This is Part II - Part I is below
5) Guarantee - why is everyone scared to guarantee what they sell? If you aren't confident enough in your product or service - find another product or service! People can do charge backs, can cause you grief with lawyers and can
spread more bad words about you than you'll ever be able to make up for. Negative customer feedback has killed many businesses - all
because they refused to refund for a sale gone bad.
"Oh, but my different is business, we can't do guarantees"
is a common excuse from those scared of guarantees. FIND A
WAY! Or put a non-performance penalty into print so that you
have to pay something (monetarily or other) if your product
or service does not stand up for the claims you make.
The funny thing is, the better your guarantee (the longer it
is and without any weasle-out clauses), the fewer refunds
you will get.
Long guarantees.
Multiple guarantees where you guarantee a number ofdifference aspects of your product or service.
Double your money back guarantee.
100%+ guarantee where you refund their money and give them extra for the time and hassle you put them through
If you buy a product that doesn't perform as promised - how
happy are you about it? Don't you want your money back? Or
at least some form of compensation for your time?
Then WHY are your customers to be treated any differently?
Put some form of guarantee in everything you do.
At Cares & White, we have performance guarantees built into
everything we do. When we meet and exceed expectations on
direct marketing projects, we expect to be very handsomely
paid. When we don't meet expectations, we don't expect to be
paid.
Imagine if more marketing people did that!
3 years ago I hired one of these so called internet marketing experts to help me get one of my sites working better and converting higher. After spending way too much money on him, my sales were DOWN by 50%! He refused to give me my money back, or even do what is ethical and help me until his promise was delivered on. Nope - he disappeared into the wind (with my money) - and you still see him all over the net claiming to be this great marketer.
Wonder how many other entrepreneurs he has scammed in the past 3 years? My guess, lots more.
6) Risk reversal - This is the guarantee on steriods. This is where there is absolutely no risk on the client in purchasing your product. So not only do they get their money back, but they also get bonus products or services to keep in lieu of their time wasted.
Jay Abraham masterfully used this technique 4 years ago to get me into his $5,000 a seat Marketing seminar. When I first heard the price of the seminar I was insistant that I would never put that kind of money into a 3 day seminar.
But I had expressed interest which put me into their marketing funnel.
Over the next few months I was deluged with free training calls, free ebooks and white papers, tons of sales material in the mail, testimonials of past students, phone calls from his team, and finally: a BIG box showed up on my door step. FILLED with books that were worth thousands of dollars if you were to buy them
The deal?
Show up at the seminar (with no money down). Attend the first day. At the end of the day, if I felt like it was not for me, I could walk out without paying for the seminar PLUS keep the $11,000 in books they had already mailed to me!
A tough offer to turn down.
I attended all 3 days and still, to this day, find ways to use those books to make my clients (and my company) more money.
So that $5,000 investment has been return many, many, many times over now.
Interesting note on this seminar. He had 650 people in the room... each paying $5,000 (do the math) and had only 2 people walk out with the free materials after the first day!
So by putting all the risk on them to overperform that first day, they made millions of dollars in revenues and build a solid list of big ticket buyers they can use for years to come.
Read that description of the process Abrahams group went through again - there are 10-15 different techniques alone there they used to get me in the door - can you find them all?
7) Real photos - not model photos. One of the most powerful forms of proof is great pictures of actual clients using your product or service. Always include a powerful caption below the picture (a caption that could stand on it's own as a subheadline or headline even).
Before and after pictures are the best. Look at late-night infomercials... they are absultely masters at using before and after pictures. Weight loss, living conditions, teeth color, appearance, success achieved, wealth attained - whatever it is you sell - there is a way to show before and after pictures (even showing pictures of you the entrepreneur or sales person delivering the product to the client - powerful proof).
Find ways to show real people in real situations using your real products or services - then use those pictures in every possible way.
This really fits in very well with the case study point #3. But, the case study is usually a longer description (1 - 3 pages) while before and after pictures are just that - pictures - with captions.
These 7 different steps will work incredibly well to help you close more deals and lower that buyer resistance.
Try one at a time and see how your market responds... then pick the one, preferably many of them, that generated buyer clients, and use them in every possible way you can.
The proof is in the pudding as they say!
About Me
- Jeffrey Summers
- I am the expert you call when you need to learn how to increase top line sales, lower your operating costs, increase your profit margin, hire and train better managers and staff, evolve your operation into more and better ways of doing business, buy or sell a restaurant, improve your service, engineer (or re-engineer!) your menu, market your business better and less expensively, keep yourself from going nuts because you have no life anymore, open more and better restaurants, don't want to have to give up your first born child to pay a consultant and have more fun! My mission is to enhance the quality of life for my clients by providing the best products and services to help them achieve their personal and professional goals. I take great pride in my clients, my company, my commitment to service and the products I sell. I am a recognized expert in the hospitality industry with over 24 years of success at planning and executing strategies for delivering dramatic results, a former "GM of the Year" for 2 major, full-service, franchises, an Award winning Multi-Unit Executive with 2 of the largest restaurant chains in the U.S., published author, husband and father of two.