How to close deals faster with hands-on, developer-first demos and POCs

Welcome back to HOT START 🔥, Instruqt’s under-30-minute webcast series for software go-to-market teams who need to drive adoption and prove impact.

Episode 2, “From demo to yes!”, focused on sales engineering and pre-sales teams. Sean Lauer, VP of Marketing and Product at Instruqt, and Josh Clough, VP of Solutions Engineering and Customer Success at Instruqt walked through how to redesign demos and proof of concept (POCs) around hands-on, developer-first experiences, and why that shift can dramatically shorten your sales cycle.

Quick summary 

If you only have 30 seconds, here is what this HOT START session covered:

• Traditional demos and POCs are slow, fragile, and produce weak intent signals.
• Developers want to get hands-on immediately, yet only about a third of companies offer interactive labs today.
• Instruqt turns demos and POCs into reusable, cloud-based sandboxes that start instantly, stay consistent, and generate rich usage signals (Engage, Signal, Convert).
• Customers like Elastic and Solo.io already use hands-on programs at scale to remove friction, engage hundreds of engineers, and turn interest into pipeline.

A fast intro to HOT START

HOT START webcasts are designed to be quick hitters: one focused topic, under 30 minutes, with a live product demo and practical next steps.

In this episode, Sean and Josh focused on a familiar question for sales engineers:

How do we get prospects to real product value as quickly as possible, without months of setup, custom environments, and endless POC creep?

Their answer is to make demos and POCs developer-first and hands-on by default using repeatable virtual IT labs instead of one-off environments.

Why traditional demos and POCs slow down your sales cycle

Most pre-sales teams recognize this pattern:

• Clunky environments. Demo and POC environments are fragile, inconsistent, and time-consuming to build. They often depend on heroic one-off efforts from SEs.
• Long waits before anyone touches the product. Prospects sit in meetings, watch slideware, or wait weeks for a custom POC before they ever log in.
• Low-intent signals. Teams still rely on clicks, form fills, and anecdotal feedback instead of usage signals that show who is actually evaluating seriously.

The result:

• POCs drag on for weeks or months.
• SEs spend too much time building and fixing environments.
• It is hard to tell whether a prospect is ready to buy or just browsing.

Pre-sales teams need faster paths to hands-on access and better signals than video views and slide decks can provide.

What changes when developers can launch a sandbox in seconds

In our State of Developer Adoption research, hands-on, real-world environments ranked as one of the most effective ways to drive awareness, evaluation, and adoption, ahead of documentation and traditional certification programs.

The surprising part is that only about one third of companies surveyed offer interactive labs today.

For pre-sales teams, that gap is a big opportunity:

• Developers can start evaluating your product immediately inside a safe, guided sandbox environment.
• You can treat users who complete labs as qualified evaluators, not just top-of-funnel leads.
• The first live call can focus on scoping proof and narrowing decision criteria instead of explaining basics.

That is where Instruqt-qualified leads (IQLs) come in. These are prospects who have already engaged with a real product experience and generated usage data you can act on.

From MQLs to IQLs: Usage signals that show who is ready to buy

Sean and Josh broke IQLs into three signal buckets that map neatly to the pre-sales motion: Engage, Signal, and Convert.

Engage: Are they actually exploring your product?

Look for:

• Time in lab
• Repeat visits
• Challenges completed and scenarios progressed
  Core feature usage

These metrics help SEs decide who deserves a deeper demo or POC and who might just need more self-serve learning.

Signal: Where are they leaning in or getting stuck?

Look for:

• Forms submitted and feedback given
• Steps where users ask for help or stall

This helps you unblock friction points, understand their decision-making process, and prioritize follow-up.

Convert: Are they moving toward adoption?

Look for:

• Inviting teammates and sharing results
• Visiting pricing pages or advanced content
• Activating trials or next-step environments
  

These actions tell you who is evaluating seriously and is close to a decision, which is the perfect place for SEs and AEs to focus time.

How Instruqt makes POCs shorter and easier for pre-sales teams

Instruqt is a SOC 2 Type 2 compliant platform that helps marketing, sales, and education teams drive product adoption through hands-on developer experiences.

Sean highlighted four ways Instruqt changes the POC and proof of value (POV) motion:

1. Instant start so prospects are hands-on on day one. Prospects click Start and land in a fully configured sandbox. There are no installs, VPNs, or special access required. Every environment is ephemeral and consistent, whether you spin up ten or hundreds of sandboxes.
2. Standardized, repeatable POV kits. SE leaders can design repeatable tracks that showcase core workflows, then reuse them across accounts. Instead of building one-off environments, reps pull from a shared library that is always up to date.
3. Pre-warmed sandboxes (Hot Start). Hot Start environments boot with data, configuration, and scenarios already in place. Prospects skip the setup phase and jump straight into solving real problems.
4. Engagement signals that drive next steps. Instruqt captures who started or completed a lab, where they spent time, and how they scored. Those signals can sync to systems like Salesforce so AEs have rich context for every follow-up and can tailor conversations accordingly.

