Designing Guarantees that Eliminate Any Possible Barriers to Buying Your Product

Feb 1
09:40

2008

Bjorn Brands

Bjorn Brands

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Guarantees will boost your sales. The question is: what are the best guarantees for your product.

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Why Merchants Fear the Dreaded Guarantee

The same psychological principle of the fear of loss that causes buyers to hesitate on making a purchase causes merchants to often be reluctant to offer a guarantee.

What the merchant fears is having to act on this guarantee when a product is returned. A return is often a psychological blow for merchants,Designing Guarantees that Eliminate Any Possible Barriers to Buying Your Product Articles especially when selling their own self created products.

Rather than seize the potential of increased sales from offering a bold guarantee, merchants dread the likelihood of increased returns, and the feeling of rejection they might get from having to deal with such a return.

This feeling is almost always foolish. A bold guarantee may increase returns, but the overall increase in sales usually more than makes up for this.

A merchant starting out with no guarantee may make 50 sales a month and see 3 returns. By advertising a guarantee he may see his sales rise to 80 a month and see returns rise to 10.

His sales rate is up 60% but his return rate is now up over 300%! Is this is a wise decision? Yes! His overall sales are now 70 rather than 47.

One might fear that this scenario may cost the merchant his reputation due to increased returns. This is not true.

Customers will rarely hold a grudge against a merchant if a return is handled properly.

We have received emails from people who have bought our products and returned them, telling us it was not right for them, but also saying they would recommend it to their friends.

If you're afraid to make your guarantee bold - understand that part of your fear may be purely psychological and like the physicians in the Kahneman Tversky study, you're operating on a natural human instinct.

You are more concerned with the fear of loss (in this case the loss of a customer when he returns your product) rather than the anticipation of gain. This is an instinct you have to suppress to make a good business decision.

Create the strongest, boldest promise you can offer to your customers and publicize it everywhere.

Unless you have a genuinely rotten product you have nothing to worry about. Bold guarantees will create more overall sales, happier customers and yes, even fewer complaints.

How a Bold Guarantee Can Boost Your Sales

People hesitate on buying from you because of one of the following reasons:

· They are afraid they might make the wrong decision and spend money (a limited resource) on a product that won't help them satisfy their need.

· They are afraid the cost of the product is not worth the benefit.

· They are afraid the quality of the product may not be as advertised.

· They fear being "taken for a ride" - cheated by unscrupulous sales methods.

· Buyers purchasing a product for a business or organization fear that by purchasing the wrong thing they will look bad in front of their colleagues or teammates.

At the same time, you must understand that a motivated buyer WANTS to own your product, but these fears, all of them expected, keep buyers from moving forward with their purchase.

There is no better time to close a sale than during the emotional "I want it now" moment after a customer first reads your sales copy. Allowing the customer to hesitate will likely make you lose the sale.

This is where the guarantee comes in. A good guarantee will protect the customer against all 5 fears mentioned above. Take a look at the guarantee we offer for this book.

Return on Investment Guarantee:

You have a full 90 days to try all the tactics. If this product does not pay for itself by 500% within 90 days of purchase, just return it to us for a full refund.

Best in Field Guarantee:

Furthermore...we GUARANTEE that you will not find a better book, seminar, CD, or DVD on ecommerce at or below this price. If you do, simply return the book to us within 90 days for a full refund. We truly believe this book to be the best of its kind.

A guarantee effectively attempts to ease each of the customer's potential fears for not making the purchase. In addition to the usual "30 days to try and return" we expand this to 90 days.

Furthermore, we guarantee that the customer will not find a better a book, seminar, CD, or DVD on ecommerce. A customer looking to shop around will likely spend hours on the net researching various ecommerce products before settling on the right one.

We're guaranteeing that customers have found the right one and we'll allow a return and a full refund if they find anything better (they won't).

What could be fairer than that? A bold guarantee makes it easier for people to feel safe when they consider your offer. You give them a compelling reason to buy today without the fear of looking bad tomorrow.

You thus make it easier for people to buy from you and you'll find your profits increasing dramatically.

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