Online Business Systems Ep. 7: How To Craft A Powerful Guarantee To Convert More Leads & Prospects To Clients & Customers

Why Your Business Needs A Guarantee To Be Successful

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Summary

In this episode of Online Business Systems Podcast we will learn why your business needs a guarantee to get more sales and clients. We will learn how other businesses have used guarantees to increase revenues and become a success. Then, to top it all off, we will learn how you can formulate a powerful guarantee that helps your business succeed.

Introduction

Welcome to Zeilhan’s Podcast where we believe in the power of using the internet, software, and technology to achieve online business success.

Today you are listening to episode 7 of the Online Business Systems Show and we will be looking at the topic “ How To Craft A Powerful Guarantee To Convert More Leads & Prospects To Clients & Customers “.

To start off today’s episode I want to read you an excerpt by Christopher W. Hart posted in the Harvard Business Reviews from 1988. It’s an article on why you should use service guarantees in your business.

Later in the episode, we will look at what guarantees are and why you need them to get more clients. We’ll also learn why businesses almost never offer service guarantees and why you should.

Let’s check out that article from the Harvard Business Review.

Very quickly before we get started I’d like to introduce myself.

I am your host today, Jabez Roberts, and I am also the Founder and CEO of Zeilhan Systems Limited. I will be your guide for this episode of the Online Business System.

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Transcript (To Be Edited)

