How to turn Free users to PREMIUM customer

📅 01 Mar 2025

🙂 Why CRM and SaaS products are leaving money on the table with free trial.

Many CRM companies are full with freemium and trial users,
but when it comes to generating a sales pipeline,
the results often fall short.

Users explore the product, but they don’t convert into enterprise clients.

It happened to me as well when I was working for Atoka, a SaaS Lead Gen company.

And in Atoka, like in many other companies who sell softwares, I found some common mistakes that prevent a successful Product-Led Sales (PLS) strategy:

1. Sending every lead to Sales without qualification.
Sales usually complains about quality of leads.
Not all self-serve users are ready to buy.
Poor lead qualification overwhelms the Sales team,
which may end up dismissing all product-generated leads.

An effective system must distinguish between users who fit the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and those showing concrete buying behaviors.

Most of the users who are approaching Hubspot CRM, just to make an example, are opportunity seekers. And not mature enough to run It PROPERLY.

2. Thinking email flow is enough
A generic email sequence won’t close an enterprise deal.

The best teams use sequences of at least 6-9 interactions across multiple channels (email, social, calls) to build trust and move the conversation forward.

I worked in pre-sales and my First Goal during the journey was understanding the customer needs COMPLETELY. Without overselling.

3. A Sales team that doesn’t know the product.
This Is the worst: if the Sales team cannot answer specific questions, the conversation will break down.

That’s why some companies are introducing the GTM (or Solution) Engineer, a hybrid role between Sales and Product that helps bridge the gap between advanced users and the sales process.

Rope of partners

Too many partners choose a technology depending on royalties, fees, market share and Total cost of ownership for the clients.

They don't really know the product capabilities. And clients usually pay the bills.

How to Implement These Strategies in Your CRM

Integrating product, usage data, and enrichment tools is critical to building a scalable sales process. With advanced sales, you can:

• Automatically qualify users based on fit and behavior

• Activate personalized nurturing and outreach sequences

• Sync data between Sales, Marketing, and Product for a unified view

Recently 2 CRM vendors askes me implement these strategies in their Sales process.

If you want to see how I can help your Company to craft a more effettive Sales process, please reply SALES to this email, and I’ll show you how to build a scalable and repeatable process for your team.

PEOPLE FIRST

HOW you can make the difference

I just received a review from my wife clinic > search “Anna Ascoli dentista Ancona” on Google Maps to see our 615 reviews.

Recently, I spent my time to build automations, to setup systems (e.g. Marketing Cloud Connect Toolbox) - See the screenshot in few lines.

I love automations, they can save your life, boost your productivity (if they’re doing properly), and conversion rates.

I usually take over job that is badly done by someone else, that took advantage from customers ignorante to build crap in their client’s systems.

I had the chance to think what really makes the difference.

1️⃣ Humans make the difference

See the reviews above!
People want to be understood.
And AI doesn’t really understand.
I mean, it listen, but people need the human touch.

They want their problems being solved.

Big secret behind my success:

• I spent a lot of hours and Money in learning LinkedIn

• I’m running a successful dental clinic w my wife. And I spent nights awake tò make It work.

• I built a premium community and I recruited +50 people last year, Just because I needed tò feel safe in case of layoffs.

• I built a great Personal Brand… because I needed a B-plan.

SECRET REVEALED -

No-one of these things make me feel successful.

I really feel successful when:

• I choose to say NO to a client I don't like

• I feel comfortable in asking money in advance

• I decide my priorities depending on paychecks

• I feel close tò my wife and kids

• others people really trust me and my recommendatios

👀GIFT and up coming events

Today I was supposed tò announce a great news 😭 I almost completed a course for AdWorld.

I am really proud of being part of that network as I found really cool people in there.

Including

• Rory Flynn

• Filipa Canales

• Seth Godin

And hundreds of famous creators.

CTA for you - do you want tò attend the First BIG event in Italy 100% focused on CRM?

Interested in having a speech in front of 300 CMO and Entrepreneurs?

Please reply “CRM strategy summit” tò this email.

Wish you a lovely weekend