Navigating PMF: Building our pilot program

At Clarify, we’ve always believed in building products that don’t just meet expectations but exceed them. As we embarked on creating a next-generation CRM, we knew that listening closely to our earliest customers was critical. So, we decided to launch our pilot program, a structured approach to refining our product by collaborating with forward-thinking companies.

Below, we’ll talk about why we launched the program, the lessons we’ve learned, and how these insights will shape the future of Clarify.

Why we launched our pilot program

Many startups create pilot, or design partner, programs when they start building their products. These programs allow folks to learn directly from potential customers, gather valuable feedback, iterate on the product, and cultivate the internal processes of selling and serving.

However, at Clarify, we chose the term “pilot program” over “design partner program” for a reason. Words matter, especially when signaling where you are in your journey to investors and customers.

A design partner program suggests you're still in the early stages, shaping your product around customer needs. On the other hand, a pilot program reflects that you’ve already built something and are ready to test it in real-world scenarios.

Our pilot program wasn't just about gathering feedback—it was about co-creating the future of Clarify with forward-thinking companies. We saw it as an opportunity to:

1. Validate ideas and assumptions directly with users
2. Uncover and integrate valuable feedback from early adopters
3. Refine our product through real-world usage
4. Build a foundation for strong customer relationships and retention

We aimed to strike a balance between learning, validating, and iterating—all while laying the groundwork for our future sales motion. In doing so, we were able to improve our product and develop the critical internal processes for scaling the business.

Overall learnings from our pilot program

‍Our pilot program was invaluable in helping us refine Clarify, and we think the lessons we learned will resonate with any startup on a similar path. After going through the process end-to-end, there are five main takeaways:

1. Embrace epic feedback from early adopters: Pilot participants are often early adopters eager to explore new technology and ways of working. Their feedback transcends the present, imagining what the future could look like. These users aren't tied to the status quo. Instead, they're willing to share how they want to work, not just how they can work. This visionary input was instrumental in guiding our product development.
2. Actively validate risky assumptions (RATs): We all have assumptions about what customers want, but nothing is more validating than hearing those desires directly from the users themselves. Their feedback provided crucial signals that shape our build process and can often reveal unexpected insights. We call these "risky assumptions" RATs—founders should actively seek to identify and validate them.
3. Invest time in proper user qualification: Qualifying pilot participants is a significant time investment, but it's essential. We quickly learned that onboarding the wrong users led to rapid churn, which can demoralize the team and drain resources. By spending more time qualifying participants upfront, we saved time and energy down the road.
4. Deliver value quickly: Users were often more forgiving of rough edges than we anticipated, especially when they saw Clarify's potential benefits to their workflow. Surprisingly, some of our richest feedback came from unexpected participants!
5. Integrate user feedback into the team to boost morale: Pilots didn’t just help us refine our product—they also provided our team with tangible connections to the impact of their work. Sharing user feedback with our team created a positive feedback loop that energized the whole team as we iterated.

These lessons underscore a crucial truth for startups: Your early users aren't just test subjects, they're co-creators of your product's future. If you embrace their insights, validate your assumptions, and foster the right relationships, you won’t just build a better product—you'll lay the foundation for a company that truly resonates with its market.

CRM-specific learnings

Beyond the general lessons from our pilot program, we learned a lot of valuable information specifically about our journey to build a next generation CRM. They boiled down to four core lessons:

1. Dogfooding helps improve validation: While conventional wisdom prioritizes customer feedback, Clarify found internal "dogfooding" invaluable for product validation. By using our own CRM, we refined key features like card popovers, natural language search, and integrations. This approach ensured we could effectively use our tool before asking others to do so and helped us uncover significant improvements quickly through internal feedback.
2. Feature sequencing matters: For early startups with limited resources, prioritizing which features to build—and when—is crucial. We focused on product throughlines for top tasks to increase customer value without overextending ourselves. This strategic sequencing helped us build efficiently and deliver features that truly resonated with our users.
3. There’s demand for CRMs as operating systems: We were surprised by how early-stage users wanted to integrate their workflows directly into the CRM. They needed Clarify to be both a customizable platform and an integration hub, which reaffirmed our belief that CRMs should function as operating systems, not just standalone applications.
4. A structured pipeline was critical for organization: Managing a pilot program demands a robust organizational system. At first, our lack of clarity regarding stages and pipelines got in the way of our ability to track next steps effectively. However, we eventually developed a structured pipeline that kept us focused and ensured we didn't overlook any critical actions.

These learnings have shaped the way we continue to build and iterate on the product to ensure we’re building a CRM that truly resonates with our users and how they need to work in the modern landscape.

