional, organized, and engaged in their success. Your prospect understands that their pre-sales experience is a predictor of their post-sales experience. Shareable Evaluation Plans impress them from the start, make you stand out against your competitors, and boost your chances of winning the deal.
Want to enhance your presales process, boost your team's performance, and win you more deals by sharing Evaluation Plans? Talk to one of our presales experts about about how Homerun can help. Click here to get started!
