FWIW, offering free trials in my SaaS business was THE strategic decision that jump-started our growth. Before that, I would do a screen share (or worse, a guid

FWIW, offering free trials in my SaaS business was THE strategic decision that jump-started our growth. Before that, I would do a screen share (or worse, a guided walkthrough) on the phone with the potential customer and it just wasn't convincing enough, alone, to get them to sign. Once I started offering a 12-month contract with the first month (or 2 or 3) free + cancellable, that's when I started getting paying customers. That period of usage allowed them to begin trusting us beyond a short pitch. The important part is to get them into a contract for a full year with the free trial period tacked on the front. If you just do the free part with no contract, they probably won't be proactive enough to sign up, even if they liked it. What you want is for them to be lazy after the free trial period is done, not cancel, and become a regular paying customer. And yes, this is very dependent on your costs. My business was like cable TV: each additional customer brought zero extra variable cost and 100% extra revenue. So the free trial strategy was very, very strong.