Guarantees With Oomph

The word "guarantee," like the word "free," has a specific meaning that the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general enforce.

Not long ago a real estate appraiser asked my opinion of his new brochure. "'Guaranteed on-time appraisals,'" I read out loud. "You mean that if it's not on time, the customer gets a refund?"


"No, I couldn't do that," he replied. "So many times things get delayed for reasons outside of my control."


"What do you mean, then, by 'guaranteed'?"


"Never mind, then. Strike that out. We couldn't give people their money back every time an appraisal was late."


He'd come close to landing his business in serious trouble. The word "guarantee," like the word "free," has a specific meaning that the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general enforce. Without any explicit qualifiers attached, "guarantee" means that the customer has the right to a 100 percent refund if the product or service disappoints them -- no "ifs," "ands" or "buts."


Further, because of the well-known strength of the word, a guarantee holds a powerful potential to increase business. I explained to the appraiser that an on-time guarantee would probably boost his business enough to cover the occasional refund. We then restated his guarantee to read, "We guarantee that we'll deliver your appraisal by the promised time, or it's free." He'd cover his flanks by being careful about the promises he made.


Like a sharp knife, guarantees can cut through a prospect's skepticism and fears. Handle them with care, but include them in your business's toolbox.

• Try a long guarantee. The longer the guarantee, in fact, the fewer refund requests a business receives. If your competitors offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, extend yours to 90 days, a year or even a lifetime.
• Depending on your business, consider a performance guarantee instead of promising a refund. For example, a termite-control customer might prefer your promise to make the problem go away, no matter what it takes, to getting her money back if the treatment doesn't wipe out the pests.
• If you can stand behind outrageous-sounding guarantees, go for it, as in, "We guarantee that your credit-card application will be approved by one of the listed banks, or we'll return every penny you paid us, plus $10.00 extra for your trouble." Since this company knows that only 4 percent of applicants get turned down, their offer motivates without bankrupting them.
• Try guaranteeing some aspect of your product or service rather than the main product or service itself. One advertising firm promises that all calls will be returned in less than one hour, or the caller receives a $25 gift certificate to a local restaurant.
• Act graciously and promptly when a request for a refund comes in. See what you can learn from the customer's dissatisfaction. Software returns were killing one catalog merchant until she wrote the catalog copy more carefully and tested it on her friends for clarity. Customer service research reveals that people whose complaints are handled well often turn into more loyal customers than those who never had a problem!

Galvanizing Buyers With Benefits

Most business owners are too immersed in their seller/provider point of view to switch easily to the perceptions of their customers. But once they get their marketing statements to pass the "So what?" test, readers of their revamped brochures, press releases and sales letters rise up and buy at startling rates.

A nutritional supplement seller says his product's uniqueness consists in its containing a "broad-spectrum, sustained-release antioxidant." A venture capitalist says his uniqueness is a headquarters in Vermont rather than Manhattan. A consultant attributes her uniqueness to delivering advice in three-hour rather than one-hour sessions.


All these claims, I'm sure, are true. But something essential is missing from each. What advantage does the buyer get from these peculiarities? Your uniqueness generates action only when you translate what's so about your business into a "So what?" for those interested in your product or service.


In traditional terms, you must translate the features of your business into benefits for the buyer to awaken skeptical, yawning prospects. This exercise is deceptively difficult and amazingly powerful. Most business owners are too immersed in their seller/provider point of view to switch easily to the perceptions of their customers. But once they get their marketing statements to pass the "So what?" test, readers of their revamped brochures, press releases and sales letters rise up and buy at startling rates.


Let's analyze the examples above.


Many nutritional supplements customers don't understand what's so great about a product being "broad-spectrum" and "sustained release" -- not to mention being confused what "anti-oxidants" can do for them. People who want to stay young-looking and healthy will respond better upon learning that this substance helps stall the aging process and prevent degenerative diseases, in a formulation that the body absorbs quickly and that keeps on working for a long time.


For the venture capitalist, being headquartered in Vermont means that he looks more favorably on some unconventional ventures than others, that he's more approachable than big-city competitors and that with low overhead, he can consider smaller deals than other firms. All of this, spelled out, would help attract the offbeat clients he envisioned when he moved to the country.