Our recommended approach to pilot programs

We found that a phased approach to the pilot program was the most effective. In the end, we broke down our program into four phases:

1. Learning: To start, we focused solely on learning. We managed a simple prospect pipeline with no qualification. Our goal was to talk to as many people as possible to gather diverse feedback.
2. Validation: As we refined Clarify, we began validating our solution with participants to make sure we were meaningfully solving their problems. This phase involved more targeted conversations and the introduction of a “Solution Validation” step in our pipeline.
3. Onboarding: With a more mature product, we added qualification and discovery steps to our process. This phase marked the beginning of our true sales motion, where we onboarded qualified participants and closely tracked their progress.
4. Sales-ready: Finally, we integrated monetization steps into our pipeline. This phase involved converting unpaid pilots into paying customers to help us validate our product’s value before launching fully into sales.

Throughout this process, we deliberately controlled the pace and managed retention. We were better able to retain our pilots and build strong relationships from the start by going slow, qualifying participants correctly, and setting clear expectations.

Here's an in-depth breakdown of the phased approach we took.

Phase one: Learning

In the earliest stage, our focus was purely on learning. We didn’t worry about qualification or conversion; we just wanted to talk to as many people as possible to gather diverse perspectives and understand the problems potential users were facing.

Why we took this approach: We aren’t the first people to suggest you focus on learning first. In fact, Lenny’s blog talks about it as well. Early on, you need to cast a wide net and engage with a broad audience before you refine your focus. This phase gave us a better understanding of the diverse problems our product could potentially solve.

Here’s what our phase one learning pipeline looked like: 👇

Phase one pipeline: Responded → Discovery (learning) call → thank you

We didn’t qualify leads at this stage because the goal was to learn from as many different users as possible.

Phase two: Validation

Once we had gathered enough feedback, the next step was validation. Here, we started asking more targeted questions to help us understand if our product could actually solve the user’s problems. This phase introduced a bit more structure to our pipeline as we moved from exploration to solution validation.

Why we took this approach: As you refine your product and start moving towards a scalable go-to-market motion, you need to shift from broad discovery to more focused validation to understand the real-world impact of your solution.

Here’s what our phase two validation pipeline looked like: 👇

Pipeline: Responded → Discovery → Thank You → Solution Validation → Pilot Invite

By adding a "Solution Validation" step, we began to filter out users who weren’t a fit for the product. This kept us focused on the people who could derive meaningful value from the product.

Phase three: Onboarding

At this stage, we had validated the product’s core value and were ready to start onboarding users. We added qualification steps to our process to make sure we weren’t wasting resources on participants who weren’t ready for our solution. Phase three also marked the beginning of our true sales motion, where we began tracking pilots as real opportunities.

Why we took this approach: Misqualifying users early on can lead to high churn rates and wasted resources, so we put effort into ensuring that we were onboarding the right people.

Here’s what our phase three onboarding pipeline looked like: 👇

Pipeline: Qualified → Discovery Call → Onboarding & Demo → Pilot → Closed Lost (with reason)

The added qualification step ensured that only users who were a good fit for Clarify moved forward, reducing churn and increasing the likelihood of success.

Phase four: Sales-ready

In the final phase, we integrated monetization steps into our pipeline. By this point, we had validated our product’s value and were ready to start converting unpaid pilots into paying customers. This phase also marked a shift in focus from learning and validation to scaling and growth.

Why we took this approach: Once you’ve proven your product’s value, the next logical step is to scale it through monetization. We didn’t rush this process—by the time we introduced pricing, we were confident our users saw enough value in Clarify to pay for it.

Here’s what our phase four sales-ready pipeline looked like: 👇

Pipeline: Qualified → Demo → Onboarding & trialing → Contract out → Redlines → Closed won → Closed lost

This final phase represented our full sales pipeline, which included stages for both paid and unpaid pilots, plus contract negotiations.

The importance of retention

Many teams focus on acquiring pilots without giving equal attention to retaining them. However, we believe that how you nurture and retain your early users is just as critical—if not more so— as how you get them.

To manage retention effectively, we did four things:

1. Went slow: We didn’t overwhelm our team with too many pilots at once.
2. Qualified correctly: We made sure that we onboarded participants who were a good fit for Clarify.
3. Set clear expectations: We made it clear from the beginning that we expected our pilots to actively use Clarify and provide feedback.
4. Built customer care early: We created a dedicated Slack channel for each pilot and checked in regularly to offer support and gather feedback.

By focusing on retention through careful pacing, proper qualification, clear communication, and dedicated support, we didn't just keep our pilots around—we turned them into valuable partners in our product development.

Moving forward: Integrating pilot insights

As we continue to grow Clarify, our pilot program has provided us with a wealth of learnings to weave into our future development. Taking a thoughtful, phased approach to our pilot program has helped us build a product our users get real value out of while staying true to our vision.

If you’re interested in following our journey and want to give Clarify a try, sign up for our waitlist below. The product comes with our full pilot pipeline stages out of the box so you can hit the ground running.