Under the hood, anything that can run on major clouds such as AWS, Azure, or GCP can generally run inside an Instruqt sandbox. This gives teams enough flexibility for complex web apps and integrations while keeping the experience consistent and safe for prospects.

Customer proof: Elastic and Solo.io turn hands-on experiences into revenue

Sean and Josh also spotlighted customers who already use hands-on demos at scale.

Elastic: Consistent experiences for 330+ sales engineers

Elastic uses Instruqt to equip more than 330 sales engineers with consistent, production-like labs for demos and workshops.

Instead of letting customers wait for custom setups, Elastic can get prospects hands-on in minutes, which removes friction and helps them experience Elastic’s value much faster.

Read the customer story → 

Solo.io: 500+ self-serve labs in a single day

At KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, Solo.io used Instruqt to power a hands-on booth experience:

• A lab station where engineers could launch labs on their own, without waiting for a live demo
• Nearly 500 engineers completed labs in about five minutes each

By letting visitors experiment with features like mTLS and API routing in real time, Solo.io turned event traffic into engaged evaluators and captured meaningful feedback it could use to inform the roadmap.

Read the customer story → 

What we showed in the live demo

During the live HOT START demo, Josh walked through what it looks like to run a pre-sales motion on Instruqt:

1. Scaled learning programs from companies like MongoDB and Datadog. Hundreds of labs, multilingual content, and embedded labs inside LMS platforms and documentation, all powered by Instruqt.
2. Embedded labs in websites and docs. Examples from Elastic and HashiCorp showed how prospects can launch playgrounds or Terraform sandboxes directly from a page instead of just reading about features.
3. A full sandbox experience. A live environment with a terminal, code editor, web UI, and feedback panel, all spinning up instantly and ready to use at scale, whether for a small customer cohort or a large event.

For pre-sales teams, the takeaway is clear. You do not have to choose between a polished demo and a real environment. With Instruqt, you can give every prospect a production-like experience that is guided, repeatable, and measurable.

A simple playbook to make your demos developer-first

If you want to pilot a hands-on, developer-first demo motion this quarter, start small and focused:

1. Pick one high-impact POC scenario. Choose a “hello world” or POV-style workflow where success is visible in minutes, not weeks.
2. Design a repeatable POV kit in Instruqt. Capture the key steps, preconfigure data, and write lightweight guidance so prospects can self-serve while SEs stay available for deeper questions.
3. Launch a Hot Start sandbox. Pre-warm the environment so prospects can click Start and jump into the action instead of watching you configure infrastructure.
4. Instrument Engage, Signal, and Convert events. Decide which actions (time in lab, challenges completed, forms submitted, pricing page visits) matter most for your qualification model, and track them consistently.
5. Sync usage to your CRM and coach the handoff. Feed lab activity into your CRM so AEs can open with context-rich follow-ups such as: “I saw you completed the advanced policy lab and invited two teammates. Want to walk through the next scenario together?”
6. Iterate based on the data. Use drop-off points, time-on-task, and feedback to improve both your lab content and your sales narrative.

Key takeaways for sales engineers and pre-sales leaders

1. Speed to value is a competitive edge. Getting prospects hands-on on day one reduces stalled POCs and creates more productive conversations.
2. Usage beats vanity metrics. IQL-style usage signals give you a clearer view of who to prioritize and how to unblock deals.
3. Repeatable labs reduce SE burnout. Standardized POV kits free your team from rebuilding environments and let them focus on strategy and discovery.
4. Hands-on programs drive business outcomes. Across customers, Instruqt helps accelerate sales cycles, increase demand, and reach ROI in a short time frame.

FAQs about hands-on demos, POCs, and Instruqt

What is a developer-first demo?

A developer-first demo is built around giving technical buyers a real environment to explore, not just a presentation. Instead of watching slides, developers jump into a sandbox that mirrors production workflows and can experiment at their own pace.

How do hands-on labs shorten sales cycles?

Hands-on labs remove the waiting period and setup work that slow down traditional POCs. Prospects start using your product immediately, generate usage signals you can qualify on, and reach “aha” moments much sooner. That makes it easier for SEs and AEs to move confidently toward a decision.

Do I need my own cloud environment to run labs?

No. Instruqt provides ephemeral, cloud-based sandboxes that spin up on demand and reset automatically when they expire. If your software can run on major clouds like AWS, Azure, or GCP, you can typically run it in an Instruqt lab as well.

How does Instruqt integrate with my existing tools?

Instruqt is built to plug into your go-to-market stack. Usage data from labs can sync into your CRM and marketing systems, so sales and marketing have a shared view of who is engaging, where they are getting stuck, and who is ready for the next step.

Build your first hands-on demo

This HOT START episode showed that the fastest path from “demo” to “yes” is hands-on. 

Your tech deserves more than a slide deck. Give your buyers a hands-on experience and give your pre-sales teams the signals they need to close deals faster.

If you are ready to see how developer-first demos and POCs could work for your product, book a demo to talk to our team today!