I'm not sure the consultant who delivers three-hour sessions has a rationale for why longer stints benefit her clients. If it led to faster resolutions, or deeper insights, or saved them money, those would be valid benefits. Asking "So what?" of her, I came up with "So nothing." The consultant invested a lot of energy and resources in believing that her uniqueness represents a marketing advantage. But until she can say what that is, her outreach to customers remains on shaky footing.


To perform this exercise yourself, divide a sheet of paper in half lengthwise and write each major fact about your product or service in the left-hand column and in the right-hand column, name the benefit of each fact. For instance, what's the benefit of Saturday and evening appointments? Convenience; clients don't squander personal job time for appointments during business hours.

Spelled-out benefits reach deep inside of people, where they feel their needs and become motivated to act. After completing this chart, you have the ingredients for marketing materials that generate telephone calls, appointments and checks in your mailbox.

Writing Testimonials: Magical Credibility Boosters

When it comes to forking over money to you, many people act like proverbial Missourians: hands folded across their chests, they demand "Show me!" You can't always mount a demonstration of your product or service, particularly at a distance. The next best thing: earning their confidence with testimonials.

Also known as third-party endorsements, or blurbs, testimonials boost your credibility because they move you from saying, in effect, "I'm great and you'd better believe it!" to "I'm great and here are real people who say so." They also help you convey elusive qualities about yourself and your business that don't easily come across on paper otherwise.


For maximum clout, testimonials end with a person's full name, his or her title where that's applicable, and either company name, preferably recognizable, or a city and state. To the extent that you water down or omit any of these ingredients, you weaken a testimonial's ower. "J.F., Santa Monica, California" is pretty weak. "J.F., California" is barely worth the ink needed to print it. Please don't give in to the temptation to concoct fake testimonials, which could amount to deceptive advertising.


Many people are under the impression that a testimonial should take the form of a complete, signed letter on a company letterhead. But because you're asking a lot of someone when you request one of these, you'll get many more usable quotes if you simply go after two sentences from each testimonial giver. Here are a few ways to do that.


If you happen to receive a wonderful letter of thanks, find the strongest two sentences to excerpt for your promotional materials. Feel free to combine several phrases and condense the wording, so long as you don't change the essential meaning. Many times the context is missing, and you need to supply it so an outsider understands the praise. If you do much more than change the punctuation, and add or omit little connecting words, get the writer's permission for the changes.


Over the telephone or face to face, whenever someone spontaneously utters quotable praise, grab a pencil or tape recorder, ask, "May I quote you on that?" and scribble it down. One approach that I've seen work well is to say you're collecting success stories from clients and would they like to be included? Putting it that way flatters clients and presents the blurb to them as a compliment rather than a burdensome request.


Or, distribute questionnaires at the time that people receive your product or service. Or send out a cstomer/client satisfaction survey. Either way, design the questionnaire or survey on a postage-paid card or a fax-back form, keeping it easy for them. Customer/client surveys also serve as a marketing tool by conveying the message that you care about feedback, and reminding people who were especially pleased with your work that they should call on you again. Some may rehire you when they return the survey!

Sad About Your Ads? Then Read This

Effective advertising begins not with a knee-jerk assumption that it's the only way to attract buyers, but with an analysis of the typical decision cycle with respect to what you're selling.

Here's a common lament from people promoting a small business: "I just spent $700 on advertising and got only two responses. Help!" And from those who've grown a business successfully I've heard: "I've built a half-million-dollar business without advertising. I guess it's time now."

Both of these comments derive from misconceptions about advertising -- as if it's the obvious and only choice for gaining new customers. Not at all. If something about your business is newsworthy, media publicity can bring you more credibility and visibility than advertising. If your product or service requires that customers trust you, personal networking, publishing articles that demonstrate your expertise and public speaking pay off better than advertising.

Effective advertising begins not with a knee-jerk assumption that it's the only way to attract buyers, but with an analysis of the typical decision cycle with respect to what you're selling. What is the way in which people typically realize that they need your service or product, and how do they usually go about making the decision to buy it? Given that, can advertising can reach prospects at a crucial point in their decision cycle and influence them to come your way?

