Sales Pilot Template Walkthrough
Who this template is for
Account executives, sales managers, sales teams, and technical sales experts looking for a collaborative platform to simplify and streamline the sales pilot process.
What this template is for
Creating a centralized hub for sharing all project information while keeping the project on track. Team members on both sides of the transaction can access project timelines, success criteria, or support documentation all in one place.
How to use the template
Dock’s sales pilot template helps you direct your pilot project from start to finish. The first section gives you space to outline the primary goals of the project and introduce key team members before diving into the definitions of key milestones and a mutual action plan, which can be updated in real-time. You can then clearly lay out the agreed-upon success criteria and showcase the ways your product meets (or exceeds) those criteria.
What’s in this template?
Overview
Use this section to provide a high-level overview of the goals you are looking to achieve over the course of the sales pilot. There’s also space to include some information about your approach to sales and how the pilot project will be facilitated.
Team and Roles
List key stakeholders on both sides of the transaction, along with their titles. This is a useful reference throughout the project lifecycle, so no one will be left wondering who the best point of contact is for different types of questions.
Project Milestones
Provide your client with a full project roadmap right from the beginning, so they’ll never be left guessing. In this space, you can plot each part of the pilot project life cycle along with a brief summary for each milestone that can be easily referenced at any time.
Mutual Action Plan
Ensure both sides of the transaction know exactly what to do. The mutual action plan section presents a list of tasks that can be assigned to individuals on either side of the transaction and includes the option to include due dates, real-time statuses, and notes.
Success Criteria
In this section, list the specific metrics you and the client have agreed upon to indicate a positive sales pilot. It’s important that this list of metrics be created in consultation with the client and be as specific and unique to each client as possible.
Solution Overview
This section is ideal for showcasing your product and highlighting the most beneficial use cases for your client’s unique needs. With Dock, you can use a whole range of embedded media to present your product or service in vivid detail—including pdfs, demo videos, and more.
Why use this sales pilot template?
Purchasing B2B software can be an extremely complex undertaking, especially in more highly technical industries. The process of properly test-driving a new product or service can take a considerable amount of time, not to mention technical expertise.
Companies that offer these kinds of services will often employ a sales pilot as a method of fully demonstrating the true value of their service to potential customers. Essentially, it's an in-depth and thorough trial of a solution, fully implemented into a test environment or a small, controlled area of a business’s operation.
A sales pilot requires a good deal of commitment and collaboration between the vendor and the potential client. This translates to a need for plenty of back-and-forth communication, sharing of technical documentation, and links to numerous different platforms.
It can quickly get hard to manage.
Dock takes all these materials from all these different platforms and makes them accessible from a single, collaborative workspace. Team members from both sides of the transaction can easily synchronize their efforts as they work together toward shared success.
Use this sales pilot template to present the high-level goals of the project, lay out project milestones, and decide on the key metrics of success. The mutual action plan can be updated by both you and your clients in real time—keeping every project on track and on schedule.
Here’s what else the sales pilot template can do for you.
Make it easy to understand an idea’s value-add
- Develop a tried and tested sales pilot workflow that will work best for your business.
- Align your success criteria with business needs.
- Store all data related to different prospects so they are easily accessible in one place.
- Increase your POC win rate through template iteration.
- Provide your potential clients with a welcome sense of transparency, so they never feel like they are left in the dark.
Focus on customer success
- Make the sales pilot a key tool of your sales strategy.
- Help collect data to better understand your target audience.
- Understand what constitutes the minimum viable product (MVP) for your customer base.
- Save time by streamlining your workflow, so more time can be spent on each customer.
Streamline your sales pilot development process
- Keep everyone involved on track, on budget, and on time.
- Create a clear, step-by-step methodology to establish a successful sales proof of concept.
- Reuse and refine the template to save time on future sales pilot setups, and create versions for specific types of clients.
- Keep on top of potential customer concerns before they can escalate.
How Dock’s customers use this template
A successful sales pilot requires significant collaboration between companies in order to see real, tangible results. Dock allows you to streamline the implementation process and gives you the tools you need to guide the pilot project through to completion as effortlessly and painlessly as possible.
- Outline the sales pilot process: Ensure everyone is on the same page throughout the entire sales pilot by providing full project scope, approved timelines, and stakeholder contact information all in one place.
- Compile all documentation in one central location: Your Dock workspace is your central hub for everything related to the project: meeting recordings, documentation, and more.
- Keep key stakeholders engaged: Maintain momentum and full transparency as you move through project milestones, complete implementation, and get final approval.
- Refine your sales process for the future: Collect feedback from clients and use Dock’s built-in analytics data to further refine and improve your process for new sales.
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