Throughout the Perfect POC you’ve done your discovery, established a communication plan, kicked off and configured properly. The wrap-up prep and actual wrap-up have gone as planned. All your drips in between have been hyper personalized and specific to their decision criteria, which you’ve been able to influence. Now is your time to close the deal.
We’ve previously posted a POC timeline to establish next steps and ensure you and your champion are on the same page, which we’ll link here for you. As you’re showing that document to the prospect you would be able to organically ask questions about their procurement process and their buying timeline. Bring this document back up over and over again to ensure alignment.
Reconfirming the PO Process
During this stage you’ll need to reconfirm the process to produce a PO. Ask additional questions about legal, who is the specific signer, what is their calendar and process like, has your champion done this before, if not who would walk them through the process?
Identify who needs to be involved in the process to get you a PO. At this point you have your champion squarely in your corner and you’ve achieved executive alignment. Now it’s time to find all the other individuals that are involved such as legal, a senior procurement officer, a back end secretary that filters email to the signer…. If you are selling information technology, according to Gartner, 2 out of 3 people involved in the selecting and signing process of a PO are not in the information technology space. That alone tells you there are more people involved and it is not a simple flip of a switch.
Map out the timeline and how/why they should sign early
While the POC timeline is a great document to achieve alignment on steps and their overall timeline, being granular here on the final step allows you to create a reverse time of steps left in the process from where you are to where you need to be. Think of yourself as a project manager here. The sales side is done now you just need to manage the procurement process.
With your champion and their executives, gain mutual agreement on a close date which I recommend placing invites on everyone’s calendar during these steps. If you are attempting to close the deal before the end of Q4, don’t send out invites for December 24th. Push for early December so that if things go awry you can have a few extra days to recover.
TLDR:
If all the steps within the Perfect POC are followed, your win rate will go through the roof. Reconfirm processes, reverse timeline it, and be the project manager till you close.
