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Ask HN: Replace trial with a schedule a call form instead?

1 points by curiously ↗ HN
so I decided that self service type of customers are really bad for my product and that the high touch clients who I can have a phone chat with and demo them the product has worked the best for me.

Currently I have a 30-day trial (w/o CC number) setup but for high touch clients this is almost unnecessary since I usually close them on the first phone call after demoing the product and demonstrating value.

The people that won't talk to me on the phone, usually ask for a huge discount, request ridiculous things so I am thinking of getting rid of the trial altogether as they appear to be the wrong market fit.

What can I replace the free trial with?

I am thinking of creating a form that will ask their phone number. In overwhelming amount of cases, someone who doesn't provide a phone number usually isn't very serious about buying or is not the right target. However, I am aware that some people might not want to input their phone number.

I am also thinking of doing an overhaul of the landing page. Currently it is sort of like a 'here is the software, here are the features, you connect the dots'. Of course when they speak on the phone, they realize the value but I have nagging feeling that my landing page isn't giving a value perception.

What do you guys think, is this a good approach to take? I'm just cautious because I see lot of SaaS out there seems self serviced (mine is data mining from video files).

5 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 24.3 ms ] thread
Tideflat
Beware that if you make it difficult to buy your product, people may just pass over your product for one that is easier to buy.

At least don't hide your price behind a phone number as that is terribly annoying.

curiously
I don't have the price hidden or hide the demo video. However, I usually find that I am having more success when I'm following up on the phone and giving them a demonstration and helping them use the tool, so I'm trying to find ways to facilitate this.
davismwfl
First, you will find following up on the phone almost always increases conversions so that wouldn't be alarming to me. But just because that helps convert more I wouldn't say your self service model can't be successful.

When I hear the comment though that you have to help them use the service to be successful it screams to me either you have a fair to poor UI design/experience, the leads are unqualified or you are pushing to the wrong segment.

Don't get me wrong there are SaaS products that require some assistance, usually though those are tailored at the enterprise level and the fees reflect the account management aspects and user support. Maybe this is your product hence your idea for the change.

My point about the leads being unqualified or the wrong market segment is basically you are getting the wrong clients. For example, me signing up for a video editing service would be foolish and require a ton of support because it isn't something I do, so even terminology would be basically foreign to me. But someone else would get it immediately if that is what they do. Hence qualifying your clients and market is critical to success.

curiously
>When I hear the comment though that you have to help them use the service to be successful it screams to me either you have a fair to poor UI design/experience, the leads are unqualified or you are pushing to the wrong segment.

You make a very good point here. I think it's a combination of those things you mentioned.

UI will be an ongoing effort but it's almost always the case that a customer misses a step or ends up mixing incompatible components. I am seeing patterns but more than often, a potential customer always reaches out for help or responds positively for help. My immediate thinking to improve the UI here would be to display some warning when they are missing a crucial step or error messages when they are trying to do something that won't work. Right now I have no such error feedback in place.

However, even if someone has used the UI successfully they will not purchase or be willing to because it's out of their price range.

So I'm trying to tie everything in together, it's a bit of a mess and I am trying to figure it all out.

davismwfl
Sounds like you are moving the right direction, so maybe you just have to do the extra phone work for a short while (something that won't scale) until you can resolve the other issues. The good part about doing it (and a completely valid reason) is you will learn a lot about your clients and who best to target and how to make things work so you don't waste time working on things that won't matter.

Good luck!