Business Leverage: Removing The Risk

This is article 5 in the series of articles designed to explode the growth of your business.

Make your customers feel safe when they buy from you

Whenever a customer makes a purchase, they take a risk that your product or service will not work.

Are your customers taking a risk when buying from your business?  If so, you need to work on removing the risk for your customers of dealing with you by giving them a ‘peace of mind’ guarantee.  By removing the risk from your customers of trying your products and services, you will increase your sales.

This is a HUGE marketing opportunity – don’t miss it in your business.

There are probably some questions in your mind like:

• how do I articulate my guarantee?
• what exactly should I guarantee?
• won’t customers take advantage of the guarantee?

Many guarantees in the marketplace have little power – they are dressed up in weasel words and have little power to influence the customer.  How you articulate your guarantee is therefore important.

Compare these guarantees:

• Your money back if you return the product within 30 days of purchase.
• Try our product for free for 30 days
• In addition to our 30 day money back guarantee, we are offering bonuses worth  £150, which are yours to keep for just trying the product or it might be better to say ‘These bonuses are worth more than £150, so even if you decide to get your money back, you’ll be £150 ahead just for trying our product.’

Will some people take advantage of you – yes, of course!  However, if you double your turnover as a result of giving a powerful guarantee, you can afford some losses to the small percentage of people who are dishonest.

To give you an example of how guarantees work, I joined a highly priced 7 week online marketing programme because they offered to return my money if I wanted to stop at any time in the first 30 days.  This guarantee persuaded me to purchase in circumstances where I wasn’t sure whether this programme was exactly what I was looking for – I can now try it risk free for the first four weeks.

The owner of the programme is not going to be hugely out of pocket (other than the bonuses on offer) if I call his guarantee because the learning is delivered online which brings me to another critical point – make sure your systems are in place to deliver on your promises.

There are two fundamentals to a really powerful guarantee: the promise and the guarantee. The promise can’t simply be a marketing tool.  It must be built into the operational structure and the guarantee must be so self-punitive that producing the promised result is the only viable option.

Here are some other features that you need to build into your guarantee:

• it should be unconditional i.e. only guarantee that which is under your control.
• it should be unique i.e. it goes beyond what customers expect
• it should be financially meaningful to the prospect
• it should be simple to understand – I like Federal Expresses guarantee – ‘absolutely, positively overnight‘ – simple, unconditional and powerful.
• easy and quick for the customer to collect on it.

So look again at your product or service offering – do you have a guarantee?  If you do, is it so powerful and compelling  that it is virtually irresistible to the customer?  If not, I suggest that you re-craft your guarantee until is.

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Tagged as: business development, Business Strategy, guarantee, guarantees, risk reversal