Risk Reversal is all about transferring the risk in the purchasing of your product or service from your prospect to you the seller. It’s perhaps the single biggest thing any business owner can do to increase sales without the need to reduce prices or alter the product in any way. Who would you buy from, the business that expects you the purchaser to assume the risk or the business that either shares the risk with you or mitigates it completely through the use of a strong guarantee. I’m going to guess the latter. In this blog we’re going to look at how to write a great guarantee to reverse the risk.
Why use guarantees in your sales process.
Regardless of what many businesses believe, a guarantee is more than a promise to return the prospect’s money. The right guarantee builds a relationship with your customers and inspires trust. It’s much more than a returns policy with strings attached. The guarantee is possibly the strongest sales tool a business owner can leverage. It tells the prospect that you stand behind and believe in your product, so much so that your willing to back it by giving them their money back. The guarantee is also the last final push to make a sale.
So why do so many businesses waste it?
Even if a product or service has a good and fair guarantee, it’s often only mentioned as a side note if then.
The Undisclosed Guarantee
What’s that you say, you don’t have a guarantee? Wrong. 99% of all small businesses already have a guarantee – but they just don’t know it nor do they publicise it. Let me explain. If a customer called to complain that the work you did was unsatisfactory, what would you do to fix the problem? Would you tell them, “Sorry, we can’t fix that for you.” or “Sorry, let the buyer beware.”? No, you would probably offer to redo the work or replace the product. You would do what it takes to make your customer happy. You see, you probably already have a strong guarantee but you don’t publicise it because you think that a bunch of your customers would come back and take you up on it.
If you’re already honouring an undisclosed guarantee you need to start publicising it. It’s a powerful hidden asset in your business that you’re not exploiting. If that’s the case why not shout about the fact that you can buy your product or service risk-free, because if anything did go wrong “We’d put it right”. To skeptical consumers, a solid hassle-free guarantee is a HUGE benefit—and we all know benefits convert potential buyers into paying customers.
The notion that your customers will take you up on your guarantee too often is a myth. It doesn’t happen. People are generally non-confrontational and don’t want to make a big issue of things (there can be a downside to that as well). If your customers are mostly satisfied now, there’s nothing to worry about. By offering a risk-free guarantee, you’ll simply call more attention to the quality you already have in place.
Now that you see the power of the right guarantee, let’s talk about writing a guarantee for your own product or service.
There are three basic things you can guarantee:
- Your product
- Your service
- The results
Guaranteeing a Product
A product guarantee is a claim that your customer will be happy with your product and that your product will be defect free. This is what some marketers call the “classic” guarantee. The longer time period your guarantee covers the more successful it will be. See step 2 for more about this.
Guaranteeing Your Service
To guarantee your service just look at Domino’s Pizza. They don’t guarantee you’ll love the pizza, just that you’ll get it hot in 30 minutes or less. There are lots of service businesses that could easily guarantee their service, for example, an accountant could guarantee that they’d process your accounts by your due date with the authorities, a telephone answering service could guarantee that they would answer the phone within 30 seconds. An I.T. business could guarantee that they will respond to your support request within 30 minutes of the call etc. There are lots of service businesses that fail to use this type of guarantee in their business, which is a surprise considering that their primary product is an experience-based through their service.
Guaranteeing Results
A basic template for a results guarantee is: “If you don’t get ____ results by _____ then you’ll get 100% of your investment back.” This is a common guarantee for fitness, diet products and training products because often the results are the only thing they can guarantee. In fact if you’re in any type of industry that is results based then this type of guarantee is a must.
Writing the Guarantee
Now that you know the different types of guarantees let’s explore how to write and develop your own guarantee. There are four main things your guarantee should encompass.
- A confirmation statement. That lets your potential customers know you believe in your product 100%. “We are so certain you’ll love _______,” or “We believe so strongly in _____’s ability to do _______,” are just a few examples of presenting your belief in the product.
- A Timeframe. Give the customer/ client a fair time period to try the product. There has been a significant amount of research that shows that the longer a customer has to try the product before sending it back, the less likely they will return it and ask for a refund. When you offer a short return period—such as a few days or weeks—people will be wary of your promises. They’ll either shy away from purchasing or they purchase with the intent to return. Some people even schedule refund requests on their calendar. Giving a longer guarantee period will make people more relaxed about their purchase and reduce refunds.
- An Action Statement. State what happens if the customer isn’t happy with the product.
- Will you exchange it?
- Will you refund their money?
- Will you fix their problem?
If you have terms and conditions—and you should—spell them out clearly and boldly. If you’re trying to hide your guarantee—or lack of one—in the fine print, maybe you should reconsider your guarantee policy.
