let's talk about free trials for your go high level saas business and whether or
not you should offer free trials or not offer free trials and if you do offer free trials
how long should those free trials actually be and for those of you guys who are brand new
here the channel my name is jason wardrop and i only share things that i actually have real
life experience with okay so i didn't read any of this i'm gonna be sharing with you guys in a book
this is not theory this is after going through and i started my own software company
nearly seven years ago grew that too over 15 000 paying clients exited that business this past
year and now i'm here on youtube be able to go through and help you grow your own go high level
saas business and yes go high level only release or saas mode just this past year we did a 100
custom development which um i actually wish i was in your position to have such low expenses
with the go high level platform and that is the amazing thing about it now let's talk about
actual trials and whether you should offer them or should not offer them and i think the best way to
go through and break this down is going back seven years ago to when we started our own real estate
software company and kind of take you through the journey that i personally had so i can share some
insights with what we found as we're going through the years of trial and error and testing and
seeing what worked what didn't work and so when we first started we started in may of 2015 and at
that time i was a total newbie entrepreneur i mean i had my experience with being a digital marketing
agency owner but i didn't have any experience in the software space which i know a lot of people
in the go high level group they're just first-time software entrepreneurs as well and so what i did
is i was like okay every software out there has a free 14-day trial so what we need to do is have a
free 14-day trial there was no rhyme or reason to it was just everyone has a free 14-day trial so
we're going to make a free 14-day trial and so we went through and had a free 14-day trial and what
we noticed when you're bootstrapping a software company a software company is very expensive
people are very expensive right to go through and hire and grow a business and so we're like
man 14 days to actually go through and get money when we're trying to bring on some new client
that's a long time especially when you have developers and other people you're trying to go
through and pay and so i was like you know what it only takes about 24 to 48 hours to go through and
get everything completely set up for our client to actually see results from the software that we're
building and so it's like you know what 14 days seven days it really makes no difference and we
can actually get paid a whole week earlier so what we did is we cut the 14 day trial down to just a
seven day trial and we're like this is going to be our saving grace this is what's going to really
help us grow our business and the only unfortunate thing is just like i was saying earlier
unless you have large amounts of funding like a lot of these silicon valley software platforms
it's hard to justify assigning an account rep to a new free trial sign up to help them get them
started the reason being is you don't know if that person is actually going to stay on long term
you don't know if that person's actually going to end up paying after the free trial or if they do
pay if they're not going to just like say oh i just saw a payment hit i didn't mean to go
through and pay for that can you refund my payment right and then if you're paying an account rep
to go through and get everyone set up then it's kind of difficult but at the same time you know
if somebody's jumping onto your software if they're not getting help right out of the
gate especially with the go high level platform because there's so many features and tools then
it's going to be very difficult for that person to actually see the value in that first seven days
so what we ended up doing is we completely cut out the free trial and before we get into this and
why we did this and some of the different things that we did this is actually a question that was
asked to me inside of our private facebook group from our clients and somebody said hey i've been
seeing the go high level facebook group that a lot of people are saying that spammers are coming
in signing up for their free trial running up a huge text message credit bill and then they cancel
their account before the payment actually goes through leaving you the sas entrepreneur on the
hook for that twilio bill right nobody wants that and we actually saw that from time to time with
email marketing and the text marketing features which we didn't see it a lot but it was enough
to be like man that's just kind of annoying right and you don't want to go through and have spammers
coming in taking advantage of your business now let alone racking up a massive twilio bill
so with that said with the free trials of kind of experience that i was breaking down
what we ended up moving to was absolutely zero trial we didn't have any trial on our main website
and what allowed us to do is actually go through and offer more support on the front end whenever
somebody signed up and it was actually a lot more valuable of an offer okay because that's
the thing is the offer is key to this whole business speed and results are going to be free
every single time so what does that mean speed and results well would somebody rather have a
free 14-day or a free 30-day trial be able to go through and figure out everything on their own and
not really seeing the results because they don't really know what they're doing or would somebody
rather pay the money have somebody set their account for them and guarantee that they're going
to see results because their account was set up the right way which one do you think your clients
actually want well they of course they want speed and results right and that's what we found with
our own business as well when we removed the trial we actually stopped signing people up
specifically just on our website and we'd send them to a page that was a little bit sexier of
an offering but was basically the same thing as if they were signing up on our main website there was
no trial but we were able to go through and help them set up their entire account so they got a
one-on-one account rep which people want anyway right out of the gate especially with the new
software so they don't have to learn it or they can have somebody one-on-one help them show them
the ropes and then two why do people sign up for software they sign up for software because they
want to save time and they want to see results from what the software has to offer and we knew
by going through and assigning an account rep one we were gonna for sure get them results two they
were gonna save a ton of time and then three by removing the free trial and making them pay
up front we were actually able to subsidize the cost of our account rep that was working with them
one-on-one so what we actually did is we charged 199 a month for our software and anytime a brand
new person signed up on our website whether it was on our website or through our 30-day
lead challenge sales funnel which you guys have probably seen me talk about here on the channel
either way they got an account rep to go through and help them get their account set up started and
see results so you can see the quick win so they were actually gonna stay on longer and the best
part about it is we didn't even pay our account reps hourly we paid them a flat fee we paid them
a flat fee of 40 bucks so right out of the gate we knew we were making basically the difference
of the 199 minus the 40 on those kind of basic costs right there obviously there's advertising
a lot of other costs but basically right out of the gate we're profitable we're getting great
results for our clients they're loving us because we're actually working with them one-on-one and so
they're gonna stay on longer and so the lifetime value of that customer actually increases right so
anyway guys i just want to go through and kind of share with this with you guys if you're looking to
go through and offer free trials you probably have a free trial right now because you probably see
all the other software companies out there that do have free trials but a lot of these companies
that do have free trials they either have a simpler software than what gohi level offers
one or two they have massive funding so if somebody goes through and does sign up they can
actually go through and pay account reps to help them get set up and see results okay and i know
a lot of people think the idea of software is sign people up never talk to them ever never have to go
through and help them and basically run a passive income type of business which i was hoping that's
what the case would that would be when i started my own software business because i saw all of
these self-serve softwares way back in the day and it's just not the case there is work involved you
do have to go through and get solid results for your clients or else they are not going to stay
whether you have a free trial or not so quick synopsis here i would personally remove the
free trial i would increase the amount of value that you offer on the front end that can justify
removing the free trial justify a hiring account rep justify having that account rep work with
that person one-on-one so they can see the instant results and get the quick wins so they are going
to stay on for a longer time and increase the overall lifetime value for your business now
if you guys want to go through and learn more about what i did to go through and get clients
get fulfilled for those clients scale my business get over 15 000 paying clients in just under six
years i have a link to a free training down in the description as well as in the top comment you guys
can click on that i break down my entire business and how i can go through and help you guys how i
can give you guys the exact sales funnels the two core sales funnels that got me all of the clients
and so you can literally replicate everything that i personally did as well
so anyway guys i hope this video was helpful if it was smash like button if you're brand
new here make sure you subscribe and with that said i will see you in the next video