Jabez Roberts: Welcome to Zelhans podcast, where we believe in the power of using the Internet, software and technology to achieve online business success. Today you are listening to episode seven of Online Business Business Systems and we will be looking at a topic how to craft a powerful guarantee to convert more leads and prospects to clients and customers. To start off today’s episode, I want to read you an excerpt by Christopher W. Hart, posted on Harvard Business Reviews website from 1988. It’s an article on why you should use service guarantees in your business. And as you know, there are product guarantees as well, and they are a little bit easier to come by. For example, if the laptops I’m planning to buy an expensive laptop, like $5,000, and the guarantee would be something our warranty would be something like if the laptop stops working within two years, you can go ahead and bring it back, get your refund, get a new product, and that’s how it would work for a product. I also want you to keep in mind warranties as well. Warranties and guarantees are a little bit different, but we’re going to group them together for this episode of Online Business Systems for the very simple fact that they do the same thing that we’re trying to achieve from going through this episode. By the end of this episode, you should know what a guarantee is, the benefits of using a guarantee in your business, how you can formulate and use the best guarantee for your business and for your clients. In addition to looking at what guarantees are and why you need them to get more clients, we’ll also learn why businesses almost never offer service guarantees and why you should. Let’s check out that article from the Harvard Business Review. When you buy a car, a camera or a toaster oven, you receive a warranty, a guarantee that a product will work. How often do you receive a warranty for auto repair, wooden photography or a cater dinner? Virtually never. Yet it is here in buying services that the assurance of a guarantee would presumably count. Most. Many business executives believe that by definition, services simply can’t be guaranteed. Services are generally delivered by human beings who are known to be less predictable than machines, and they are usually produced at the same time they are consumed. It is one thing to guarantee a camera which can be inspected before a customer sets eyes on it, and which can be returned to the factor for repairs. But how can you pre inspect a car, tune up, or send an unsuccessful legal argument or bad haircut back for repair? Obviously you can’t, but that doesn’t mean customer satisfaction can be guaranteed. Consider the guarantee offered by Bugs Burger Bug Killers, a Miami based pest extermination company that is owned by SC Johnston. This article that I’m reading right now is from the Harvard Business Review, like I said, and it was posted in 1988. So keep that in mind as we go about looking at the numbers and specifics. The information is still valuable because the reason I took most of the information for the episode from this article is because it’s very clear that and you’ll see it as we discuss what happens in Dell and with our guarantee, it’s very clear that the premise is the same as what we’re discussing. And even though the media has changed in terms of a lot of more people are using online and everything like that, the benefits are still there because people are customers. And customers still have the very same fears that they had in the past. They still have them know they might take a different form, but the root cause of the fear is still the same. And I’ll tell you right now, before we continue, is that they don’t want to spend money on a bad purchase. And as a business owner, an entrepreneur or a salesperson, I want you to sympathize with your buyers and customers and clients. Because you have to keep in mind that a lot of times if, let’s say, you’re calling on a company to sell some product or service or training software or even training, you have to keep in mind that money is limited. And so opportunities to use and to invest money, if a company uses money to buy your product or service, they’re depriving themselves of the opportunity to use that money for something else. And that’s called opportunity cost. This is so important. If an employee makes a bad purchase or investment, they can lose their jobs and have their career go pretty much downhill. So try to sympathize with your leads and clients and customers, even when you’re calling on them to make a sale or a purchase. Continue with the article, but that doesn’t mean that customer satisfaction can’t be guaranteed. Consider the guarantee offered by Bugs Burger Bug Killers Bbbk, a Miami based pest extermination company that is owned by SC and Johnson. Most of Bbbk’s competitors claim that they will reduce pests to acceptable levels. Bbbk promises to eliminate them entirely. Its service guarantee to hotel and restaurant clients promises one, you don’t owe one penny until all pests on your premises have been eradicated. Two, if you’re ever dissatisfied with Bbbk services, you will receive a refund for up to twelve months of the company’s services, plus fees for another exterminator off your charts for the next year. Three, if a guest puts a pest on your premises, bbbk will pay for the guest’s meal or room, send a letter of apology and pay for a future meal or stay. Four, if your facility is closed down due to the presence of roaches or rodents, bbbk will pay any fines as well as all lost profits plus $5,000. In short, Bbbk says, if we don’t satisfy you 100%, we don’t take your money. How successful is this guarantee? The company, which operates throughout the United States, charges up to ten times more than its competitors and yet has a disproportionately higher market share in its operating areas. Its service quality is so outstanding that a company rarely needs to make good on its guarantee. In 1986, two years before this article was written, it paid out only $120,000 on sales of $33 million just enough to prove that its promises