Are you losing sales because of "risk"?
When it comes down to it – what holds someone back from buying from you? Usually the bottom line is fear. Fear of making a decision. Fear, in particular of making the wrong decision. Are they buying the right product or service? Are you reputable? Is this the best deal? Is it good value? And the list goes on. Those risks often stop customers in their tracks. Now imagine what would happen if you took that risk away — if you gave the potential customer a Plan B, a back up plan, a way out if you will – even if most will never take it.
A guarantee could be the solution
And that’s what offering a guarantee is all about – reversing or removing the risk from the customer and putting it back onto your business. Doing so offers you a huge opportunity to increase sales – assuming you’re offering a good quality product or service — what’s holding someone back if the risk is gone – that’s right — nothing! Better yet, guarantees help differentiate your business from your competitors and that helps prospects choose you over them everyday.
But how risky is it?
Think about it this way – guarantees can lift the response to your marketing by up to 350%. What would that mean to your revenue? Could you afford to suffer from one ‘bad apple’ in many to generate sales you wouldn’t have had otherwise? Yes.
And that’s because the risk to you even if you offer an outlandish, over the top, crazy guarantee is usually very low. In fact statistical research by Christopher Hart, author of Extraordinary Guarantees: A New Way to Build Quality Throughout Your Company and Ensure Satisfaction for Your Customers shows it’s only 0.1%. So while most people are thinking ‘I couldn’t offer an unconditional guarantee – people would take advantage of it’, in fact the opposite is true; sales opportunities are going begging!
Make it strong and shout about it!
For a guarantee to be effective it must be specific, rather than something generic like a ‘lifetime warranty’. Ideally try to create a statement that says ‘if this ..... then that’. That is, if this happens — for example our product fails, or our service does less than delight — then we’ll do such and such – for example; refund your money in full, immediately correct the problem, credit next month’s service to your account — to fix it. Once you have it put it on all your marketing material, encourage your team to talk with customers about it and create signage showing it off. Remember when you literally guarantee your customers will experience success dealing with you, you’ll be an important step closer to guaranteeing your own success and increased sales. (And remember this as well; when you have a guarantee you can charge more because of it AND it forces you to do things great — and to do great things.)
Focus on ‘4 Ways to Grow Your Business’ rather than just one. Then grow your business significantly.
Most business owners focus on just one way to grow their businesses — winning more customers or clients. You’ve heard it and probably thought it yourself – ‘quick, business is slow we’ve got to get more leads’, ‘if I could just win 10 new customers we’d have it covered!’ or ‘I have to do more advertising’. But that’s only part of the picture.
To leverage your investment in marketing, to generate the best results, to ensure the profitability and longevity of your business you must consider the ‘4 ways to grow your business’ thoroughly. Doing anything less means you’re missing out on invaluable opportunities to grow your business.
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