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Obvious, right? Nevertheless, let’s unpack it some more. 

First, a note about the customer. People make decisions; organizations don’t. So whether a pilot is successful ultimately depends on people’s perspective of success criteria. With that, let’s talk about success criteria. 

Here’s a framework for thinking about success criteria:

Stated criteria for success

Customers typically know why they got interested in a product. They can then translate this interest to specific performance metrics. Examples of this are:

  • Higher revenue, lower cost, or higher return on investment
  • Higher productivity e.g. emails per minute and workers time saved
  • Lower risk e.g. threats neutralized and law suits averted

Un-stated criteria 

Then there are the criteria that a customer does not mention because they take it for granted. If the folks at the startup are new to the customer’s industry, they can be blind-sided. Examples of these are:

  • Operational performance thresholds e.g. uptime and latency
  • Legal or compliance requirements
  • Pre-existing organizational workflow

Wow factors 

Finally there are factors that delight customers. These generally result from deeply understanding the customer and their use cases. 

  • Solving the problem extremely well
  • Engaging the customer, even when there are challenges in the pilot
  • Building in “enchanting quality” into the product 
  • Demonstrating expertise so customers want to join you in your company’s vision 

Update criteria throughout the pilot and post-pilot

Strive to agree with the customer in advance what the success criteria for the pilot are. Also startups need to be flexible because the customer’s business situation can change, people’s roles and objectives change, and the startup learns new criteria during the engagement. So it’s important to (internally  at least) have success criteria documented and updated as and when new information is learned. 

Finally after a successful pilot completes, the customer may have new or different success criteria. Be sure to discuss with the customer. FYI, here is the first post on winning pilots.

What has been your experience with success criteria?