customer-developmentso 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).
In addition to asking for a phone number, why not embed a soft phone in your website. That way, those visitors who don’t want to enter their personal contact information can still contact you if their computer has a microphone and speakers.
If you do this, consider also adding a chat for those visitors with under-equipped computers. Then, once a chat session has begun, you can offer to give them your business sphone number so that they can call you anonymously.
You will probably want to wrap all of your contact mechanisms in some javascript so that they only appear during the hours that you are willing to accept calls.
As for reworking your landing page, it seems like you need to focus on real world applications of your technology. See if you can get some of your customers to write testimonials for you, describing how your product helps them do what they do.
Maybe use your landing pages to feature specific customers who use your product in unexpected or highly profittable ways. Make your landing pages serve dual purposes, advertising your service and those of your featured customer. Make it a win/win and then ask your featured customer to return the favor, featuring you on one of their landing pages.
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