How giving away free sessions can hurt your business and what to do about it

Let me ask you a question. Over the past year, how much of your time have you given away for free? If you really stop to work this out, you might be shocked at the hours involved. In professions like coaching, students are taught to give away free sessions as a way of marketing. This doesn't work for several reasons.

Let's face it; if you don't value your own time, no-one else is going to!

There are only two situations where you might consider giving your time for "free."

Number one is when you are still training or when you first qualify and want to do some sessions to get the experience and the practice. Even then, ideally you would negotiate some kind of fee, even if it's only 25% of what you plan to charge later. If you want clients who will value working with you and give you great testimonials and referrals, then ensure there is some financial investment.

The other exception is the "getting to know you" session of around 15-20 minutes where you talk to a prospect about what they want and how you can help. In these situations your aim is to discover whether you would work well together, not to give away a free session.

By giving away free sessions of your expertise you will attract all sorts of time wasters who have no intention of ever becoming a paying client - what my American friends call "looky loos" or "tire kickers." They are simply curious or they want a freebie.

And if you do a really good job in the free session, the other danger is that you'll inspire and motivate your prospect into thinking they can do this all by themselves. This happened to me several times when I was brand new in business. When they have already paid you for the session they are much more likely to continue working with you for a fee.

As soon as I started charging for a "trial" session, my conversion rate shot up to over 90%. Today it's closer to 100%. Charging for your introductory session means you only spend time with serious contenders.

"Free" clients will often mess you about, being late for appointments, not doing the work they signed up for and sometimes they will even disappear without an explanation. You'll maybe even start to think that it's your fault. Don't go there. It's only happening because you haven't charged a fee. Free clients are usually not so invested in the work and this can impact on your confidence when you are new in business.

So, if you're still giving away free sessions because that's what everyone else in your field is doing, try charging for introductory sessions. You may get fewer prospects, but you'll definitely convert more of them into paying clients. People value what they pay for. You know you're good at what you do, so why give it away for free? By all means run special introductory offers, but do charge something for them.

I haven't given away free one to one sessions for years now. What I do instead is give away free resources like this newsletter, the bonus reports and the information on my blog. I'm happy to invest that time because I do the work only once yet I can reach thousands of people with the same information.

Isn't this a great reason to start your own newsletter? But that's a topic for another article!

(c) Shona Partridge, Women Mean Business 2009