What is a paid pilot?
A paid pilot is a short, limited trial of your product inside a business customer’s real operations, for which the customer pays a fee. Both sides agree in writing on the scope, the length, what “success” means in numbers, and what happens if the pilot succeeds. It sits between a demo and a full contract.
The fee is the whole trick. Free pilots get deprioritised: nobody at the customer is accountable, data arrives late, and the end review never gets booked. A pilot with an invoice attached has a budget line, an owner, and a reason for the customer to make it work. It also tests the hardest question in B2B early: will this company pay at all, and who signs off when it does?
When should you use it?
- Use it for B2B products where a buyer needs proof in their own setting: software for clinics, schools, logistics teams, factories, retailers, agencies.
- Use it after discovery calls and ideally after a letter of intent, when the buyer says “we’d need to see it work for us first”.
- Skip it for low-priced self-serve tools. If someone can sign up with a card for 30 euros a month, let them.
- Skip it if your product can’t deliver the main result yet. Deliver it by hand first with a concierge test, then charge for the pilot.
How do you do it, step by step?
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Agree on the problem and its cost before you mention a pilot. You need the buyer’s own number: hours lost, money leaked, errors per month. Example: “Rescheduling eats 12 coordinator hours a week.” This becomes the baseline for success.
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Set the scope small and specific. One team, one site or one process. 30 to 90 days (our rule of thumb: 60 days for software, 30 for a service). List exactly what you will set up, who on their side takes part, and what is out of scope.
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Price the pilot. Our rule of thumb: charge 10 to 25% of the expected first-year contract value, or at least enough to cover your direct costs. Offer to credit the pilot fee against the first year if they sign within 30 days of the pilot ending. That one line turns the fee from a cost into a down payment.
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Write measurable success criteria together. Two or three, each with a number and a measurement method: “Coordinator rescheduling time drops from 12 to 6 hours a week, measured by their timesheets in weeks 6 to 8.” Let the customer phrase them; criteria they wrote are criteria they accept.
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Name two people on their side. A champion who uses the product every week and a budget holder who signs the contract after the pilot. If you can’t get the budget holder’s name, the pilot has no path to a contract. Ask: “If the numbers hit, who signs the annual agreement, and can they join the kickoff and the final review?”
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Put it on one page and get it signed. Sections: problem and baseline, scope, dates, fee and payment terms, success criteria, roles, data access, what happens next (“If criteria are met, [Company] intends to sign a 12-month agreement at [price]”). Invoice 50% at kickoff and 50% at mid-point, or 100% upfront for small amounts.
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Book every meeting on day 1. Kickoff, a weekly 20-minute check-in with the champion, a mid-point review, and the final review with the budget holder. Put them all in the calendar before the pilot starts. A final review booked in week 1 happens; one you try to book in week 8 drifts.
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Report against the criteria every week. One short email: the number this week, the trend, one thing blocking progress. At the final review, show baseline against result and ask directly: “The criteria are met. Shall we move to the annual agreement we discussed?”
What does a worked example look like?
Say Nadia, a hypothetical founder, is building a scheduling tool for home-care agencies that reassigns visits when a carer calls in sick. One agency with 40 carers tells her that sick-day reshuffles take 2 coordinators most of each morning.
She proposes a 60-day pilot for one region of the agency (14 carers). Fee: 1,800 euros, credited against a first-year licence of 9,600 euros if they sign within 30 days of the end. Success criteria, written with the operations manager: reshuffle time per sick call drops from 50 minutes to under 15, and zero missed visits caused by scheduling. The champion is the senior coordinator; the budget holder is the managing director, who joins the kickoff.
By week 5 the average reshuffle takes 18 minutes. Nadia’s weekly report flags the cause: carers don’t update availability in the app. The agency adds a 2-minute availability check to its morning routine. By week 8 it’s 11 minutes. At the final review the director signs for all regions at 9,600 euros minus the pilot credit. Nadia asks for permission to write it up as a customer case study.
Which free tools help?
| Tool | What you use it for | Free plan |
|---|---|---|
| Google Docs | One-page pilot agreement and final report | Yes |
| Google Sheets | Baseline and weekly numbers against criteria | Yes |
| Stripe Invoicing | Sending the pilot invoice and tracking payment | No setup or monthly fee, a small fee per paid invoice plus payment fees |
| PayPal Invoicing | An alternative way to send invoices | No monthly fee, you pay per transaction |
| Google Meet | Kickoff, check-ins and the final review | Yes |
What mistakes should you avoid?
- Running the pilot for free. Free pilots compete with every other priority at the customer and lose. Even a small fee changes behaviour.
- Vague success criteria. “See if the team likes it” can’t be met or failed. Use numbers and a measurement method.
- No budget holder in the room. A delighted team that can’t sign anything gives you a great story and no contract.
- Endless scope creep. Customers ask for “one more thing” every week. Log requests for the contract phase and keep the pilot scope fixed.
- Pilots without an end date. An open-ended pilot quietly becomes free use. Fix the date and the final review on day 1.
How do you know it worked?
The pilot worked when the criteria you agreed are met and the customer signs a paid agreement within 30 days of the final review.
Our rule of thumb across your first pilots: go when at least half convert to paid contracts; fix the offer when criteria are met but nobody signs (the budget, the buyer or the price is wrong); rethink the product when criteria are missed in most pilots even with a committed champion.
What should you do next?
Use each converted pilot as proof in your next cold email and turn the results into a customer case study. Keep a reusable one-page offer sheet for the next pilot conversation. If you want to rehearse the pilot pitch before the real meeting, the F/MS startup game lets you practise with an AI co-founder.
FAQ
How much should I charge for a pilot?
Our rule of thumb is 10 to 25% of the expected first-year contract, with the fee credited against that contract if the customer signs soon after. At minimum, cover your direct costs. A price that hurts a little makes the customer take the pilot seriously.
How long should a B2B pilot last?
Long enough to measure the success criteria at least twice, and no longer. For most software that means 30 to 90 days. If the result needs 6 months to show, measure a leading number you can see sooner.
What is the difference between a paid pilot and a proof of concept?
A proof of concept checks whether something can work technically, in a test setting. A paid pilot checks whether it delivers results in the customer’s real operations and whether they will pay for it. For an early startup, the pilot answers the more useful question.
Updated 26 October 2026 · Written by the Fe/male Switch team