Illustrative Decision Pack excerpt
Executive Decision Brief
Decision signal. Across three fictional POCs, the strongest supported common mechanism is not product-performance failure. The record instead shows a recurring break between technical validation and commercial commitment. The next cohort should test whether pre-agreed buyer authority, decision criteria and procurement readiness reduce that transition failure.
Confidence boundary. Seller-side records do not establish buyer intent. Budget displacement and internal prioritization remain UNKNOWN unless buyer-side evidence exists.
POC Decision Reconstruction
POC A
SUPPORTED: technical criteria met; security review completed.
SUPPORTED: no confirmed economic buyer participated before technical completion.
COUNTEREVIDENCE: no pricing objection appears in the provided trail.
UNKNOWN: whether budget was formally allocated.
POC B
SUPPORTED: validation completed on schedule.
SUPPORTED: procurement requirements surfaced only after the POC ended.
COUNTEREVIDENCE: no unresolved technical blocker appears in the evidence pack.
UNKNOWN: whether the champion could drive procurement.
POC C
SUPPORTED: user acceptance and integration passed.
SUPPORTED: success criteria contained no commercial decision rule or committed next step.
UNKNOWN: whether another internal initiative displaced budget.
Failure Mechanism Map
Mechanism 1 — product capability failure: weakened by counterevidence; 3/3 POCs passed technical criteria.
Mechanism 2 — transition/design failure: supported across the cohort; commercial decision architecture was absent or surfaced late.
Mechanism 3 — price/budget: insufficient evidence; remains partly UNKNOWN.
Cross-POC Pattern Matrix
3/3: explicit technical success criteria.
0/3: evidence of a pre-agreed commercial decision rule tied to successful completion.
2/3: procurement or buyer-authority gaps discovered after technical validation.
Confidence boundary: this is case recurrence inside a three-POC illustrative cohort, not a prevalence estimate for the buyer's pipeline or market. Each POC counts once; repeated notes inside one POC do not create additional independent evidence. Generalization requires additional comparable evidence.
Economics & capacity
The fictional record supports counting three technically successful POCs that consumed presales capacity without paid rollout. It does not provide defensible labor cost, opportunity cost or revenue-at-risk inputs, so no monetary ROI estimate is fabricated.
Next-Cohort Experiment Cards
- Buyer authority gate. Before POC start, name the economic buyer or documented delegate. Illustrative preregistered success threshold: ≥80% of next-cohort POCs have verified decision authority before technical work begins.
- Commercial decision rule. Add a written post-success decision criterion and next-step owner. Success: every technically successful POC reaches an explicit commercial decision within the agreed decision window.
- Procurement readiness. Surface procurement/security path before technical completion. Failure criterion: a late requirement still becomes the first material blocker after technical success.
Thresholds shown here are fictional examples. In a real engagement, success/failure criteria are agreed from the buyer's context and evidence before interpreting outcomes; DealCause does not import arbitrary benchmark thresholds as facts.
Activation sheet
Owner: Revenue/Presales leadership.
Minimum reversible action: update the next-cohort POC template; do not redesign the whole sales process.
Evidence to collect: buyer authority, budget state, decision rule, procurement readiness, technical result, commercial decision date.
Review point: after the next 3–5 completed POCs, compare the mechanism against the new evidence and keep, revise or reject it.