Notes for owners · Sales management
Sampling and trial orders: how to price, send and follow up
A sample is a sales step with a named owner, a feedback date and a next-order ask. This post covers what to charge, how to send it and how to chase the result.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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Send a sample only against a named person, a stated quantity and a date for the buyer's answer. Decide before it leaves what you will ask for when the answer is yes. Charge for it, or credit the charge against the first order, when it costs real material or machine time. A sample sent without those three things is not a sales step. It is stock given away.
What a sample costs you, written down
Price a sample by feel and you never learn what it cost. Work it out once, on paper, because the answer decides your policy.
| Cost line | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|
| Material | Actual weight or length used, including the waste at set-up |
| Machine or line time | Hours on the machine, at your own hourly rate |
| Set-up or tooling | Any die, mould, jig or screen made only for this |
| Packing and courier | The bill, or the rate card for the distance |
| Someone's time | The hours your engineer or supervisor spent on it |
Add them up and put the total in the sample note. Now you know whether sending ten pieces to a stranger is a small courtesy or a day's profit.
Three rules for charging
Set the rules before the next request, so you are not deciding under a buyer's gaze.
- Free when it is cheap and the buyer is specific. The buyer names the application, a likely annual quantity and the person who will test it.
- Charged, and credited back, when it is costly. The invoice shows the sample cost, and the first order carries a line crediting it. A serious buyer is unlikely to mind.
- Charged outright when there is new tooling. A buyer who wants a pattern or die made for a trial is asking you to invest. Agree who owns it and what happens if the buyer drops out.
Skip the credit idea for very small samples. Writing a credit note for a few hundred rupees costs more in paperwork than it saves.
Send it with a sample note
A courier packet with no paper in it gets lost on a desk. Put a one-page note in the box and email the same note the day it ships. It should carry:
- the buyer's name and department, so it is clear who tests it;
- the product, the grade or batch, and the quantity sent;
- what the buyer said they would check, in their words;
- the date by which you will call for feedback, agreed in advance;
- what happens if it passes: the trial order quantity and the price you will quote.
The last line is the one owners leave out, and it is the whole point. Without it the buyer may read your sample as an offer to supply at no cost.
Follow up on a calendar, not on mood
Put three dates in your diary when the courier is booked. They are the delivery check, the feedback date, and a second date in case there is no answer. Name one person on your team as owner of each sample, and when that person is on tour, someone else takes the entry.
On the feedback date, ask three things in order. Did it reach the person who tests it? What did the buyer find? What would they need to see to place a small order? If it passed, propose the trial order on the spot, with quantity, price and delivery. If it failed, ask what was measured, and write it down before you argue.
For the specific case where quality says yes and purchase goes quiet, our note on sample approved, no order goes through what to propose next.
An invented case: a woven sack maker in Surat
Take an invented unit in Surat making laminated HDPE woven sacks for fertiliser and cattle-feed packers. A feed company in Anand asked for fifty sacks. The owner sent them free, with no note and no name beyond "stores". Nobody tested them. Three weeks later the buyer said the sacks "seemed fine" and asked for a price for ten thousand.
The unit never learned whether the sacks had been filled, stitched, stacked or dropped. It quoted anyway. The buyer set that quote beside a rival's, which had been through a filling-line trial.
The next sample went differently. The owner asked who would fill the sacks and on which line, sent two hundred with a note, and agreed a call on a named date. Two faults surfaced that no price could have cured. The stitch was slipping on one side. And the packer stacked higher than the sacks were built for. The unit corrected both, sent a revised lot, and then proposed a trial order of a stated quantity against a purchase order. The packer ordered half that quantity and held back the bigger order until the stitch had run through a full season, so the sample cost the unit two hundred sacks and some months of waiting.
When to say no to a sample
Turn the request down when there is no application, no quantity and no named tester. Say: "Tell me what it will be used for and who will test it, and I will decide on the sample." Keep a short list of the buyers who answered, and ship to those first.
Also decline when the sample would be identical to a catalogue item the buyer can buy off the shelf. Offer the catalogue item at the standard price instead.
Pick the next request and fill in the note
Take the next sample request in your inbox and fill in the sample note before you do anything else. If you cannot complete the last line, the request is not ready to ship. If you want the policy set for your own product line, negotiation and closing support is the service, the manufacturing hub has more for factories, and you can tell us what you need.
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