For a service like plumbing, people usually decide to buy when a problem of crisis proportions has occurred. They find a plumber either by word of mouth or by sending their fingers walking through the Yellow Pages. Advertising plumbing services in a magazine or through sales letters most people would receive when they weren't experiencing a problem wouldn't work. Yellow Pages ads are the plumbers' #1 marketing vehicle.

For something like computer software, people generally have the leeway to investigate options over a period of time, and might look to magazines that cover software for leads and recommendations. Here advertising consistently in magazines read by your target audience makes perfect sense.

For products and services people may want but not urgently need, like self-help books, exercise equipment or vision improving surgery, attention-getting ads in magazines, newspapers and on television can create interest and with repetition, inspire people to act. However, this works only with a careful match between the product or service and the audience of your chosen advertising vehicle.

For advertising to pay off, avoid impulse buying of ads. When I ask people why they chose their advertising vehicle, I sometimes hear, "It seemed like a good idea" or "I subscribe" or "They offered me a good deal." Instead of this haphazard approach, be specific about the population you're trying to reach and investigate which options will actually reach that population at the best price. A reference work on advertising media called Standard Rate & Data Service, available at many public libraries, will be helpful, as will statistics in the media kits provided free by any medium that sells advertising.

Be strategic in your advertising approach and your new lament may be "The phone is ringing off the hook. Help!"

Five Brochure Alternatives

Often, something besides a traditional folded envelope stuffer does a better job of galvanizing prospective clients or customers. Consider five alternatives: the one-sheet faxable flyer, the portfolio approach, a substantive sales letter, an audiotape and a computer disk/CD-Rom.

Horse and... carriage. Love and... marriage. Thick and... thin. For many business owners, the connection between "start a business" and "create a brochure" is almost as strong and automatic. Often, however, something besides a traditional folded envelope stuffer does a better job of galvanizing prospective clients or customers. Consider these alternatives:

1. A one-sheet faxable flyer. If your leads typically come in by telephone from business customers, a one-sheet may be her best response to the request, "Send me your stuff." Near-universal now in the speaking and conventions industry, it typically includes in a nicely designed layout a specially screened photo, a list of offerings, a client list and brief testimonial quotes. If you have separate phone and fax lines, you can send this one-sheet through on your fax while on the phone with a prospective customer.
2. The portfolio approach. Common among high-priced consultants, this allows you to assemble a customized collection of ingredients for each prospective customer in a colorful pocket folder. For a hardware-store owner who is thinking of doing business with you, you include one set of price lists, company profile, press clippings and customer quotes, and another set for a stockbroker. A portfolio yields a high-class impression with a next-to-zero upfront investment.
3. Substantive sales letter. Try conveying your whole marketing message in a two- or three-page sales letter. Begin by making it clear why the recipient should bother to read the letter, end by explaining the action you wish the reader to take, and in between lay out step by step your best arguments why your prospect should do business with you. I've seen this technique succeed for photographic services, mortgages, lawn care, vacation trips, and many other items.
4. Audiotape. If you can convince someone to pop a tape in their car or kitchen cassette player, you may get their attention for a longer period of time than they'd normally spend reading. A pleasant, conversational human voice can go far in explaining a complicated product or service and persuading the listener that he or she is trustworthy. Your main hurdle here is the psychological distance from the mailing envelope to the tape machine. The cassette needs a cover letter or self-stick note persuading the recipient that a listen will be worth their time.
5. Computer disk/CD-Rom. Don't bother with this marketing method unless you have overwhelming evidence that recipients have the proper equipment to place the disk or CD in. And as with audiotapes, you need a cover letter explaining what it is and why it's worth their time. With those two bases covered, though, this can get through wonderfully to high-tech customers who love anything electronic and wouldn't have the patience for the same content printed out on paper.