aren’t empty ones. A main reason that the Bugs Burger Guarantee is a strong model for the service industry is that its founder, Alberga, began with the concept of the Unconditional guarantee and worked backward, designing his entire organization to support the no Pests Guarantee. In short, he started with a vision of error free service. In this article, I will explain why the service guarantee can help your organization institutionalize superlative performance very quickly. Before we get started, I’d like to introduce myself. My name is JBZ Roberts, and I am the host of online business Systems Today. I am also the founder and CEO of Xelhan Systems Limited. How would you like to increase your revenues by 10% to 30% over the next twelve months while we increase your revenues, wouldn’t it be awesome if we could increase your profits by 10% to 30% as well? Then while we increase your revenues and profits, how about we take away all the stress, anxiety and frustration of setting up and running a successful online version of your business? We’ll keep it open. Twenty four seven manage and market your amazing new online business so that you never have to worry about getting your next lead, sale or client again. Introducing the Zelen Online Business Suite, where we take your business online with a website that churns out more leads, more clients, and more sales for your business. 24/7 added to your conversion. Optimized Online Business is a twelve month online marketing strategy to help your business reach its goals whether it is more leads, more profits, or even to expand in the next twelve months. Managing marketing and helping to scale your online business is your team of website development experts, experienced online marketing professionals, and accomplished online business development strategists working for you 24/7 so you have time to do the things you love and spend with the people you care about. The Zelen Online Business Suite works for every business of every size and niche and was designed and engineered to help you and your business succeed. We are so confident we can help you that we are giving you a 30 minutes Online Business Success Strategy session valued at $1,000 for free so that we can show you what your business needs to succeed online. During this session, you will meet with an online business strategist from our team to discuss the problems holding your business back from success, the fears you have around taking the next step forward, frustrations you feel with getting your next sale or client, and the goals you would like to achieve in the next twelve months. Your online business strategist will take everything from there in helping you set up a successful online business version of your business that is fully managed, marketed and secured by our team working for you. Visit onlinebusiness zelhan.com to learn more. Or go to zeland.com and schedule your free 30 minutes Online Business Success Strategy Session and our team will take care of the rest for you. Our first ten signups will get the chance to save 10% on the entire year of their subscriptions. That’s a minimum of $6,000 saved for the entire year and more than one month free. Set up a free consultation@zeland.com to get started and claim one of ten discounted spots. No obligation to buy, just tell us where you’re struggling and our team will show you what you need to change to be successful. That’s like, we are paying you $1,000 to sit down with us for 30 minutes so that we can help your business succeed and help you achieve your dream life. Visit onlinebusiness zelhan.com to learn more or go to zelahan.com with the link in the description or show notes and schedule your free 30 minutes Online Business Success Strategy Session and our team will take care of the rest for you. Conditions Apply what are guarantees and why do they matter? According to Entrepreneur.com, the definition of a guarantee in entrepreneurship is that it’s a pledge, usually in writing, given by a company to any customers, that something is of specified quality, content, benefit, or that will provide satisfaction or perform or produce in a specified manner. I guarantee also outlines what will happen should the buyer not be satisfied with his purchase. And I like the way that they’ve gone about explaining this because it’s pointing out the benefit. Really what we want to understand today is that guarantees are meant to be used, and warranties as well. Remember, as we go into this episode, we want you to take a thought on warranties while you think of guarantees. Guarantees and warranties are meant to help to reduce the friction and the fear and uncertainty between your customer and your business. You’re trying to sell a product or service to a customer, a client or a prospect. You have to remember that they are also fearful of making a bad purchase. And a bad purchase can be innocent or malicious. It can be innocent in a sense that they really did not know, or the salesperson really did not know, that this was not a good fit for them. And this can happen because of like a poor discover session and it can be malicious because there are malicious people out there trying to scam others. Keeping that in mind, we have to look at the five elements of an effective guarantee. And according to Harvard Business Review, it says that there are five elements of an effective guarantee. The first is that it’s unconditional. Second is that it’s easy to understand and communicate. The third is that it’s meaningful. The fourth is that it’s easy and painless to invoke. And the fifth is that it’s easy and quick to collect on. Let’s look at what these mean out a bit more. Remember, at the end of this episode, we want you to be able to sit down, grab a pen, grab a paper, have a nice drink, and come up with an effective guarantee for your business. An effective guarantee that will convert more leads and more prospects to paying customers and clients, and also position your business as a reliable and trustworthy source of help to your ideal clients and customers. Five Elements of an Effective