Evaluation Copy of the Software

One of the key "try before you buy" techniques used by product marketers in the software industry is for a qualified prospect to download an evaluation copy of the software. The evaluation copy of the software would typically have a time period (usually a month) associated with it. Another form of trial version is when you want to release a "pre-production" version of your software for testing purpose to a select few customers. In this post, I will be talking about the first case. You already have general availability(GA) release of your software. You are making your software available to a prospect for evaluation purpose.

Some of the key questions to consider:
Should the evaluation copy have all the features of the commercial version of the product?
I am in favor of making all the features available in the evaluation version. The prospect could be conducting an internal proof-of-concept to compare your product with that of your competitors. You want to ensure that the prospect is aware of the key differentiators your product has vis a vis that of your competitors. By making all the features available, you also don't have to maintain multiple versions of the same release. Even if you don't make all the features fully available, you should make the prospect aware of their existence (e.g., with grayed out menu items). You should also propose to the prospect about doing a demo for these additional features.

Should I follow a different lead nurturing technique for a prospect using a evaluation copy? 
Downloading the evaluation copy indicates that the prospect is serious about buying. Make sure you do proper lead nurturing with the prospect, including having regular touch points. For "hot leads" (your lead management system should help here with proper lead scoring), you might consider some level of customer service support for the prospect during the evaluation period.

Is there a difference in approach between on-premise and SaaS offering?  
With a SaaS offering, the customer does not have to install the software. Since there is potentially "less work" for the prospect to try out your product you could make an offer for the evaluation copy earlier in the lead nurturing cycle than you might normally do with an on-premise only offering. If you have both an on-premise as well as a SaaS offering, it might help having a prospect try out the SaaS version. If you have quite an elaborate "product availability matrix" (e.g., support for multiple versions of different databases on multiple versions of different operating systems) and your evaluation copy does not have all the features of the product, having the prospect try out the SaaS version could mean that you don't have to maintain multiple versions of the evaluation software. If a prospect insists on trying out your product for a specific platform (e.g., Red Hat Linux), (s)he is quite serious about buying a solution. Go ahead and share a "GA" version.

Other things to consider?
Make sure there is an easy "migration path" from the "evaluation copy" to the "commercial copy" of the software. For example, once the prospect becomes your customer, it should be easier for the customer to migrate the "repository objects" (s)he created with the evaluation copy of the software to the version of the software they bought.

Your thoughts?