Mark Zeibarth, who heads up Bongarde Holdings the parent company that owns SafetySmartOnline, told me they've just done a successful first test of a sub sales tactic to organizations. It's kinda clever...

SafetySmartOnline's sales team cold call prospects with the following offer:

- Try out the $900/year site for 72 hours (3 days) for free

- If you like it, continue as a trial subscriber for just $399 for six months

- If you don't, cancel during the first 72 hours and you owe nothing. Cancelling is easy and can be done on the phone or via email.

Because many prospects don't have corporate credit cards, nor the authorization to use them for such an amount without permission,
Zeibarth's sales reps don't ask for a card. Instead they tell the prospect they will send a bill, as soon as the 72 hours are over.

If the prospect says ok, the rep then emails them their trial access password while they are on the phone together. Then 72 hours later the formal invoice is faxed and postal mailed to the now-customer.

Zeibarth says that so far roughly half of trials bail either during the 72 hours or immediately after when they get the bill.

However, the other half pay-up. These numbers are based on a small test though and may change. Plus he has no data yet on how these accounts will convert to the $900/yr site membership when their 6 month trial is over.

He said one other thing I found interesting, which was that although the SafetySmartOnline site is pretty good now, he's carefully planning out the next 3-5 years enhancements already. It's not enough to keep a good service going, you have to add on every year to keep subscribers happy and involved .... "even if you don't raise your prices."

Zeibarth compares subs sites to Microsoft Office. Each new reversion has more add-ons and improvements, but the price remains
roughly the same.