Guarantee unconditional this means this is the first element. It’s unconditional. This means that the best service guarantee promises customer satisfaction unconditionally without exceptions. It simply means that it’s very straightforward and to the point in the sense that there are no conditions. You’re either happy or you’re not. You’re either satisfied or you’re not. The product did what it was supposed to do or it did not, or a team was committed to the cause or we weren’t committed to the cause. The article also says if a company cannot guarantee all elements of its service unconditionally, it should unconditionally guarantee the elements that it can control. For example, at Zelhan, what we’ve done is we give our clients or prospective clients and clients a guarantee that we will do everything that we say we would do to help their business become successful online. And if we don’t do what we say we would do, you’re going to love this. Then we’re paying them everything that they’ve given us, will pay them back, and we’re also going to pay them for wasting their time. Toward the end of this episode, I’m going to break down our guarantee here at Zelahan and help you to understand how we arrived at that guarantee and how it’s worked so far. Element One of an effective guarantee is unconditional. Element Two of an Effective Guarantee easy to understand and communicate, a guarantee should be written in simple concise language that pinpoints the promise. Customers then know precisely what they can expect, and employees know precisely what’s expected of them. Five minute lunch service rather than prompt service creates clear expectation, as does no pests rather than pest control. This is so important that I’m going to read it again. It says that customers then know precisely what they can expect, and employees know precisely what’s expected of them. This is a critical part of running a successful business, as you would have come to realize. The disconnect between value the client or customer gets and what the employee thinks is acceptable means the difference between a billion dollar company and a million dollar company. And it’s really very simple. Whenever the client and the employer are on the same page in terms of what is expected, you can expect that clients will walk away more comfortable. Even if your product or service is not of superior quality, build or reliability. Reason is very simple in terms of that you don’t want to make a promise that you can’t keep. The mantra always here is that you should under promise and over deliver. I hear this everywhere I go, and I know that you’ve heard it as well. A guarantee can help to clear up this confusion between your clients, your customers and your employees, because it highlights very clearly and succinctly, if done properly, what is expected of both parties. Now, the third element of an effective guarantee is that it’s meaningful. A good service guarantee is meaningful in two respects. First, it guarantees those aspects of your service that are important to your customer. It may be speedy delivery. Example bennegan’s, a restaurant chain, promises 50 made service. Remember, this is the 1980s, so I am reading from the article. Every now and then I’ve made notes and I’m commenting. So I will share the link to the article in the comment section below or in the show Notes. You can click on the article and read for yourself. But I am also sharing my information and experience and commentary while I read beneath. Remember, the restaurant chain promises 50 minutes service or you get a free meal at lunch. So during lunchtime you get your service, you are served within 15 minutes or you get a free meal. And this happens during lunchtime only when many customers are in the area to get back to the office, but not at dinner, when fat service is not considered a priority. So Benneganz has looked at what is important, at what time, and they’ve crafted a guarantee for the most important part of the day lunchtime, when staff inevitably comes to the restaurant to have something to eat versus going home. And they’ve crafted a guarantee that will help to remove all the hassle and fear of customers or diners, in this case, having something to eat in a short window that they have for lunch. And also, employees understand that during lunchtime we don’t take things out later than 15 minutes because, well, it’s a free meal. And who’s going to pay for the free meal? The late waitress? Our waiter? Second, a good guarantee is meaningful financially. It calls for a significant payoff when a promise is not kept. What should it be? A full refund? An offer of free service the next time? A trip to Monte Carlo? The answer depends on factors that the cause of the service, the seriousness of the failure, and customers perception of what’s fair. A money back payout should be large enough to give customers an incentive to invoke the guarantee if dissatisfied. The adage let the punishment fit the crime is an appropriate guide. At one point, and I think they do this even today at one point, Domino’s Pizza promised delivery within 30 minutes or the pizza is free. And we’re seeing at one point they even said delivered in 30 minutes or you get $3 off because you’ll find that if the payout for the warranty are the guarantee remember, we’re discussing guarantees to service business, especially because those businesses are the ones that have guarantees criminally under used, let’s put it that way nicely. But you can think of product guarantees and you can think of warranties as well. Fourth element of an effective guarantee is that it’s easy to invoke. A customer who is already dissatisfied should not have to jump through hoops to invoke a guarantee. And the point being made previously about Domino’s Pizza and the 30 minutes late or the pizza is free or you get $3 off, you have to remember that a lot of times people will not take the guarantee if it seems too ingenious or disadvantageous to the business. Remember, you’re dealing with people, you’re not hooligans. And the idea is that if the guarantee is one