How to Capture Pilot or Trial Periods Within Enterprise Opportunity Stages in CRM Systems

·Mar 05, 2026 11:41 AM·

Friends, I'm curious how you reflect pilot/trial periods for enterprise opportunities. We sometimes have opportunities ask to do a quick pilot before committing to an enterprise contract. Not all do though. For a pilot they sign a short-term agreement (like 4 to 6 weeks). If pilot is successful in their eyes usually we move to redlining of a more formal enterprise agreement. Less than 20% of opportunities ask for a pilot. Currently we have pilot as an opportunity stage (was created before I joined) but something about that doesn't sit right with me. How do other folks capture pilot/trial agreements that are part of longer enterprise cycles in your CRM, with respect to opportunity stages?

3 comments

· Sorted by Oldest

Jared R.
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Adam J. Dale Z.
Sunny S.
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Arvind C. In this case, the way I track these is by having a 100% dedicated Pipeline stage named "POC Active". This would have a low forecast probability to avoid inflated pipelines and proper indication of risk. Let's say about 20% probability. And it's always good to ask the prospect to start redlining in parallel, if you feel the POC is going in the right direction. Saves the time post evaluation. If you follow any specific frameworks, you can add a couple of custom fields to this stage. For e.g. we use MEDDPICC, the the custom fields I'll have:
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Metrics being tracked.
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Economic Buyer Sign Off on POC/Trial.
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Feedback Score.
And regular weekly checkins to see the progress.
Adam J.
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Thanks for the tag Jared R.. Generally speaking if pilots occurred greater than 70% of the time I would encourage a dedicated stage in the pipeline called pilot. With pilots occurring less than 20% of the time, having that dedicated stage will eventually lead to incorrect data in your deal progression numbers. What I will usually do in this instance is have a “Pilot Y/N” drop-down field that can be selected if a deal is a pilot and also ensure that the deal name ends in - Pilot. When I run reporting I can include or exclude the pilot information so that my deal conversion rates do not get messed up. I create a similar field that allows us to track. The pilot conversion to a complete sale. Drop me a DM if you would like to discuss further.