Activation Provenance and Practice-Based Rules

Externally sourced

• Activation dominance in trials: activation explains an estimated 60-75% of trial conversion variance; activated trials convert at 35-65% versus 2-8% un-activated (industry trial-benchmark aggregations, 2025-2026; blog-tier compilations, direction reliable, exact splits indicative). The skill's transfer of this mechanism to post-signature retention is a stated practice-based judgment, not a measured claim; instrument your own activated-vs-not renewal split to make it local fact.
• Gross revenue retention median ~90%, top quartile above 95% (SaaS industry surveys, 2025; shared provenance with renewal-save-motion's references/retention-benchmarks.md).

Deliberately excluded

Widely circulated onboarding statistics ("X% of churn traces to onboarding," "customers decide in the first N days") trace to vendor content without published methodology and were excluded under this library's benchmark standard.

Practice-based rules (validate against your own cohort)

• Activation defined as one observable event per segment, distinct from go-live.
• The handoff artifact contents and the "what has changed since you signed?" kickoff opener.
• The 30-60-90 default arc with milestone gates and the one-workflow-first rule.
• Stall thresholds: access blocked >1 week, attendance decay, two-week post-launch usage flatline; and the two-response verdict rule.
• Graduation criteria including the agreed value baseline.

After two quarters, replace the defaults with your measured time-to-first-value distribution and your own activated-vs-not retention split.