1. POC/POV test plans preparation and execution

“The POC/POV process is always a mess. Every SE keeps their POC/POV test plans on their laptops, there is no central repository of such documents, and even if there is, e.g. google docs or sharepoint, the documents are not easy to browse through and they get outdated quickly as the product evolves. Then everyone starts re-inventing the POC/POV test plan on their own, wasting a lot of time on the work that someone else has done too. And this is all insane as POC/POV is the final stage before going into procurement, and most of the deals depend on it being executed flawlessly.”

- Industry veteran SE Manager with 20+ experience in the field

2. POC/POV qualification and progress tracking

“We have executed way too many useless POC/POVs, with no proper qualification. The POC-to-close conversion rate should be 70% or more, that’s the industry standard. In my last organization it was much, much lower. As a Sales Lead, I do not want to handhold the SEs in their POC/POVs. But I would appreciate visibility into what is planned and ensure proper qualification of these deals before committing to a POC/POV. POC/POV is the most resource-consuming part of the sales process and I can not have the SEs wasting time on POC/POVs with no clear path to close.”

- Sales Leader and CRO with 15+ years of experience in the field and great track record

3. RFQ/RFI/RFx document input

“Every now and again a prospect of mine asks me for help in preparing an RFx document. I want to help but usually I am too busy to dedicate enough time to work on it properly. And after I have worked a few nights and weekends and created such a document, I realize that my colleague had already done something similar but have not shared it with the wider team. I could have saved myself plenty of time if we had a central repository of such documents with easy ways to create an RFx document based on the available templates.”

- Senior SE, 10 years in the field

4. Feature Requests prioritization

“We are tracking feature requests in a spreadsheet and in another system. I add my customer’s request in both places and wait. Sometimes it feels like the request goes into a black hole and I do not ever hear back. I admit, sometimes my customer realizes they do not need a feature after all and I forget to take it off the list. In general, there is plenty of things wrong with the process and I never know how these requests are faring compared to other requests from the field, and when each will be implemented, if ever.”

- SE, 5+ years in the industry

5. Internal knowledge sharing

“Our product is quite complex. There are many features and each of them can use a number of settings. At some point, it becomes difficult to keep track of all these configuration combinations, limitations, gotchas... Many of them are tribal knowledge but coming in new into the company can be challenging, learning all of these little details from scrach. We have tried building an internal database of such nuggets a few times, and we failed each time. Mostly due to the lack of proper indexing of the entries in this collection.”

- Junior SE, 2+ years in the industry