Guaranteed to Please

Buying is a risk for your prospects. When they sign an order for your product or service, they can’t always be sure they’ll get everything you’ve promised them. If your prospects won’t sign on the dotted line despite all your best selling efforts, you may need to reduce their buying anxiety with a guarantee. These guidelines should help show you when it’s wise to offer your buyers a guarantee – so that they’ll offer you a sale.

1) When you’re starting out. If you and your company haven’t been around long enough to establish a reputation for quality and service, you can hardly blame prospects for hesitating to give you their business. Many prospects simply can’t afford to assume the risk of ordering from an unknown and unproven company. Take away your prospects’ risk and fear by guaranteeing them everything you promise.

Several years ago, for example, then-newcomer Hampton Inn earned national attention and differentiated itself by offering a money-back guarantee to dissatisfied lodgers. To build your own strong customer base, offer buyers a guarantee. If you know your sale depends on your customers’ satisfaction, you may be more motivated to keep them happy.

2) When you need to overcome a “bad rap.” Companies that have made news for all the wrong reasons won’t have customers lining up to do business with them. When you’re trying to regain the buying public’s confidence in you, you’ll probably have to offer them something extra to take a chance on you.

Be honest about your company’s past mistakes, then tell your customers you want to make it up to them. Tell them that you won’t settle for less than their complete satisfaction, and that you’ll put it in writing. And learn from past mistakes! Take any measures necessary to make sure you don’t betray your customers’ trust again.

3) When you introduce a new product. The latest addition to your product line may be the best ever, but your prospects might not be convinced. Even if your company already has a good reputation, your prospects may still need the reassurance of a guarantee. Take the time to explain your new product thoroughly and why it’s worth its price.

If they still hesitate, guarantee them free service for the first year or tell them that if the product doesn’t live up to their expectations, you’ll let them apply the purchase price to other products or services you offer. Remind them of new products introduced in recent years that lived up to your company’s and customers’ expectations, and tell them they have no reason to expect less of this product.

4) When you’re selling sight unseen. Many of us wouldn’t buy a product we hadn’t seen or handled for ourselves, so many of your prospects might not want to either. Be sure company catalogs describe products in detail so your customers know what to expect.

Telemarketers should be well versed on their products’ benefits and features and should know how to answer any questions their prospects might ask. When you’ve thoroughly explained your product but still can’t get the order, tell your prospect that they may order on a trial basis, and if after 30 days the product proves unsatisfactory, they may return it for a full refund.

This guarantee will often make customers out of prospects who don’t want to assume the risk of buying but who do want to try out your product or service.

5) When you’re trying to win back a dissatisfied customer. Many customers will forgive a mistake if you assure them the problem has been solved, but they may not come back without a guarantee to protect them from another disappointment. Find out why your customer was dissatisfied with your product before, then do whatever it takes to make sure it won’t happen again. Tell the customer what you’ve done to solve the problem, and that you’d like the chance to redeem yourself.

Win your customer back by making an irresistible offer and backing it up with a guarantee. Even if your customer is reluctant to do business with you again, he may decide that despite your past mistakes, a guarantee still makes you a better buying risk than your competition.

6) When buying risk is high. The more your customers stand to lose on their buying decisions, the more reassurance they’ll need to make one. Cars and computers come with warranties, and your big-ticket items should too. Put yourself in your prospects’ shoes and ask yourself if you’d be willing to spend several thousand dollars – with no guarantee – for your product. Then ask yourself what kind of guarantee you’d want.

Design your guarantee based on what’s most important to your prospects. If they’re most concerned with reliability, guarantee them problem-free performance for a year. Each of your prospects may have different buying fears, so offer guarantees that help eliminate all of them.

7) When your margins are high. The higher your profit margins, the more you can afford to say, “Satisfaction guaranteed.” Even if your business is already doing well, consider the added advantages of offering a guarantee.

Companies that offer guarantees often inspire fierce loyalty and attract even more customers that want to do business with a company quality-conscious enough to guarantee its work. Even when you have to refund a customer’s money, you can use the experience to find out how to improve your product.

In the long run, any risk associated with offering a guarantee will be offset by the respect and customers your company earns for standing behind its product.

8) When you can accept returns gracefully. Don’t try to attract more customers with a guarantee only to alienate them when they use it. You can’t please all of the people all of the time, so if you can’t refund a dissatisfied customer’s money cheerfully, maybe you shouldn’t offer to do it at all.

No salesperson welcomes a return, but you can preserve customer relations and future sales by treating them graciously when they return something or demand the satisfaction you guaranteed.

9) When stop-losses are available. Guaranteeing a personal service carries greater risk to you than guaranteeing a product. If you feel confident enough to guarantee a service, make sure you can cut your losses before you complete the entire service. You might, for example offer to do half the job for a customer, and complete the job only if the customer is satisfied with what you’ve already done.

Take photos of previous jobs to show customers the quality of your work, or gather testimonials that show how pleased other customers have been with your service. Be tolerant of your customers’ demands – it’s much better to invest extra time and effort into a job to satisfy a customer than to lose the customer and any referrals that person might have provided.

When you offer a guarantee, not only do you help ease your prospect’s fear of buying from you, you send a clear message of confidence in your products and services. Any salesperson or company can claim that customer satisfaction is their top priority, but guarantees help you back up those claims.

To close more sales and attract more new prospects, tell your next prospects they can count on getting what they pay for – or they won’t pay.