846 – Guaranteed to increase sales: Tom talks Guarantees

Episode 846 - Guarantees
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 846 The Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about guarantees. And of course, this is part of my copywriting series starting at episode 836. And anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. I highly suggest you go in one by one. There are only about five minutes each on copywriting techniques that are going to help you sell more. All right, check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. It's the longest running, most unique, and most successful ever in the field of internet and digital marketing. And if you like our training techniques, you can just go to screwthecommute.com/training we've got over, I think, 435 now training episodes out of our 850 or so podcasts. So check that out. And of course, I definitely want you to pick up a copy of my automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree.

[00:01:22] All right. Let's talk about guarantees and how they can increase sales for you. And one of the questions is do they increase good sales or not. All right. Because you could give a super guarantee to a bad group of people that'll just steal your stuff. But you don't want to do that. But in most cases guarantees increased sales. And you have lots of options when it comes to giving guarantees. Now, one type of guarantee is called a conditional guarantee. This means that someone to get the refund, they must do something with the product.

[00:01:54] So here's an example. If you try at least three of the modules and you don't see value of this powerful program, then contact support for a full refund. So they had to try three models to or three modules to get the refund. All right. So that's a conditional guarantee. Now generally this type of guarantee is not as powerful as an unconditional guarantee. But there may be times when it's most appropriate for you. Now before I go too far talking about guarantees, I have to tell you something that you're going to think that that doesn't make any sense at all. But I think you'll understand that when I explain the idea behind it. So here it is. In general, the longer the guarantee, the less refunds you'll have. The longer the guarantee, the less refunds you'll have. And that seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? Well, here's the thoughts on this. If you had a one day guarantee on something and you bought it, you'd totally focus on the purchase and make an immediate decision on whether to return it or not. Now, if you have a 30 day guarantee, you might purchase it and then get busy with life. And even if the product wasn't great, now I do want you to create great products. All right, don't get me wrong. But even if it wasn't great, people tend to not get around to returning things give a 60 day or longer guarantee, and many people forget they even bought the thing or or where they bought the thing.

[00:03:27] Then you also have lifetime guarantees. Now let me give you an example from my yard work. You know, outside of my house here, I bought a Razorback rake. That's a brand of outdoor equipment from I got it from Home Depot with a lifetime guarantee. And after, oh, quite a few years, the rake broke. And when I went to return it to Home Depot, they've discontinued Razorback. And now they carry DeWalt. So they said I had to contact Razorback to get the replacement. And a year later, the two pieces of the rake are still laying out in my yard. I just never got around to calling Razorback and they'd probably make me pay shipping since it's not in stock at Home Depot and I don't really know. But they they haven't had to pay up on their guarantee whether, you know, whether they charge shipping or not. I don't know, because I never got around to calling them because I'm busy and it would take me an hour to find their number, call them, get the thing together, pack it up and all, you know. And so it just hasn't happened. Now, I don't want you to think I'm ragging on Razorback. Their tools are excellent, and I would buy another one because it lasted longer than a lot of the junk ones I bought, even if it didn't have a lifetime guarantee. My point here is I bought because of the lifetime guarantee, and they haven't had to respond or spend any time or money responding to my broken tool.

[00:05:02] So if it's appropriate for your product or service, you must consider the length of your guarantee. And I'd say lean towards longer. Now. Some guarantees make you pay return shipping and some charge a restocking fee. These tend to reduce sales, but again it may be appropriate for many products. I mean, even Harbor Freight has a restocking fee on some products to discourage returns on products they're going to have to discount. And they could be very expensive products, and they got a discount to try to get rid of them or put them in the bargain bin. But speaking of harbor freight, it's not a bad model to follow for many products, and I spend a ton of money there. I say their method must be pretty good, since the guy that founded it's a billionaire with a 400 foot long yacht. All right, so I think he knows what he's doing. I've done other episodes about how fantastic they are to do business with. Even if some of their tools are junky, then you have phrases that are frequently added to guarantees, like no questions asked, no risk to you. We take the risk, we take all the risk and many other ways that are said in guarantees that encourage you to buy, because if you don't like it, you can get your money back. Now, I've had products where I say no guarantee or the guarantee is void.

[00:06:31] Once you take the consultations that are included with the thing and in very various fashions, that's worked like a charm. It's made the product more exclusive. And also, if you just want to buy the product, great and you'll have a guarantee. But if you take my personal time up help and you personally screw you, screw your commute to my phone line because you're taking my personal time. And there's no question that, you know, I know more about it than you do. You know, especially with the speaking product that I was talking about after my 3000 speeches and millions and millions of dollars of sales. So so I say, no, you know, once you take advantage of the consultations, the guarantees no longer good. You agree that the product's good. All right. So that's, uh, you know, another variation, but you have to really, you know, have some cojones to, to do that kind of guarantee. And, you know, but I, you know, I got the backing to be able to say those kind of things. Or if you don't, uh, it might be a little risky for you to, to do that. People wouldn't trust you or couldn't corroborate the fact that it's going to be great to talk to you. Now, another thing, fake guarantees are going to ruin your reputation. I want after one piece of shit guy who told his new assistant she told me this to never check the 800 number voicemail, and when she asked him why, he told her well, the refund period would run out before they could ever contact us.

[00:08:00] And what a piece of shit that guy is. So pay some attention to your guarantees and you can most likely increase sales guarantees. I don't know of any study that's ever said they've reduced sales, unless you did it on purpose so that you didn't have to deal with the refunds. And that's it can be common in very small operations where they can't afford to be able to to service you and take the product back and have to either scrap it or resell it at a low price. I can see that. But if you want to grow, uh, you know, get some money build up to handle those, those kinds of returns, and then you'll sell more and you'll be able to grow faster. So pay attention to your guarantees. And the entire in depth course I have is copywriting 901. And keep in mind, copywriting is a number one skill I've identified in my entire business career, now going on 47 years from 1977. Okay, I've been in business long before the internet, but copywriting is the one that can make you the most money the fastest. All right, there we go. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'll catch you on the next episode. Remember, screw the com slash. 836. We'll start all these short copywriting episodes, and every one of them can make you more money.