Trials are a very useful way of demonstrating to reluctant customers that you have something that they will value. A trial allows them to see for themselves what your product or service can deliver without committing to the full purchase price. Used correctly trials can be a tremendously effective way of boosting sales, particularly of products or services that do not yet have a reputation.

For a lot of companies, consumer software companies for example, running a trial is effectively without cost. You simply put your trial software up on a website for download and let whoever wants to trial it do so. However, for other companies, including us in RevaHealth.com, trials have a tremendous cost.

Running a trial here with a potential customer means we have to spend time setting them up and teaching them how to use the system. It also means that the trialling company may receive value that would otherwise flow to one of our existing paying customers. The trialling company is also monitored by an account executive on an ongoing basis. All of this means that running a trial from our perspective is an expensive proposition.

The whole purpose of a trial is for the potential customer to determine if the product or service can deliver value. This means the trial isn’t without cost to them either. They have to devote time and effort to evaluating the offering. If they take the trial and don’t spend any time working with it then the trial was obviously pointless in the first place.

So how can you ensure that the customer is going to give the trial the attention it deserves? You can’t really, but a good starting point is to charge for the trial, and here’s why.

What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

A decade ago I was working for Baltimore Technologies selling Public Key Infrastructure into tier-one banks all over the world. Our software was expensive and complex, costing millions of dollars. In the beginning we thought that simply trialling our software for free with one of the world’s leading financial institutions represented a great success. Later on we found that all our product was doing was sitting gathering dust without anyone actively evaluating it. Obviously the entire trial was pointless.

So we started to charge for trials, and as a result we did much fewer, but the trials that we did were always a success. (A successful trial doesn’t necessarily mean that you make the sale – a successful trial simply uncovers and clearly demonstrates the value your product offers to the customer.) Not only did this mean more sales in the long run but it also resulted in significantly reduced costs.

How Did Paid Trials Reduce Our Costs?

Charging for a trial is a nearly foolproof method of evaluating a customer. It tests their interest in the product, their ability to purchase at all, and demonstrates a commitment in a way that is close to impossible through any other means.

  1. It forces your own sales staff to correctly evaluate the customer.
  2. Even if a customer isn’t interested, sometimes the path of least resistance is to agree to a free trial. After all, it doesn’t cost them anything. Charging for the trial uncovers this.
  3. Charging for the trial uncovers if the customer has any money to spend.
  4. It also reveals whether or not the person you are talking to has the authority to sign off on a deal, and so helps to identify the key decision maker.
  5. Finally, it helps to ensure that the customer will spend some time and effort making sure that the trial gets the attention it needs. After all, they probably have to justify paying for it in the first place.

At RevaHealth.com we never give free trials of our paid accounts. If someone wants to trial a particular account we will normally accommodate them, but they will always pay, normally for a quarter of a year at a pro rata cost. Ultimately, charging for trials reduces the amount of time we need to spend on customers who would never buy in the end.

Charging for trials isn’t going to work for everyone in every sector, but it does work for us. What are your experiences of offering your products or services on a trial basis?