Increase sales? Guaranteed!

More often than not, people do not buy a product, not because they did not like it, but because they are not sure that they liked it. The best way to relieve them of this uncertainty is to provide a guarantee, even one that seems risky to the seller himself. During the Guerrilla Marketing conference, Alexander Levitas, an expert in the field of budget-free marketing and winner of the title “The Best Business Coach of Russia”, shared several ways of increasing sales tenfold using the guarantee system.

One way or another, the purchase presents a risk to the buyer, and if it is possible to eliminate this risk, consider that the sale on 90% is completed. How to reduce the risk for the client? There are several ways.

"Foot in the door" method: The essence of the method is to sell a small part instead of the whole and thereby inspire the buyer's confidence. For example, instead of a product worth 10 rubles, try to sell a product for 000 rubles, and instead of 1 - for 000. When the buyer is convinced that everything is in order with the product and you can be trusted, it will psychologically be much easier for him to make a more expensive purchase.

Method "Fire on yourself", version for extreme sports: To remove the risk from the buyer, you can transfer it to yourself. This method inspires strong respect for the seller and trust in the product, but at first glance it seems very risky. The main message is: “Are you dissatisfied with the product? Then we'll just refund your money! " - just like that, without filling out a dozen applications, additional return conditions and time limits - the buyer should be able to return the product even on the same day, even after five years. It doesn't seem to work for a personal item like shoes, but the example of clothing manufacturer LLBean suggests otherwise. The company was running a similar campaign, and a buyer who bought a hunting jacket ten years ago decided to check the honesty of the offer. He brought a battered and worn jacket to the store and was extremely surprised when he simply returned the money without further questions. Impressed, the man immediately bought several other items and told his friends about the company. But the very salt of the "fire on yourself" technique is not how much trust in the store increases, but how negligible the return rate will be. A valuable truth is that people are not as bad as we think - the vast majority of us do not want to behave badly. People do not steal in restaurants even when they have all the opportunities for this, and they will not unnecessarily hand over used goods. Therefore, the risk of using the extreme option "Fire on yourself" is rather justified.

Method "Fire on yourself", version for cautious: If you still fear shopper terrorism, try our full money back guarantee with a temporary “point of no return”. Give the buyer a period before which you can exchange the product without giving any reason: for example, a week or two. True, this method is more suitable for products with an expiration date, and in the shoe business it can be applied to shoe care products.

Method "We will also pay ourselves": If a client purchases a product or service and remains dissatisfied with it, the seller not only returns the money, but also pays the buyer himself - “for the competitor's product”. Naturally, the sold product must be out of competition, but the risk in any case is 1-2%. The method can be used relatively safely if the loss from the return is comparable to the cost of the product itself. For example, if a pair of shoes cost the seller $ 100, and fulfilling the obligations under this guarantee cost $ 200. If the product cost $ 30, the return rate of already 5% can turn into big losses. True, such a percentage is more likely something out of the ordinary, and it happens extremely rarely, therefore this method of guarantees turns out to be profitable even with low marginality.

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Better than no risk method: What could be better than the possibility of a free return or payment on the result? Only the same opportunity, but flavored with good gifts. Even if the buyer hands over the goods, the gift remains with him, so he risks only his time. Who will refuse such a deal?

To increase the effect: so that the guarantee “sells” many times more, it can be backed up by other types of guarantees. An inexperienced negotiator comes to negotiations with one option as with a "knife for a firefight", and an experienced negotiator has several proposals in the store in case one does not work. Therefore, if you have built a whole system of guarantees, the probability of a deal increases significantly. If you want to protect yourself, you can offer a guarantee not to all buyers, but only to the first hundred. After the experiment is successful, you can go to the second test level and provide a guarantee for the first 1000 buyers, and after that - only August sales (or you can choose any other time period). If sales have increased, implement a guarantee system on an ongoing basis. In general, we can say that guarantees work perfectly where there are many customers and the loss of 1-2% of them is fundamental. But even if there are few customers, the system of guarantees will attract new customers - and this is already an undeniable advantage.

The most pleasant thing about using guarantees as a sales driver is that the conversation about the price remains, in principle, behind the scenes, and the seller does not add the buyer to the "discount needle" - only guarantees, only full payment. Plus another pleasant side effect: when you use guarantees, the average check rises.

Only part of the article "Increasing sales? Guaranteed!" You can read the full version in Shoes Report # 108.