Is there a reasonable trial period for a CRM application?

Please remember that a trial period for a vendor's CRM software is a cost to them that involves the licenses, and the installation costs if it is on premise, or possible customization costs for both on-premise or on-demand applications. It is easier for an on-demand vendor to grant a trial because they are using a multi-tenant architecture, meaning they are driving multiple clients from a single instance so there is revenue production already going on with that instance and it already exists.

Any trial, should a vendor be willing, should be, out of respect for the vendor, small in scope (five users perhaps) and as plain vanilla as possible. Which probably wouldn't do you a lot of justice since you won't get a sense of how well the applications scale or how they function over a long time in a real ongoing way.

The other consideration for a trial is the environment that you provide should it be on premise. Keep in mind, if you don't like what you see, you have to remove it and that will cost something also.

Additionally, if you're asking for a trial, is it because you've already chosen the vendor or are you getting trials of multiple vendors' applications as part of the selection process? I would NEVER recommend the latter. It would screw your IT up way too much to do that -- and confuse the workforce.

In other words, while I think asking a vendor for a trial usage for a small group is fine, I think you're better off making an evaluation, seeing how the vendor's CRM applications or services work with businesses similar to yours and then making a wise selection, once you've identified which processes are important to your present and future.