Pilot to Contract

Plan a pilot from the buyer's budget date backwards, with criteria both sides agreed in writing, so a pilot that works has a contract waiting at the end of it.

When to use

When a founder is about to start a pilot (a school or district, a clinic or health system, or a design partner for an AI or B2B product), when pilots keep "going well" and then stall, or when a free pilot has quietly become free use.

Before you start

1. Read the brand/product context first. Pull the product, buyer, pricing and proof from .agents/product-marketing.md (or .agents/aaj-brand.md). If none exists, ask the user for the essentials.
2. Gather inputs: buyer type; pilot start date and length in weeks; the buyer's own budget decision date and fiscal year start; the founder's procurement estimate in weeks; each success criterion (metric, baseline, target, how measured, who owns the data, agreed in writing or not, and how many weeks before it can move); the evidence the buyer needs; whether a champion is named and the economic buyer is involved; which conversion terms are agreed; pilot price; seats or sites in the pilot and in the full contract.
3. Get the buyer's dates from the buyer. Budget calendars differ by district, health system and company. Never assume a date. For a US district, the founder enters that district's own budget adoption date and fiscal year start, from the champion or the district's published budget calendar.
4. Confirm the objective: a pilot plan the champion can sign before kickoff. If there is no champion yet, run discovery-call-framework first; if the buyer group is unmapped, run sales-process-design.

Method

A pilot converts when three things are settled before it starts: the dates, the criteria and the deal. The dates are worked backwards from the moment the buyer commits next year's money, not forwards from the founder's quarter. The criteria are few, measurable inside the pilot, baselined, owned by someone who will share the data, and agreed in writing. The deal names who signs, what it costs afterwards, when the contract starts and what happens if the criteria are met. A free pilot with none of that is a free trial with extra steps.