Welcome to the latest post in our Content on Matik series. In this series, we will be taking a look at some of the innovative ways Matik customers have used data-driven storytelling to create compelling content, and build better relationships with their customers.

Meet the Pilot Review.

‍What is a Pilot Review?

A Pilot Review is a data-driven, multi-slide presentation that gives an overview of what short-term goals you achieved during the pilot period, addresses any pitfalls in the process, and demonstrates how your product could bring this customer continued success if they signed on for a full-length contract.

‍What is the value of a Pilot Review?

The goal of a Pilot Review is to convince your customer of the value you’ve built with them during their trial period. This presentation should get you and your stakeholders on the same page and support a smooth transition of their account from a successful pilot to an official customer.

With a pilot, remember that you’ve had limited time to prove value to your customer. It’s okay if everything didn’t go perfectly! You can still leverage a Pilot Review to explain how you’d address any shortcomings and be able to meet your customer’s unique business needs in the long-term.

‍What is in a Pilot Review?

There are four key sections to a Pilot Review - Executive Summary, User Proof, KPI Review and an ROI analysis.

After your Title and Agenda slides, the next slide in your Pilot Review should be an Executive Summary. This slide is very quantitative and should highlight the 3-4 metrics you and your customer agreed to track during the pilot period. 

How many of their users were activated? What did their usage look like? Did users who spent a lot of time in your product see quantitative results, like time savings? Use this section to call out these wins.

It’s okay to have a data-heavy slide like this, because you’re going to follow it right up with the User Proof section. Poll the power users at this company to ask them what their experience has been during the pilot period. If you get permission to share their thoughts with leadership, include their pictures and quotes to provide qualitative proof of your product’s impact on top of the quantitative metrics you just shared.

Next comes the KPI Review. Spend 1-2 slides digging into the most important metrics from the Executive Summary. What was your customer trying to accomplish with this pilot? Call out where they saw the most wins and demonstrate how your pilot met their requirements for success. If there were any hiccups in the process, call those out here, too, and show that you have an action plan for how to remedy these issues during their contract term so they can still achieve their business goals with your product.

Lastly, wrap up your presentation with a brief ROI analysis. Let’s say the impact of using your product was a huge time-savings for your customer’s team. How can you tie this time savings back to revenue? Does saving X number of hours save the company a significant amount in salaries or headcount? What about how this time savings might free up their team to focus on more revenue-generating activities, like conversations with their own customers? However you choose to frame it, your ROI analysis should focus on what will resonate the most with your customer’s high-level business goals.

Don’t forget to conclude your presentation with a thank you to your customer for taking the time to explore your solution, and then open the conversation up to chat about any potential next steps.

‍In Short

A Pilot Review is a personalized, data-driven way to demonstrate the value you’ve built with a new account during a pilot period, and to support a smooth transition of the account from a successful pilot to an official customer.

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