Business Coaching: Are Free Consultations Worth Doing?

Last month I ran a special offer to my newsletter subscribers for a 'Marketing Spring Clean'.  It was the first time in quite a while I'd offered a free consultation, and was partly prompted by a fellow Masterminder who observed that I might be missing opportunities to attract clients by not doing so.

Initially I was pleased at the interest generated and duly set up the telephone appointments (using my superb online scheduler Tungle).  And then things started to go awry.....

Here's what I learned:

• Some people will apply for anything that's free, even if they don't qualify.  They don't read past the word 'free'.
• Others will want you to bend over backwards to accommodate their diary (never mind about the 20 possible alternatives you offer, they expect a weekend appointment or evenings) and then they cancel.
• Then there are the pedants who quibble at having to pay £2.50 for a phone call when you're giving them nearly an hour of your expertise - "But it isn't really free if I have to pay for the call, is it?"

Thankfully, 80% of the free consultations went ahead OK (although I'm still waiting to find out how much actual business they bring), but the whole experience has served to remind me how many people really don't value something they haven't had to pay for.

What's your experience of offering free consultations?  Please share by commenting below, and if you enjoyed reading this post, I'd appreciate a re-tweet!

Comments

[LouiseBJ]

Hi Paul, yes this has been a well discussed subject. Indeed it was you who encouraged me to look at offering free sessions again, and the pre-qualification did thankfully discourage a lot of time wasters.

As you see, the exercise raised a few new points to ponder over!

Thanks for sharing your very useful model of how to make free sessions work for both parties.

[Paul Simister]

Louise, good to see you've got plenty of comments on this interesting topic.

I think I may have been the person who encouraged you into doing these free sessions.

It's the pre-qualification questions that are essential. Since I introduced this system at the start of the year, it's made a big difference.

First it creates a hoop people need to jump through - people need to do something to qualify for the chance to book the session and doing it increases their commitment.

Second, it gets them to think about their issues and what they want.

Third, it gives you pre-warning of the issues and I've seen a big improvement in the quality of the sessions I give and how they convert.

[LouiseBJ]

Hi Nicky, good to hear from you again! It really is amazing the lengths we sometimes go to with these free consultations. And I've done the 'free travel' bit too many times to own up to ;)

Two things I did differently this time were, firstly to hold the consultations over the phone (and get them to call me), and secondly to send out some pre-call questions to be answered beforehand. This did seem to help somewhat.

Thanks for adding to the discussion.