>
Some things do apply. I am not an ML expert myself, but just today i helped during the initial requirements call for a ML opportunity.Nice. It is important not to promise what your ML experts said they can't deliver.
We have conversations with everyone about a prospect/deal. Everyone chimes in with talking points, potential problems, conditions of success [i.e: we'll need to have Y data, and we need to have their sales and data warehouse teams on board for this to work], ethical considerations, engineering constraints.
We fine tune this so that we know how to help the client succeed in that project. We do this so that the client organization knows who to include in the project.
>Question about 2.7.0: Currently we have an offer for a ML PoC for a very cheap price. Do you do initial work completely free of charge?
If you consider it's very cheap, you might want to make the client see how much value they're going to get from the completion of the project and price it accordingly. It helps to be aware of the client's context, their competitor, where they are struggling, knowing the sector and key metrics. You're not selling "ML". Your helping them solve a problem, and it helps framing that in terms proper to their sector.
For example, if you're doing a PoC for customer churn for a bank, you want to do your homework about that bank, read their financial documents and get information about number of clients and the problems they're voicing (what's growing, what's shrinking, why, competition). You also want to learn how much does a churner cost.
Framing things in terms of dollars and market share instead of of recall and accuracy helps.
We offer different modalities for value to be exchanged. We have the advantage of being very flexible and able to make offers on the spot; we therefore can offer multiple ways for the client to get value of this by adapting to how their own organization works.
This is why it's important to ask questions and listen/read what they're saying to discover the reasons of an apprehension/hesitation. Sometimes it's just that it's the end of a fiscal year and they really want to do this but they can't budget for this right now. How do you then construct a deal to make the project possible?
Sometimes it's an organization bound to do public tenders because of public procurement regulations. How do you construct a deal to make it possible for them to hire your services.
You want to avoid free of charge? Get them to agree that if the PoC meets certain criteria, they'll green light the project and pay you for what the PoC would have cost. You may offer a conditional discount tied to their subscribing to a maintenance offer later.
Ultimately, the way you structure things is up to you but you may be surprised to know that organizations are more than willing to pay you, and more than you think, if you structure things in a certain way, and make it easier for them to pay you in exchange of real value.