The Cost of a Free PoV: What We Gave Away Without Realising

Remember teh time I was conned into a vortex of free labour disguised as a “quick proof of value”? Yeah, neither did I, until I was neck-deep in it. It hit me like a ton of bricks - not when the customer’s CTO pestered me at 11 PM for “just a tiny tweak,” nor during the soul-crushing eternity of “configuration workshops” I inexplicably found myself spearheading for the fourth week in a row.

No, the penny dropped when I caught myself drafting user documentation for a feature that wasn’t even part of the deal yet.

Rewind to three months earlier. The bigwigs at Cyberdyne Systems had lured us in with the promise of a simple PoV to showcase how our platform could untangle thier customer journey mapping woes. “Two weeks of setup, one week of testing, quick in-adn-out, and Bob’s your uncle,” they said. Or something to that effect.

“They’re practically in the bag,” our overly optimistic account manager chirped. “Just dazzle them a bit, and they’ll sign on the dotted line before you know it.”

Alarm bells should have rung when, during our kickoff call, Diane, their project maestro, innocently inquired whether we could “just quickly” whip up a custom integration with their antediluvian CRM.

“That’s a bit beyond the pale for a PoV,” I pointed out, my pen poised dramatically over my notebook which sported the words “SCOPE BOUNDARIES” underlined with the fury of a scorned lover. “Normally, that’s post-contract fun.”

“Oh, right,” Diane nodded, her face pixelating into ambiguity on my screen. “But how can we judge without the full picture? Just a bare-bones link-up would do.”

That familiar chest-tightening sensation - half panic, half resignation - began to set in. “Maybe a rudimentary connection, just to illustrate the point,” I conceded, already mourning my forthcoming evenings.

Her smile broadened alarmingly. “Splendid! And while you’re at it, could we peek at how it handles our customer segmentation rules? We’ve only got about forty-seven different criteria.”

Thus began my descent into the boiling pot.

The first week, I admit, was rather smashing. I set up their enviroment, connected dummy data, and even the basic CRM handshake worked without a hitch. I was practically smug when I dispatched that first update email.

However, by the second week, the goalposts started moving. Innocent queries like “How would X function?” subtly morphed into “Could you set X up for actual use?” Each request floated in gently, masquerading as trivial.

“Pop in our real customer journey stages, could you?” “How about importing our entire taxonomy?” “Might we see it handle our full rule set?”

Each time, I’d gently remind them, “We’re curating a demo, not your entire system.” Each nod in agreement was followed by another “tiny” request.

By week four, I wasn’t demonstrating; I was knee-deep in deployment. My calender had become a tyrannical ruler, dictating back-to-back “working sessions” where I morphed into their de facto implementation guru. My once pristine notebook was now a war zone of scribbles and desperate doodles.

The Jira board they’d “kindly” set up for our PoV was a garden of tasks - all blooming with my face on them. I was sinking in a sea of faux-evaluation tasks.

“It’s just one more workflow,” they’d chant. “We need to see it fully operational before deciding.”

One dreary evening, as I tweaked yet another custom field, a Slack ping broke the silence: “Top-notch progress! Quick one - could you whip up some basic user guides for the marketing gang? They’re eager to start training.”

That was it. The moment of epiphany. I wasn’t conducting a PoV; I was unwittingly delivering a gratis implementation.

I slammed the laptop shut and stared at the ceiling of my makeshift home office. How had I been duped into this? Each request, seemingly innocuous on its own, had collectively morphed a two-week demo into a two-month saga.

Caffeinated and irate, I called Diane and her entourage the next day.

“We need to reassess this PoV,” I started, my voice a thin veneer of calm. “We’ve strayed into creating a ready-to-launch system here.”

Diane nodded with rehearsed empathy. “You’ve been stellar. Just a couple more tweaks, and we’re golden.”

“Actually,” I interjected, the last of my patience fraying, “the PoV phase is over. We’ve shown your system can do what you need. Time to talk contracts for the full monty.”

That silence. Oh, that awkward, stretched-out silence.

“But we haven’t trialed with live users yet,” Diane finally countered.

“That’s for the implementation phase,” I shot back, sturdier than I felt. “We’ve proved the tech works. Extensively.”

After a fortnight of tense negotiations, Cyberdyne signed. Turns out, they’d always planned to buy; they just fancied squeezing out as much freebie work as they could first.

I chalked it up to a costly lesson in the fine line between demonstrating value and accidentally donating it. Now, my PoV templates are ironclad - capped hours, crystal clear boundaries, and a stern warning on page one of my notebook: “When they ask for manuals, it’s time they paid for the priviledge.”