Free Services to get business, is this a good idea?

Do you give away your services for free?

I often see people who are in a service industry want to give their services for free in the hope they will get clients. What happens when you do this?

People love something for nothing so when they see something being offered free they love to jump on it. These people normally would not avail themselves of your services and are only contacting you as it is free once you try to up sell they will not be interested. These people you will have in your database to market to but this is not quality people you want to be marketing to.

The other thing that happens is the people that would be interested in your services are no wondering why you are giving them for free. Do you not believe in yourself or your service to charge for it?

The people I find want to give away free services are people in the alternative health business. A lot of them because they have this gift feel they cannot charge for it.

What to charge for your services can be a challenge to figure out. When I was doing my NLP training they taught me to make sure you charged what you were worth and also to charge to get the clientele you really want.

So if you charge $10.00 a session then you are going to get many clients but do you want to work that hard. The smarter way is to charge what you are worth. It took you a lot of money and time to get your qualifications and your intellectual property is worth something to someone to help them change their lives for the better.

Economy is not usually a factor for good coach's and service people because most business need professional advice to make them more successful so during the harder times is when companies need the most advice.

If you believe in yourself and your service there is no reason to give it away free. You can give extra value, longer sessions, extra information and go the extra mile, this is what people want from you. Quality of service.

Free workshops and seminars to market your product might be something to consider from time to time but these should be short and timely and the people should be hand picked invitees. Do not send it out to all your database or open invite to all as again your will get people there just because it is free.