The Fido SA passes every standard interview. They know the product. They demo confidently. They are likable in the room. And then they get into the field and wait for the customer to tell them what to do.

The real signal is not whether a candidate can answer your technical questions. It is whether they can run a discovery session that reframes the customer's problem, set success criteria before they open the product, and map what the product does to what the business gains. Most hiring processes never test any of this.

TAF-IC is a two-demo process specifically designed to surface these behaviors. Demo 1 uses the candidate's own technology, a product they know intimately, so technical unfamiliarity cannot mask a lack of deal control. Demo 2 uses your product. The panel scores both demos against four dimensions: Technical Capability, Deal Control, Business Acumen, and Account Leadership. You will see within the first ten minutes of Demo 1 whether you are looking at a Challenger SA or a Fido SA. The rest of the process confirms it.

Built for VP of Presales, Directors of Solutions Architecture, and hiring managers at high-growth SaaS companies. Especially useful for teams that have made bad IC hires, are scaling quickly and need a repeatable process, or are trying to shift from a Fido SA culture to a Challenger SA standard. If your last three hires looked great in the interview and disappointed in the field, TAF-IC changes what you are measuring.