You know that sinking feeling when a “promising” proof of concept drags on for months, burns through your engineering resources, and ends with “we need more time to evaluate”?
Yeah. That’s the PoC death spiral.
And I’m seeing so many agentic companies falling into this trap as we help them monetize their agents at Paid.
Yes, that means most AI agent companies are doing pilots completely wrong. They’re treating them like tech demos when they should be treating them like business case laboratories.
Here’s what’s actually happening in your “successful” pilots:
You get tire-kickers
Free pilots are curiosity magnets.
Every company has an AI mandate now – and they come down from the board. Some VP gets told “go figure out this AI thing” and suddenly you’re their science experiment.
They’ll say yes to your pilot (you should read about The Mom Test if you got a yes). You’ll get some junior engineer to “monitor progress”.
They’ll sit through your weekly check-ins. And after 90 days of burning your best engineers, they’ll tell you they need to “evaluate a few more options”.
You just spent three months being their unpaid consultant. We call these “Jokers” at Paid.
These people aren’t buying anything. They’re just satisfying their curiosity (or their board’s) about whether AI “actually works”.
Time to reframe
You shouldn’t call it a “proof of concept”.
Start calling it what it actually is: a business case development project. Co-own the results!
The goal should not be to prove your technology works. That’s table-stakes. The goal is to co-create an ROI model that justifies a commercial deal.
Here’s a script to try:
This is a 30-day pilot for co-creating an ROI model and building a business case with your team. When we demonstrate clear value based on the business case, we move to commercial discussions.
Notice what you didn’t do? You didn’t talk about features. You didn’t promise technical milestones. You positioned this as a joint business exercise where both sides win only if there’s measurable value.
And charge for it
Charging for pilots isn’t about making money upfront. It’s about improving the Signal-to-Noise ratio.
Sure, a $10K pilot fee eliminates 90% of the people who just want to “see how this AI stuff works”. It’ll hurt to say “no” to people. BUT the remaining 10% have budget allocated and decision-making authority.
👉 Make it clear that this pricing his not your commercial pricing 👈
The $10K covers building a business case together. Commercial discussions will be separate and based on the value we demonstrate.
If they push for commercial pricing anyway, give them context, not numbers:
For customers like yours, we typically unlock $5-10M in value annually.
You just said you cost $500K-$1M without saying it. And you anchored it to value, not cost.
How this looks in practice
- Week 1: Define success metrics that matter to their business (not your technology)
- Week 2-3: Deploy and measure real business impact
- Week 4: Present the model you’ve built together
Don’t frame it as “our agent processed 10,000 requests”. Frame it as “our agent saved your team 40 hours per week, which translates to $180K annually in labor costs”.
👉 Tap into the labor budget, not the IT budget 👈
When they’ve agreed to the inputs (time saved, error reduction, throughput increase), they can’t argue with the output (business value).
tl;dr:
Your AI agents deliver real business value. Price them like it from day one.
The moment you position a pilot as a technical proof-of-concept, you’ve already lost. You’re now competing on features instead of outcomes.
Position it as business case development, charge enough to filter out the curious, and co-create the ROI model that closes the deal.
Because here’s the thing: if they won’t pay $10K to prove $1M in value, they were never going to buy anyway.
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