- Finally, the most important elements of your guarantee are honesty and transparency. The goal of your guarantee is to build a trusting relationship with your potential customers. If your guarantee is too restrictive you’ll likely come across as a crafty salesman.
Use Magic Words to Create Powerful Guarantees
How you word your guarantee can make all the difference in the world. Power words and phrases significantly boost your sales and response rates. Here are few strong words and phrase that will bring some zing to your guarantee:
- Take-It-To-The-Bank
- Better-Than-Risk-Free
- You Can’t Lose
- Unconditional, Money-Back Guarantee
- Your Money Back, No Questions Asked
- I Personally Guarantee
- No Way That You Can Lose
- 30-Day Free Examination
- No-Questions, No-Quibbles, Money-Back Guarantee
- Iron-Clad Money-Back Guarantee
- 100% On-The-Spot Full Refund
- My 110% “Call me Crazy” GUARANTEE!
- Absolutely No Risk To You!
- 100%, no-hassle refund!
- My 110%, No-Fuss, No-Questions, “Take-It-or-Leave-It” PROMISE!
- No Pussyfooting Around And Get Every Single Penny Back GUARANTEE!
Here are some example guarantees.
Here are three examples that I think are heads and shoulders above the rest.
Sample Guarantee No.1 Jetstar Airlines.
Jetstar is an Australian Airline with a really strong guarantee. They compete in an extremely competitive field and one of the ways they do this is their unique 10 point guarantee.
Our 10-point Customer Guarantee
This Jetstar Customer Guarantee applies to all flights operated by our Australian, New Zealand and Singapore businesses (effective from February 11 2010, updated in July 2012). The commitments in this Jetstar Customer Guarantee apply in addition to any rights you have under our Conditions of Carriage, or under law.
- Your safety is our highest priority.
- We commit to provide the lowest fares with our ‘Price Beat Guarantee’ *
- Our team are always here to help, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
- We’ll let you know your choices if your flight is changed before you travel
- We’ll keep you updated and provide options if things don’t go to plan on the day
- You will get what you paid for
- You can have confidence in how quickly we will respond to an issue
- You can have confidence in how quickly we will refund your money
- We share your passion for protecting our environment
- We commit to the privacy of your personal information
You can read this excellent guarantee in full here https://www.jetstar.com/au/en/customer-guarantee
Sample Guarantee No. 2 – Yanik Silver – Instant Sales Letters
100% Better-Than-Risk-Free-Take-it-To-The-Bank Guarantee:
I personally guarantee that if you make an honest effort to try just a few of these proven sales letters in your business, you’ll produce at least 10 times your investment in profits within the next 60 days. That’s right, 10 times extra profits you wouldn’t have made if you didn’t send out these sales letters. You’ve got 2 full months to prove to yourself these templates really do work. But if you aren’t 100% satisfied, let me know and I’ll issue you an immediate, no-hassle refund right on the spot. Plus, the free bonus gifts are yours to keep regardless, just for your trouble.
Sample Guarantee No. 3. Ohero Fishing.
Our last guarantee type is another seriously bold one. The We’ll Pay the Competition Guarantee is always surprising to see.
Ohero Fishing uses this type of guarantee, in the following manner: “IF YOU ARE NOT COMPLETELY SATISFIED WITH YOUR PURCHASE, WE WILL BUY YOU AN EQUIVALENT FROM OUR COMPETITION!*”
This type of guarantee sends a clear message to the customer that your company is fully confident in its products or services. After all, who in their right mind would endorse the competition?
Can’t a Guarantee Put My Company at Risk?
If you guarantee your product then, yes, there’s a chance that at some point you’ll have to issue some invalid refunds. It’s just part of being in business. However, the benefits of a guarantee—increased sales and a strong customer relationship—far outweigh profits lost from the occasional unfounded refund. The only time you’ll run a significant risk with a strong guarantee is if the product or service isn’t strong enough to justify the price. Overcharging and under-delivering on your promises will cause higher refund rates. If your customers take advantage of your guarantee, you may want to consider your promises and possibly the quality of the product itself.
Customer relationships are built on trust and the quality of your products and services. Adding the word “guaranteed” to the end of a sentence isn’t enough. Give the details up front to build that crucial customer relationship and get more sales and more referrals.
Want help to develop your guarantee?
It’s ok reading about it, but the hard part is actually implementing a risk reversal strategy. I’ve helped hundreds of businesses develop such a strategy successfully, and the best part of it is that my fees are paid from the new strategies that bring you new clients and customers.
Want to know more, then get in touch. Either drop me an email @ info@johnolivant.com or call on +44 1482 408585 to book a 30 minute risk reversal audit Today..
Twelve intensive half-day meetings.
