I’m going to start this off with a disclaimer: This is only relevant to SaaS sellers at companies that have some form of a PLG (product-led growth) motion.
If your company offers trial accounts on your website, read on.
If your company does NOT offer trial accounts, I’ll save you 3 minutes and hope to see you next time.
I got a question from an AE recently:
“It feels like buyers used to be totally fine going through a drawn-out process – discovery, demo, second demo, alignment call, business case, closing call, etc. Now it feels like they’d rather live with the pain of the problem than go through that again.
Have you noticed this shift? And what does the ideal buying process look like now?”
Short answer: yes – it’s shifted. And if your process isn’t adapting, you are more likely to piss off potential buyers than close deals.
This shows up in a few ways:
1) Just give me pricing (we covered this two weeks ago – you can read it here)
2) Just show me a demo (we covered this last week – you can read it here)
3) Just give me a trial account (covering today)
Buyers, especially technical ones, want to get hands on product as fast as possible:
“Why talk to a rep when I can figure it out myself?”
But, if you just hand over a trial account, they’ll either never log in, or poke around aimlessly for a few minutes and bail. Then you’ll be chasing them for months with “How’s the trial going?” emails.
But if you refuse the trial altogether, they’ll just sign up for one on your website. Or worse, test your competitor’s product instead.
So we have to find a way to get them what they want (hands on product) while making sure we get what we want (a meaningful evaluation of the product that leads towards a purchase).
Another disclaimer:
Self-guided trials are not the same as POCs or formal evaluations with defined success criteria, timelines, and buying committees.
This is about when you’re in a non-optimal, fast-moving eval and the buyer’s going to get a trial no matter what. This was a challenging newsletter to write because you don’t want to end up in this situation. But, I’ve found that a big part of success in sales is making the best of a bad situation. So I hope some of you find this one helpful.
How to Handle “I Want to Try It Myself”
Start with:
“Happy to, let’s get you set up today. Since no one wants to waste their time learning a new tool, let’s do a quick walkthrough so you can test the product efficiently.”
Then ask:
“What are you hoping to test?”
Here are the likely responses:
1) They give clear answers
This is a good sign – they are actually evaluating, not just trying to brush you off.
Here’s how you respond:
- Tailor your walkthrough to those features
- After each, ask: “How will you measure the success of this feature in the trial?”
- Document their success criteria
- Offer to send a trial checklist (template linked)
- Schedule a follow-up call in 3–5 days
2) They say, “I’m not sure what I want to test, just want to play around.”
Bad sign, probably not a deal. Here’s your follow-up:
“We’ve run a lot of trials – I have a good sense of what people usually want to test. Want me to show you a few common use cases real quick?”
If they say yes:
- Run the training
- Anchor it to a few valuable use cases
- Send the trial checklist with those use cases
- Ask to meet again in 3-5 days
If they say no, you don’t have a deal. Point them to self-serve on your website and move on.
Even in the “good” situations here, you are a long way from winning a deal. If you are in this situation, you are purely in a technical evaluation. And, you are likely stuck too low in the account.
As you earn the technical win, you need to also be building out the business value. Then, you can multi-thread into the account at higher levels with a business case that translates the technical value to business value they might care about. Do that, and you have a real opportunity. If you keep it at the technical level, your most likely “best case” is winning a small, transactional deal.
Have a great week,
Kyle
