When we were leading go to market, one lesson landed early and stuck. You do not win cybersecurity deals by making the buyer feel exposed.
Most proof of concepts fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the product. The buyer feels rushed. The scope is unclear. The internal risk is too high. Someone realises too late that if the test goes badly, it will reflect on them, not the vendor.
The 80% success POC framework was our response to that reality. It was not a sales trick. It was a trust sequence. The goal was simple. By the time a POC starts, the buyer should already be mostly convinced. The POC should confirm a decision, not force one.
Here is how the framework works and why it shifts outcomes.
A POC is not a demo.
A demo proves capability. A POC proves safety. Buyers are not asking does this work. They are asking will this fail on my watch.
Marketing plays a bigger role here than most teams realise. Long before engineers touch traffic, the buyer needs language, framing, and internal confidence. That is where the first eighty percent happens.
De risk the problem before you show the solution.
Before talking about features, we focused on naming the problem in a way the buyer could reuse internally. Not technical symptoms. Business exposure.
Instead of talking about detection rates or query analysis, we framed outcomes. What blind spot exists today. Why it survives audits. What kind of incident it leads to. Who gets blamed when it happens.
If the buyer cannot explain the problem to their manager in one calm paragraph, a POC will not save you.
This stage lives in content, workshops, short decks, and conversations. No product access yet. Just clarity.
Align on what success looks like before anything runs.
Most failed POCs fail because success was never defined. Or worse, it was defined by the vendor alone.
We insisted on a written success definition. Not metrics soup. A small number of observable outcomes. Fewer unanswered questions. A clearer view of traffic. Evidence that a risk category is real or not.
Crucially, success did not mean replacing anything yet. It meant learning without damage.
This removed pressure. Buyers relax when success is about insight, not commitment.
Design the POC as an observation, not a replacement.
The strongest POCs run alongside existing tools. No rip and replace. No critical path dependency.
This matters emotionally. If something breaks, nothing breaks.
From a marketing perspective, this positioning is key. The POC is not sold as a trial. It is sold as a window. We are not asking you to trust us. We are asking you to look.
Let real traffic speak quietly.
This is where the last twenty percent happens.
Once live traffic flows, the product does the talking. Not dashboards for the sake of it. Signals that map directly back to the original problem framing.
The buyer sees patterns they did not expect. Gaps they suspected but could not prove. Conversations change tone. Internal questions shift from should we do this to how do we operationalise this.
Notice what did not happen. No pressure. No sales theatrics. No forcing a moment.
The POC feels safe because it is.
Arm the buyer for the internal conversation.
A POC only succeeds if it travels. The buyer needs artefacts they can reuse. Screenshots. Simple summaries. Clear before and after language.
Marketing owns this part. Not sales. Not product.
We prepared short internal ready narratives. What we tested. What we learned. What changed. What did not. And what the next logical step is.
When a buyer sounds credible internally, deals move faster without pushing.
Why this works.
The framework respects human behaviour. People do not buy cybersecurity because they are excited. They buy because uncertainty becomes uncomfortable.
By front loading education, framing, and internal confidence, you remove the fear of being wrong. The POC becomes a formality, not a gamble.
80% of the decision is made before a packet is inspected. The last 20% simply confirms reality.
The quiet rule behind all of this.
A good POC does not make the buyer feel impressed. It makes them feel safe.
That is what turns testing into trust and trust into revenue.
Leave a Reply