Fear is one of the greatest barriers to a sale. Will I get what was promised? Will it work? What will my family, friends, co-workers, bosses 
think? Will the supplier stand by me when things go wrong?
This is especially prevalent in construction projects. What looks good on paper might not end up being what you really envisaged.
So when I heard, “If you don’t love it, I’ll rip it down and build it again” my first thought was, “That’s pretty gutsy” given we were talking about construction projects that could cost upwards of $1,000,000.
Were there any weasel clauses? None. The wording was straightforward. Love it or we’ll redo it.
As a mentor of ours is fond of saying, “If your underwear doesn’t tighten, your guarantee isn’t strong enough”. In other words, your guarantee should scare the heck out of you. This one certainly qualifies.
Strong guarantees do four things:
- You build trust, develop an excellent reputation and become a supplier of choice.
All purchase decisions involve an element of risk. You wonder what happens when things go wrong. Will the supplier stand by their product or will they try and weasel out of helping you. - You can charge premium prices. Strong guarantees prove your commitment to your clients, therefore you can charge more.
- Help eliminate buyer’s remorse – that niggling feeling of “Did I do the right thing? Should I have bought this?” A strong guarantee can alleviate these negative feelings as new buyers will go, “Well, if anything does go wrong, I have a long term, solid guarantee – so what am I worrying about!”
- You have to develop excellent products and services that truly deliver.
There are internal benefits as well.
To afford to offer such a guarantee, you must run a really tight ship. Processes and procedures need to be clearly laid out and followed.
Which means working through every detail of your processes from initial marketing, sales, delivery and final signoff to ensure they are fully documented and adhered to.
Your client communication must be first rate. All communication must be logged. You must have written evidence procedures that tell stakeholders they’ve got what they agreed to.
Now I hear some of you saying, “I couldn’t offer this type of guarantee and don’t have the supporting structures in place.”
But what if you could? How much more business could you generate?
Pretend you were offering an underwear tightening guarantee. What systems would need to be in place for you to do so?
Remember 80/20. Your job is to figure out the critical points in your process that must be done correctly (usually 20% of the full process) which gives you 80% of the result.
Pick those first and fix them. Get everyone on your team on board. Then work on the rest.
Once that’s done, go out there for real. You’ll never look back.
Here are a couple of examples our clients have implemented.
- A property investment firm which guarantees the amount you save on a property sourced through them will be more than their fee or your money back.
- A professional photographic printer who gives a 110% money back guarantee who’s never been called on it in 15 years!
Want help figuring out what your guarantee could be and how to implement it? Call Rashid on 0414 913 334 and we’ll help.