that draws fear, guilt or concern into your prospect before they make a purchase or become your client or customer, then it’s doing the opposite of what you want it to do, which is to comfort them and make it easier, more frictionless for them to do business with you. That’s the reason for the guarantee that we’re working on. The fifth element of an effective guarantee is that it’s easy to collect. Customers shouldn’t have to work hard to collect a payout either. Element four is easy to invoke, which means that a customer who’s already dissatisfied shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to invoke a guarantee. The dissatisfaction is only exacerbated when a customer has to talk to three different people, fill out forms, go to a different location, make two telephone calls, sending written proof of purchase with a full description of the events. Wait. For it in a reply, maybe even wait 20 days, go somewhere else to see someone, to verify all the proceeding facts and so on. And the idea being made here in element four in terms of easy hope is that if the guarantee seems too hard to get the benefit of, then it’s pretty useless because it’s like no protection. This step right here where you have to talk to three different people, fill out five forms and go to a different location is the opposite of what you want from a guarantee. If you think about it, you wouldn’t want to try to get the benefits of this guarantee unless they’re paying you a million dollars for having a bad taste in sweet or something. And the idea here is that because you wouldn’t go through the hurdle of getting the guarantee, it’s doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to do, which is make it easier for you to do business with the business that is offering a product or service. It goes hand in hand with what we discussed prior when we say that if the payout is too extravagant or enormous, it might drive fear, concern or guilt into the customer or client that would benefit from the guarantee, which also is inviting more negative emotions. To put it simply, that is a friction or a hindrance to doing business. What you should not do in your guarantee don’t promise something your customers already expect. Don’t shroud a guarantee in so many conditions that it loses its point. And don’t offer a guarantee so mild that it is never invoked. A guarantee that is essentially risk free to the company will be of little or no value to your customers and maybe a joke to your employees. Going back to the second element of an effective guarantee that is easy to understand and communicate. And because it’s easy to understand and communicate, it tells your customers exactly what they should expect and employs what is expected of them. If the guarantee isn’t a good one in terms of the payout being too little, it’s promising something that customers or clients already expect. Are there too many conditions? Like, for example, we looked at in the previous one, we had to talk to five people, go to a different talk to three people, go to a different location, fill out five forms, make a call, everything like that. Too many conditions. Then it’s not easy to collect. That’s also what’s happening here. And it loses its value. And because it loses its value, it may be a joke to your employees, and a joke to your employees means that it’s an offense to your customers. You have those two working and in, and your costs are going up because employees aren’t doing the work that they’re supposed to do and they’re not doing it effectively. And you’re getting less clients or customers because, well, employees aren’t doing the work that they’re supposed to do. According to Alex Hormones in his book 100 Million Dollar Offers, the single greatest objection for any product or service being sold is a risk risk that it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do for them. Therefore, reversing risk is an immediate way to make any offer more attractive. Now, why do guarantees work, though? According to Harvard Business Review, a guarantee is a powerful tool. First, it pushes the entire company to focus on customers definition of good service, not an executive’s assumptions. Second, it sets clear performance standards, which boost employee performance and morale. Third, it generates reliable data through payouts when performance is poor. Fourth, it forces an organization to examine its entire service delivery system for possible failure points. And this is a huge one. Lastly, it builds customer loyalty, sales and market shares. Number one, guarantees forces you to focus on customers. Knowing what customers want is a sane quote unknown. In offering a service guarantee, a company has to identify its target customers expectation about the elements of the service and the importance they attach to each. Lacking this knowledge of customer needs, a company that wants to guarantee its service may very well guarantee the wrong things. For example, British Airways conducted a market study and found that its passengers judge its customer service on four dimensions care. One, care and concern, such as employees friendliness, courtesy and warmth. Two initiative, for example, employees ability and willingness to jacket a system on a customer’s behalf. Three problem solving, which is figuring out solutions to customers problems, whether unusual or routine, like multiplied airline tickets. And four, recovery going the extra yard when things go wrong to handle a particular problem, which includes the simple overlooked step of delivering an apology. Point one says that it forces you to focus on your customers because you essentially have to know what is important to your customers in order to give them a guarantee that’s going to give them peace of mind, make it easy for them to do business with you, love you, trust you, and actually work with you, handing you their hard earned money. And I gave the example of what British Airlines found was important. Here, though, it says that British airway managers confessed they hadn’t even thought about the second and fourth