Sell again after the first sale 13 of 25 in this group
SOP 71
Run a free trial with a penalty
What this page is for. Use it when a customer has refused every paid option and you still want them started. The trial is free on conditions: the customer does the things that get results and pays nothing; miss them and a fee applies. The page carries how the conditions and fees are set, the four-step way the trial is sold — card first, fees explained after — what to do when the trial ends in each of three ways, how to tune it, and how it differs from pay-later offers, discounts and rebates.
SOP-71-Run-a-free-trial-with-a-penalty.md
1. What it is
A customer can try the product or service free as long as they meet your terms, and pays only if they do not. Internally it is called a trial with a penalty; to the customer it is never called that.
It mirrors the win-your-money-back offer. There, the customer pays and earns the money back by meeting the terms. Here, they pay nothing and avoid fees by meeting the terms. The two are described as virtually the same offer with the timing and method of payment changed, so the actions and results you required in the one become the conditions of the other; the incentive becomes avoiding a fee rather than winning money back.
It is not here is my thing, see if you like it. It is you get this free as long as you do the things that make you right for my next offer — and if you do not, you pay. Either way you win: those who do not follow through pay, and those who do are likely to buy the next thing.
The arithmetic, as an example. Close three of 10 on the attraction offer, downsell four more onto the trial, and upsell three of those afterward: three sales become six, which doubles your customers.
Where it goes. It is used as a downsell, preferably offered after somebody has said no to paying rather than advertised — though it could be used on the front end, and whether to advertise it is up to you. Getting people to put some skin in the game is a great way to help them. The principle behind it: everyone who is qualified buys something. The terms may change; the buying does not.
2. The rebate behind it
A company choosing an HR platform found the options more or less the same. One vendor charged 500 bucks and rebated it if the buyer attended two or three onboarding and training sessions; skip them and the vendor kept it. The buyer attended, learned the software, had no wish to learn anyone else's, and stayed for years. That was a rebate; the trial with a penalty is the same structure with the charge moved to the end.
3. Trial, penalty and rebate
| Form | What happens |
|---|---|
| Plain trial | Take a card; bill later |
| Trial with a penalty | Take a card; bill later; and bill fees if activation steps are missed |
| Rebate | Charge up front; refund on completion |
The fees attach to not using the product and to not attending further sales consultations. The conditions borrowed from the win-your-money-back offer are: advertise your business, show up to sales consultations, and do the things that get results.
Of the four conditions, three are above. The fourth is not established on this page.
Tie the conditions to what gets the customer a result, because a customer with a result will probably want to buy. They did not come for a trial; they came to solve a problem, and only their own action solves it. If somebody objects to committing, ask whether they want the outcome. They will say yes; then the steps are what the outcome takes, and this is simply how you can give them the service free. If they mean to do it, they pay nothing.
4. Worked conditions
A consumer program — a 28-day habit-breaking blueprint. To get it free and avoid fees: attend every consulting call, post progress in the group once a week, journal daily in the app, and attend the feedback and transformation sessions, which are the upsell opportunities.
A business program — a 5-day first-five-clients challenge. Send 100 outbound messages a day, report the numbers, attend the daily training, post in the group daily once the work is done, and attend the graduation call, which is the upsell opportunity.
A therapy practice — a free 28-day breakthrough trial. Complete the assigned work before each session and show up. A $50 non-compliance fee applies to either miss, explained plainly: without the work done, the session cannot help.
Setting the fees. The fees can add up to exactly what a win-your-money-back offer would have charged. If they have, say, 10 things to do and the offer is $500, charge $50 for each. Where some matter more — sales consultations, say — make those $100 or $150 and the rest 25. Weight the fees by what matters to the business and to the customer's result.
5. Selling the trial, in four steps
Step 1 — Offer it last. Only when somebody has made clear they will not take your first offer do you downsell the trial. The opening might be: that is a pickle; how about we get you started for free — would that be all right? Then ask for their ID.
Asking for ID, in person or on video, makes them take their wallet out, so they cannot say they left it at home. Fill the contract in for them — you avoid staring while they write, you can make conversation, and you make sure the form is right. Hold the ID and offer to trade it back for the card they want to use. Copy the card number yourself, so a mistyped digit does not stop the charge later; this matters more when a separate finance team runs the transaction after a delay. It works the same on a tablet or on the phone.
Step 2 — Always get a card. If they balk — you said it was free — agree that it is, and say the card is only to complete the account profile, not to bill. When pressed, say this is how it has always been done. An appeal to an unnamed policy settles it; the reason it works is not given. A 14-day trial that began with I'll give you my card after the 14 days is the failure this line was found to fix.
Step 3 — Sell staying and paying. The leverage has shifted: you are now working for free, so the customer should show why they deserve it. Ask directly: if this gets you the result, will you stay long term? If the answer is no, do not start them; the whole point is to win a customer. That holds because the trial is offered last, on terms: a free trial you advertised has to be given as advertised. Set the expectation honestly: they will not reach their long-term goal during the trial, only build the habits that get them there, and staying on is how they reach it. Say the trial goes ahead as long as they are comfortable with that. If you can't sell staying for free, you need to work on your selling — or they might just not be a good prospect.
Step 4 — Sell the commitment to use it, after you have the card. Getting agreement on terms is much easier once you have the payment method. Frame it as a fair deal: we do our part as long as you do yours. Ask them to bet on themselves: missing things hurts their results, so a small charge keeps them on track. Follow through and everything is free — the best of both worlds. Explain the fees before taking the card and you meet far more resistance; explain them after, with the same this-is-how-we-do-it attitude, and people tend to agree far more often.
