Critical Date / Critical Event Examples

At a recent Great Demo! Workshop, the participants asked for a starter set of Critical Date / Critical Event examples that they could use in conversations with their customers.  For those who are unfamiliar, a Critical Date or Critical Event is a date by when the customer needs to have a solution in place – and is one of the key elements of a Great Demo! Situation Slide.

Uncovering a customer’s Critical Date or Critical Event should be a part of your Discovery conversations.  However, in many cases your customer may not have a date or event in mind – in which case you might want to suggest some, to trigger fixing a date. 

So, here you go with a starter set…

• Customer’s Project Deadline
• Customer’s Project Date-specific objectives or goals
• Customer’s Budget Cycle
• Customer’s Budget that needs to be consumed
• End of the customer’s fiscal quarter / fiscal year
• End-of-Life of an existing software package
• End-of-Support for an existing software package
• Any Major Changes to the customer’s business
• Acquisitions
• Divestitures
• Mergers
• New Plant or Facility Openings (or Closures)
• Scheduled Plant or Production Line Down-time
• New Production Line
• New Store Opening
• New Field Office Openings (or Consolidations/Closures)
• Key New Hires (or Fires)
• Aging-out/Retiring Workforce
• Board Meetings
• Compliance or Regulatory Changes, New Rules, or Deadlines
• Other Government-imposed Deadlines
• Elections
• Retail Selling Seasons / Holidays
• Other Seasonality-based Factors
• New Product Launches
• New Market Entries
• Marketing Campaigns
• Competitive Campaigns
• Implementation of a Related or Impacted Program (e.g., a new sales methodology, marketing automation system, etc.)
• Customer’s Internal Key Events (e.g., major company anniversary, annual picnic, etc.)

Any others to add?