categories. First, they realized that if they hadn’t understood these important dimensions of customer service, how much thought could their employees be given to them? And that’s where management comes in. If management isn’t making clear what is expected and required of employees and setting the standard for clients and customers to understand what they should get, what is their right, then we have a drop off in service quality, and we might have a bit of incoherence in terms of what clients and customers see as acceptable service. I remember we looked at this previously. The other reason why a guarantee works is that it sets clear standards. For example, it says that it says that a specific unambiguous service guarantee sets standards for organization. It tells the employee what the company stands for. BBB case stands for pest elimination, not pest control. Federal Express stands for absolutely, positively by 10:30 a.m. Not. Sometime tomorrow, probably. And it forces the company to define each employee’s role and responsibilities in delivering the service. Salespeople, for example, know precisely what their companies can deliver and can represent that accurately. The opposite of the common situation in which salespeople promise the moon and customers get to own a dirt. And this happens a lot. You’ve been in a meeting with a salesperson and he promises you that everything will be okay and you’ll get the best product or service on the market. And when you realize what you paid for, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. It’s a classic situation where the salesman oversale. It’s like he’s willing to do or say anything to get the sale. Once he gets your money, he packs up, he leaves, and you never hear from him again, except that you do and you regret hearing from him or the company because the service is so poor. That is something that happens quite often. A poorly constructed guarantee can cause a situation. An example is that mitchell Frumstein, president and CEO of Manpower, says at one point we wondered what the marketing impact would be if we dropped our guarantee. We figured that our clients were well aware of the guarantee and that it might not have much marketing power anymore. Our employees reaction was fierce, and it had a lot less to do with marketing than with a predator in their work. They said the guarantee is proof that we are a great company. We are willing to tell our customers that if they don’t like our service for any reason, it’s our fault, not theirs, and we’ll make it right. I realized then that it guarantees far more than a single piece of paper that put customers at ease. A payout that creates financial pain when errors occur is also a powerful statement. And you’re going to learn more about that when we discuss Zelhan’s payout system for our guarantee. I touched on it a little bit recently. A payout that creates financial payment errors occur is a powerful statement to employees and customers alike that management demands customer satisfaction. Pretty much. It’s like putting your money where your mouth is. What better way to say that you stand or show that you stand for what you say you do? Reason three why guarantees are effective. A guarantee generates feedback really quickly. I guarantee creates the goal. It defines what you must do to satisfy your customers, and it also tells your customers what they should expect from you in terms of your product quality or service, which will tell them what they need to see or to get to be satisfied. Next, you need to know when you go wrong. A guarantee forces you to create a system for discovering errors, which a Japanese called golden nuggets, because there are opportunities to learn. Knowing what’s wrong with your business and your system helps you to understand what needs to be fixed in order for it to be more efficient, make more money, serve more clients or customers, and be more profitable. It’s not all about marketing and business negotiations in the boardroom trying to strike up a bigger deal, trying to sign a new client. It’s a leaky basket all over again. If you have a basket that’s been filled with water or a barrel that’s been filled with water, pouring more water in more quickly will not get the barrel filled any faster. If the bottom of the barrel is nonexistent, meaning there’s a giant hole in the bottom of the barrel, and the same situation here, using a guarantee, will let you find well, that well, maybe, just maybe, there is a big hole in the bottom of the barrel, and I need to fix that before I try something in your business. That means that if there is an area of your business that is having issues so you might promise excellent customer service, but realize that there is no customer to service because there is a drop. Off between the point when somebody indicates or prospect indicates that they want to become a customer and the point that they actually get an offer to sign to start using your product or service that might be just a sales issue because the onboarding isn’t properly done. And you want to iron that out before you try to run ads or set up a website or advertise your business. Because there is a glaring hole in how your business operates and serves as clients or customers. A glaring hole, like a hole in the bottom of the barrel that, if exacerbated, can be disastrous for your businesses short and long term health. Reason number four why a guarantee helps your business. A guarantee forces you to understand why you feel, and we’re touching on this quite a bit in our previous point, it says that in developing a guarantee, managers must ask questions like these what failure points exist in the system? And that is what I was given an example of in conjunction with .3 that says a guarantee generates feedback because you’re looking at where things could go wrong and why they go wrong. If failure points can be identified, can their origins be traced and overcome? A company that wants to promise timeless service delivery, for example, must first understand its operations capability and the factors limiting that