# Trial Drop-off Interview Guide

For talking to people who signed up, looked around, and never paid.
From saasfeedback.ai — https://saasfeedback.ai/blog/free-trial-to-paid-conversion

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## Who to call

Sort your last 60 days of non-converting trials into four buckets before you
call anyone. The buckets are the whole point: each one has a different fix, and
mixing them produces mush.

| Bucket | Definition | What you are testing |
|---|---|---|
| **Never started** | Signed up, fewer than 2 sessions, no core action | Was the promise wrong, or the first five minutes? |
| **Started, stalled** | Hit the core action once, then stopped | Where did the effort exceed the payoff? |
| **Used it, didn't buy** | Sustained usage through the trial, no conversion | Value delivered, price or authority blocked |
| **Wrong fit** | Usage pattern nothing like your paying customers | Is acquisition selling to the wrong people? |

Call five from each bucket. Twenty calls. You will have your answer before you
finish.

---

## The opening

> "Hi [name] — you tried [product] back in [month] and didn't stick with it. I'm
> not selling you anything and there's no offer at the end. I just want to know
> what happened, because you're the person whose opinion I can't get any other
> way. Eight minutes?"

Non-converters are easier to reach than churned customers. They have no
relationship to protect and no sunk cost to defend. Response rates on this
segment routinely run higher than on cancellations.

---

## Questions by bucket

### Never started

1. "What made you sign up that day? What were you in the middle of?"
2. "What did you expect to see when you got in?"
3. "What did you actually see?"
4. "What did you do instead?"

*Listening for:* the gap between the acquisition promise and the empty state.
Nearly always a marketing or onboarding bug, almost never a feature gap.

### Started, stalled

1. "Take me through what you did after you signed up."
2. "Where did it stop being worth the effort?"
3. "What were you trying to accomplish at that point?"
4. "What would have made you push through?"

*Listening for:* the specific step where cost exceeded perceived payoff. Ask them
to narrate rather than summarise — "and then what" is your main tool here.

### Used it, didn't buy

1. "It looked like you got real use out of it — what were you using it for?"
2. "What happened when the trial ended?"
3. "Who else would have had to say yes for this to become a line item?"
4. "If the price were half, would you have bought it? What about a tenth?"

*Listening for:* whether this is price, budget authority, or timing. Those are
three completely different fixes, and the price answer is the least common of
the three despite being the one everyone assumes.

### Wrong fit

1. "What were you hoping this would do?"
2. "Where did you first hear about us?"
3. "What kind of work do you actually do day to day?"

*Listening for:* which acquisition channel is producing people your product was
never built for. This bucket does not need a product fix. It needs a targeting
fix, and it is the cheapest win in the set.

---

## The two questions to ask everyone, regardless of bucket

**"What are you using instead?"** — the honest competitive landscape, which is
usually a spreadsheet.

**"What would have had to be true for you to be paying us today?"** — the
counterfactual. Same question as on a churn call, and just as load-bearing.

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## Logging sheet

| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Bucket | Never started / stalled / used-not-bought / wrong fit |
| Signup source | Channel and campaign |
| Job to be done | In their words |
| Furthest step reached | From your instrumentation, not their memory |
| Stall point | The specific moment |
| Alternative | What they use now |
| Counterfactual | Their answer, quoted |
| Best verbatim | One exact sentence |

---

## Reading the results

After twenty calls, count the buckets rather than the reasons.

- **Mostly "never started"** → your problem is upstream of the product. Fix the
  landing page promise and the first-run experience. Do not build anything.
- **Mostly "started, stalled"** → one specific step is too expensive. Instrument
  it, then remove the cost. This is the highest-leverage fix in the set.
- **Mostly "used it, didn't buy"** → you have a packaging or authority problem,
  not a product problem. Look at who signs versus who uses.
- **Mostly "wrong fit"** → turn off a channel before you build a feature.

The failure mode is averaging across buckets and concluding "people want it
cheaper". That conclusion is what you get when you refuse to segment.