If you decide to offer free consultations in your business, you want to be really clear on the return on investment. You want to be sure that by investing your time, even for free, you are still receiving something beneficial. Since the benefits are not monetary, you want to ensure there are plenty of other perks! 

I came up with a list of some benefits that you can prioritize when determining whether or not you want to offer free consultations: 

1. Building Trust

   Spending money is an act of trust. By offering free consultations, you can encourage people to engage with you without the monetary barrier holding them back. Potential clients get an opportunity to witness your expertise up close and build trust with you, and thus makes it easier for you to convert them into becoming a paid client. 

2. Experience & Experiment!

   Let's say that you want to offer one-on-one coaching and you don't have your first contract yet. You might offer free consultations as a way to experiment and get some experience coaching people one-on-one, rather than waiting on your first contract to gain experience.

   Maybe you already have one-on-one coaching experience professionally, but you want to start experimenting with different ways to leverage that experience in your business. Rather than waiting on your first contract, you can offer some free 30-minute coaching sessions for folks, so you can test out your new methods. You could ask participants to answer a few survey questions and provide you with a testimonial, which would be yet another return on investment. 

3. Building Your Audience

   If you’re trying to get your name out there and have as many people as possible know you, you might offer free consultations and even some free content. You can utilize the various social media platforms to go live and make a virtual connection with your audience so that more people know your expertise, know who you are, know what you're offering and what you do. You can even think of going live as a group consultation!

   Remember, building trust is what moves people through the process from just being a potential client to becoming a client. The more people that know of you and your business, the more they can connect you to other people who could potentially become clients. Word of mouth is a powerful, powerful tool!

Again, the most important factor when deciding whether or not to do free consultations is to consider your return on investment. 

Now, in the early stages of EJT Consulting I offered free consultations. I did that to help build my audience and to build their trust in me. As my business expanded and revenue grew steadily, I stopped offering consultations for two reasons:

1. Time

   First, I just didn't have enough time! I had more contracts and clients than I did in the early stages of my business. My business was growing and I didn't have the same amount of time to offer for free consultations. It came to a point where I would have actually been losing money by offering free consultations as they would take away from the time I could spend working on my paid contracts.  

   Basically, as my business grew, the return on investment for free consultations diminished. That is a beautiful place to be! There’s never going to be judgement from me if you’re offering free consultations. That’s a strategy best utilized early on to build your audience and trust, but remember that offering free consultations at the start of your business doesn’t obligate you to offer them forever. 

2. Attendance Rate

   So not only did I have reduced availability for consultations, the attendance rate was low. Only about 50% of people who signed up would actually show up to the consultation. Because it was free, the other 50% of people just weren't valuing the time in the same way they might have if they had to pay for the time. 

   That's just something I want to share with y’all to be aware of. This isn't to discourage you, but it was my experience of utilizing this strategy. As my business began to grow, the low attendance rate was an even stronger reason to phase out the strategy as I had gained a steady stream of income with paid contracts and clients.

If you want to learn more about how to secure your first client, enroll in my "Securing Your 1st Consulting Client" module. Click here to enroll!