A guest post by Benny Shaviv.

For many SaaS vendors  offering prospects a free trial seems to be the prescribed route of getting the customer on board.  Many marketing & sales executives dictate to their team that this is the key goal they should push for with all their prospects in order to convert them into paying customers. What many vendors don’t realize is that this process in many cases is flawed and if not properly managed, could be costing them the loss of the most qualified customers.

Case in point: a while ago we were in the market for a CRM software.  I had allocated a budget, we were ready to buy immediately, and were looking exclusively at SaaS Vendors.  We were a very qualified “A” type lead. We figured it would be an easy process – there were several vendors that seemed appropriate and I thought that all we needed to do was to figure out which one of those best met our needs, and then give it a try. That’s when we realized the huge gap in the “free trial” process that many companies have…

The Problem with the Free Trial Process: Several years back, a free trial in SaaS was a great benefit for customers who’s alternative was to go through long sales presentations, in-house demo installations, and making a leap of faith in buying and implementing expensive installed software.  Instead they just took a free trial from the few SaaS vendors that were offering it at the time and it worked great.

But then things changed.  Then every SaaSy Tom, Dick, and Harry started offering free trials and the tables turned. If we (the vendors) want to be realistic about free trials today – it’s not the vendor that is giving the customer a free trial, it’s the CUSTOMER that is giving the vendor a free trial!  With all the options customers have today, telling them that you’ll give them a free trial for a month is no longer a gift, it’s a task.  From the customer’s perspective, she’s been offered that free trial from your 6 competitors as well and she needs to decide where she will spend her time.  If you push hard enough, she might sign up for your free trial but never use it; the real measure is trial usage – if you can get a customer excited enough to actually use a free trial then you’ve got a seriously qualified prospect.  The irony is that in many cases qualified prospects refuse to sign up or use the free trial, and this is because they have not been given the information that convinces them that the solution is right for them, so they refuse to waste their time.

That’s what happened with us and many CRM vendors.  Those that did not have the prepared resources to help answer our questions BEFORE the free trial were simply disqualified, because we were not about to run 6 different vendor applications through proper trials.

Here are some facts

• Every SaaS vendor is offering free trials. It’s no longer unique nor is it a benefit, it’s a task for the customer.
• When a customer decides to actually use your software in trial mode, she is the one that is giving you the free trial, not the other way around
• The real measure of success is not free trial signup, but free trial usage.

Making the free trials work

• Our task as vendors is to rise above the noise of our competitors.  Assume your customer has been offered a free trial by all, and make sure to give him much more– give him access to a rich & graphic set of resources that provide the answers & information he is asking for.
• Make your information useful.  Overview presentations are nice, but they are high level.  White papers are boring – and its doubtful that anyone reads them.  A rich library of to-the-point presentations & movies will do wonders for you.
• Be respectful of your customer’s time.  When a customer is first looking at your website & product (before taking the free trial), assume you will get a very limited time slot.  What do you prefer that the customer do in that time, read one whitepaper or see 10 movies/presentations covering different aspects for your solution?
• Track and measure your customer’s usage of materials & resources you make available to them, as well as the free trial usage.  You will see a direct correlation between the resources used, the free trial usage, and prospects becoming customers.

If you do these things, you will be able to give the customer the value that he is looking for, and the warm and fuzzy feeling that your SaaS solution can address his needs.  The next step will be real free trial usage, and a happy & paying customer.

This post was originally published February 21 on Benny’s blog on bennyshaviv.com

Benny Shaviv: Ex software techie gone sales & marketing. He blogs about sales & marketing in the SaaS & startup world on http://bennyshaviv.com Benny is also the Co-founder of VC backed SaaS provider plmplus; previously he managed international sales teams, key customers, and lots of techie stuff before that. Benny can be reached on twitter via @bennyshaviv or on benny at bennyshaviv dot com

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