The pilot is free. It runs on your best engineer for three weeks.

Unpaid proof-of-concept work is an acquisition cost that never reaches the acquisition budget, and the buyers who demand most of it often convert worst.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The pilot is free. It runs on your best engineer for three weeks.

Somewhere in most B2B service and software businesses there is a line of work nobody costs: the free pilot, the proof of concept, the paid-in-goodwill trial. It is booked as sales activity, so it never touches the delivery ledger. It consumes senior technical time, so it never appears in the cost of acquisition. And because it feels like an investment in a deal that is nearly closed, it is rarely questioned until the quarter ends and the deal has not closed. The interesting question is not whether free pilots are…

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