Have them initial beside each fee. Keep the fees few — not 19 of them. They will usually be the sales consultations they must attend, the key actions behind their result, and maybe some advertising for you, since you are giving the service away and they might as well post about it or give a testimonial. Explain why each fee exists — which is for their benefit: it is the only way you can still ethically say you could help them get results and keep it free.
The check-ins are part of step 4. Make them required, and name each one and what it is for: a nutrition check to fix their food, a progress check to adjust it, a transformation meeting at the end for the after photographs. Charge for missing them, because they are how results happen. Never call them sales consultations.
6. When the trial ends
A trial ends one of three ways, and each has its upsell.
| Outcome | What to do |
|---|---|
| They like it | Billing is already set up. Meet anyway, near the middle or end, and offer the longer or higher version. If there are three consultations, pitch at the first and second |
| They hate it | Ask what should have been different, agree, and take the blame. Only one person can be angry, and it must be you. Ask for the chance to make it up, then offer the higher-level thing |
| They do not use it | Reach out several times first. Meet, and offer to waive the fees if they get back on track, or offer something better |
Successful customers tend to get even more from your better offers, so offering them is ethical: if you can help, help. For the unhappy customer, the outcome stated is that about half of people buy the higher-level offer. For non-starters, the preference here is not to bill them at all — billing non-starters is a great way to earn one-star reviews, and a small fee is not worth it — but the choice is up to you. The fees are leverage to get people back, because that is where lifetime value is. In short: more of what they love; if they have problems, swap in what fits; if they are not using it, let them make it up.
7. Tuning the trial
| What you see | What to change |
|---|---|
| Nobody takes the trial | Lower the requirements |
| They take it but do not follow through | Explain how the fees help them; make the meetings mandatory and walk through each line |
| They do not stay afterward | Put more weight on staying and paying |
When one sales team dropped the stay-long-term question, fewer trials converted; with it restored, many more did. Let people make up for mistakes: people often lose heart after being billed, so offer a chance to make it up first. After a second miss it is up to you; billing is justified, though the preference given is usually not to.
Call it a trial. Say it is run in a particular way that gets results. Calling it anything else may scare or confuse people; nobody wants to be penalized. If asked why, it is how it has always been done.
8. Choosing between this and the alternatives
Against pay-later. Pay-less-now-or-pay-more-later is used as a downsell for physical products and one-time services; the trial with a penalty for recurring products and services.
Where it works. It has only been made to work where the customer has to do work to get the result — usually where somebody has to do something: often a lot of it, as with software; with services it is common. Whether this works for businesses where customers need do nothing is not established on this page.
A low price instead of free. Some people balk at giving a card for something free. A small price justifies the card and means it will probably work when billing starts: you might offer a first month for a dollar, or $10 down, then the normal monthly price.
Rebates. A little harder, but the same mechanism: the customer pays up front and gets the money back on doing the thing. Rebates are like win-your-money-back, usually smaller in scope. The HR vendor's $500 against two or three webinars is the example — clear, small and simple. The rebate also shows the card works, since it has already been charged, and is in effect rolled onto the service afterward.
One fee or several. Charge per missed item — $50 each — or a lump fee for any miss. Small separate charges are preferred: a single all-or-nothing fee makes somebody who has missed once stop trying. The view here is that the money is made from results and customers, not from fees.
This form of trial converts as high a share on the back end as a plain one, or a much higher share, which is why it is used. It keeps goodwill, because you are visibly trying to help. A plain trial can still be offered as a last downsell, but somebody who needs it is, in the view here, just trying to leave.
9. What this page does not decide for you
- How many conditions to set. Few, and tied to results; this page gives no figure beyond the warning against 19.
- Whether to bill non-starters. Stated as your choice.
- What the fourth condition is. Not established on this page.
10. The checklist
| Question | The answer |
|---|---|
| When it is offered | Last, after every paid option is refused |
| What it costs the customer | Nothing, if they meet the terms |
| What the fees attach to | Not using it, missing sales consultations |
| How fees are sized | Summing to the win-your-money-back price, weighted by importance |
| The four steps | Offer last; get a card; sell staying; sell the commitment, check-ins included |
| When the fees are explained | After the card |
| Three outcomes | Likes it, hates it, does not use it |
| Unhappy customers who buy the higher offer | About half |
| What to call it | A trial |
| Where it works | Where customers must do work to get results |
11. What this page does not cover
The trial is the last rung of the downsell prong of SOP 59. The offer it mirrors, and whose conditions it borrows, is SOP 60 — Design a win-your-money-back offer. The payment-plan rungs that come before the trial are SOP 70 — Work the payment-plan downsell ladder. The pay-later counterpart for physical products and one-time services is SOP 64 — Design a pay-less-now-or-pay-more-later offer. Giving one thing free while selling the extras that go with it is a different structure, SOP 66 — Run the classic upsell and choose the moment. Cancellation terms for continuing customers are SOP 76 — Design cancellation terms and the waived-fee offer.
Consumer billing law and card-network rules are not covered on this page.
Terms defined on this page
- Rebate
- Charging up front and refunding once set steps are done: a trial with a penalty with the charge moved to the start, usually smaller in scope than a win-your-money-back offer.
- Trial with a penalty
- A free trial with conditions: the customer pays nothing if they do the things that get results and attend sales consultations, with a fee for each miss. That name is used inside the business; customers just hear 'trial'.