Creative Offers Multiply Profits

If you're getting only a sluggish response for a product or service that people genuinely need, wake buyers up by spicing up your offer. I've seen losing propositions become winners with these kinds of changes, which in most cases cost you nothing:

1. Guarantees. With a strong, simple guarantee, you can overcome the doubts of people who have not done business with you before, and calm down worriers who don't act when they can think of too many "what ifs." The guarantee does not have to promise a refund. Someone hiring an exterminator service wants those darned critters out, not their money back. "We guarantee you'll be pest-free for a year, or we'll come back and spray again for no extra charge" is the thing to promise them. Direct-mail professionals tell us that a one-year guarantee sells better, with fewer refund requests, than a thirty-day guarantee, and a lifetime guarantee does even better.
2. Package deals. If you sell office supplies, you might think that folks going back to school know how to select what they need. Perhaps, but why not make things easy for them -- and more profitable for you -- by shrink-wrapping three spiral notebooks, two packets of pens, a pocket calendar and several semi-necessary items together in a Back to School packet? This often persuades people to spend more than they would on separate items.
3. The same principle applies to services, where you can mobilize people who shy away from hourly fees with fixed-price bundles: only $350 for a will and a consultation on estate planning. A name makes your bundle more appealing: $150 for the "Get Organized Special."
4. Premiums. Try rousing sleepy customers with bonuses -- spend more than $100 and receive a free whooziwhatsit, which isn't available any other way. One mail-order company offered a free booklet with any order from that catalog, and received 13 percent more orders from that catalog than previously. Similarly, frequent-buyer programs have now spread far beyond airlines, because they work. If convenience-store patrons have a card to buy nine cups of coffee and get the tenth free, they're more likely to consolidate their coffee buying rather than buying sometimes here and sometimes there.
5. Payment terms. When you let clients know they can spread payments out over two or four months, you'll snag some wavering over the money issue. But this sort of offer doesn't necessarily mean you get your money later. I know speakers and consultants who offered a 2 or 5 percent discount for payment in advance, and received their money a whole year before they would have otherwise!
6. With any new offer, test, test, test! You can't know any other way whether "Buy one, get the second one free" works better or worse than "Buy two and each is half price." Human beings are illogical creatures, and unexpected offers can turn this fact to your advantage.

Extraordinary Media Coverage for Ordinary Businesses

Media folks suffer an eternal hunger for distinctive material. When you supply a creative angle, you are helping the city editor who has to fill up a score of pages every day, the TV producer constantly on the hunt for fun and perky topics, or the column writer desperate for information nuggets. Here's how.

When I was looking for examples of publicity successes, a man named Chuck told me this story. During a visit with his brother, who owned a hardware store, the brother suddenly said, "Wait a minute," ran outside the store and returned a few minutes later breathless. "I saw the meter maid coming, and I don't want downtown shoppers to get parking tickets. So I put money in the expired meters. One of these days a reporter is going to come along and find out what I'm doing."


"Why not today?" Chuck responded, reaching for the phone and calling the city desk of the local paper. Within two hours a reporter and photographer arrived at the hardware story. Later in the week a sizable feature portraying Chuck's brother as a civic-minded store owner appeared in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Along with appreciative shoppers, the article quoted someone who argued that this renegade meter feeder was depriving the city of much-needed revenue. On the whole, though, it nicely enhanced Chuck's brother's profile in the community.



Here's how a coffee dealer -- an equally ordinary business -- achieved valuable media coverage. In Washington state, Clancy Donlin had launched a fax-on-demand system offering free information by fax about choosing and brewing fine coffee, as a service of his mail-order Coffee of the Month Club. After he mailed his press release to newspapers, the story appeared in 24 papers nationwide and led to Donlin's appearance on "CBS This Morning." Donlin told me that sales for his new company spiked $10,000 higher the month after all this happened.


Years before, I had used a similar strategy to get a media spotlight to shine lucratively on a new firm that would present writing seminars to businesses. Along with our seminar plans, my partner and I created a 900-number that dispensed tips on business writing. Our one-page press release about the "WordRight Lesson Line" got us onto page one of the Wall Street Journal, in its Business Briefs column. This clipping and others like it gave us tremendous credibility when we went looking for clients.


In these three cases, notice that what got each company media attention was not its central business purpose but something tangential and distinctive, something peripheral and unusual that caught reporters' eyes. Yet when the resulting stories appeared, the halo of publicity glimmered on the everyday aspects of each business as well.


Media folks suffer an eternal hunger for distinctive material. When you supply a creative angle, you are helping the city editor who has to fill up a score of pages every day, the TV producer constantly on the hunt for fun and perky topics, or the column writer desperate for information nuggets. Begin reading the papers and listening to the news each day trying to understand what gets coverage and why, and you too will soon wind up in black and white or on the airwaves.