Posted by Will the shoes fit? Should I take the risk and buy them online?
Is this the right car for me, especially with all the driving I have coming up?
Should I hire that firm, finally? Can I trust them?
These are some of the questions we ask ourselves when making a purchase. It is normal to have doubt and fear and question before we make a decision to move forward. It is normal to doubt and question. And normal for that doubt to prevent us from moving forward.
Yet many business owners seem to forget this when it comes to selling their own products, programs and services.
Think about your prospects . . .
What are they thinking before they pull the trigger to buy . . .
While you can and should address the major objections of your target market, it is impossible to know all of their concerns, fears or doubts.
So how do you address them in a universal way?
One simple answer — a guarantee.
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With a guarantee, you can remove the fears of your prospect by taking on all of the risks and removing the risk from them.
Take Nordstrom’s for example, for their infamous guarantee. It is not full of rules and regulations. It is focused on the customer.
What is your return policy? We handle returns on a case-by-case basis with the ultimate objective of making our customers happy. We stand behind our goods and services and want customers to be satisfied with them. We’ll always do our best to take care of customers — our philosophy is to deal with them fairly and reasonably. We have long believed that when we treat our customers fairly, they in turn are fair with us. We do apply returns to the tender it was purchased with. If no record of sale is available and we choose to provide a refund, your personal identification will be required to process the return and the return is provided at current price on a Nordstrom Gift Card.
What about returns for purchases at Nordstrom.com? Simply send your item back or bring it to a store near you and we’ll do our best to take care of you.
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Their return policy is clearly about making the individual purchaser feel comfortable making a purchase. There is no mention of time limits or packaging. Just care for the customer. And this allows the consumer to move forward without risk or fear.
And a guarantee works well beyond retail.
You can and should offer a guarantee for your programs and services.
For our signature program, offered after our free training elitedigitalgroup.com/getpaid, a program to produce predictable leads and sales every day for entrepreneurs and small businesses, we offer a 200 percent guarantee.
It goes like this:
“Now for our incredible guarantee that you won’t find anywhere else. It’s our 200 percent DOUBLE guarantee. The first guarantee is that if for any reason you decide you don’t want this program within 60 days, just give us a call or send us an email and we’ll happily refund your entire investment no questions asked.
“Second though, and this is a huge one: After that first 60 days, I’ll ride along with you for another 10 months. That’s 365 days total. And if you can look me in the eye (via email) and tell me you did your best to implement this program into your business and you didn’t at least double your money — that’s a 200 percent return on investment — you will get all of your money back. And you can keep the program. That’s right. You can keep the program.
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“So you have a full year to go through the entire program. To use all the templates, tools, scripts, pages and bonuses, and if in that 12 months you don’t double your money, I’ll gladly return your investment in this program.”
Now you are probably thinking, “What if people take advantage of us? We can’t afford to offer a guarantee like that.”
Here’s the thing. You can’t make the rule for the bad guys. The crooks will always be crooks. They will always find a way to lie, cheat and steal. No matter what the guarantee.
The guarantee is for the good guys — those whose fear will stop them from moving forward — but if you can remove it they will move forward. Your guarantee can remove their doubt and fear and be just the thing to help them overcome objections.
We have tested this time and time again and a good return policy always results in more sales in the end, even if your refunds increase slightly.
What kind of guarantee can you give to be that final nudge your prospects need in order to pull the trigger and say “yes?”