capability. I love this point very much because it helps you to be realistic in what you’re offering. Bbbk offered zero pests. That simply tells us that they had a way to eliminate every single pest on the compound in such a way that no patron, no diner, or no, I wouldn’t say tenant because they were hotels and restaurants, right? No guest at the hotel would see a pest. And if they did see a pest, the company Bbbk would pay for their stay and the future stay. The powerful thing about that guarantee, that coincidence, what we just looked at, is that it’s also telling customers just how good you are. And it points back to what Manpower’s CEO found out when she considered removing the guarantee from the service because employers were saying no. That’s laughable. If we remove the guarantees, like saying we’re a so and so company, that guarantee proves that we’re a brilliant company and we will go above and beyond to improve the service quality of our clients. I think their customers at this stage for that business. Sorry. And that’s something that’s also happening here in that guarantee forces you to understand why you feel, because if it’s costing you a lot of money every time someone requests you to honor you a guarantee in making a payload or on some claim that wasn’t upheld, then it’s burning a hole in your pockets. And that’s a clear concern that you would want fixed. Having that knowledge of what’s wrong and how to fix it is pivotal in improving the profitability of your business. Like I said, it’s not always about more. It’s just about better before more. That’s something Alex Harmose spoke about as well. The fifth reason why a guarantee works is that a guarantee builds marketing muscle. Perhaps the most obvious reason for offering a strong service guarantee is its ability to boost marketing. And we touched on this a little bit as well. Encourages consumers to buy a service by reducing the risk of the purchase decision. And this goes hand to hand with warranties as well. And it generates more sales to existing customers. By enhancing loyalty, you’re showing them that you’re all about everything that you say you’re about. You’ve put your money where your mouth is. In the last ten years, looking at manpower again, manpower’s revenues, and it says 86. So this would have been from 1978 to 1988. Seen the articles posted in 1988. It says over the past ten years, man post revenues of mushroom from $400 million to $4 billion. That’s marketing impact. I remember that they had a guarantee we were going to see or thought of removing it. Employees said that, no, we are an amazing company, that’s why we have this guarantee. The guarantee is proof that we are such an amazing company. This number 400 million to 4 billion, it goes hand in hand. What I’ve been seeing, the clear distinction understanding what is expected by a client from an employee and the employee and a client both having that understanding works wonders. And the quality of the service that you deliver, because there is no incoherence or a drop off in terms of what is expected of each party in the agreement. At Zelhan, we believe in the power of the Internet, software and technology to make it easier to start and run a successful business online. We know that it takes more than running Facebook or Google Ads for two or three months to attract the right clients or customers for your business. We also know that as a business owner, you don’t want to be bogged down with learning the latest online marketing trends, the best way to set up a Facebook ad, or deciding what to do before or after your newest Google Ad campaign goes live. For it to be successful, we want to make it easier for you to attract more clients and customers, increase revenues, build a brand that your ideal client knows, loves and trusts, and ultimately live your dream life. That is why we have removed the guesswork out of marketing your business online by designing and engineering a twelve month marketing strategy tailored for your online businesses success. Introducing Zelan’s Online Marketing System over the next twelve months, our marketing and Business Development strategy teams will work together with you to help your business succeed. We do this by settling on smart goals to achieve over the next twelve months for your business. A smart goal can be as simple as increasing revenues by 15% in the next twelve months, getting 20 clients in the next year or even growing top line revenue to $500,000 in the next twelve months. After we set and agree on the smart goals to achieve, our team will design and engineer a unique and helpful marketing system that will give you the highest chance of success and achieving your goals. Every month we will have a consultation with you to let you know how we progress on helping you achieve your goals. We will help you understand what we worked on last month and the results, what worked, what didn’t work, what our conclusions are, and how best to move forward strategically in the next month. By doing this, we ensure that our goals are always aligned with yours and that of your business. Your business is getting the results it needs and you know that your Zillow and marketing team is working 24/7 doing meaningful work to support your businesses success. After twelve months, we will have our final consultation where we say our goal, set in January 2023, was to increase revenues by 15%. It is now in January 2024 and we have successfully increased your revenues not by 15%, but by 25%. Our approach moves the guesswork out of getting your next sale or client and make your online business success inevitable. As a result of a marketing strategy tailored for your business, prices start at $3,000 per month. That is as low as $100 per day for your own professional and experienced marketing and business strategic teams, working twenty four seven to ensure your business succeeds. But for a limited time, our first ten signups will get a chance to save 10% on the entire year of their subscription. That’s more than $3,500 in savings for the year or more than one month. Free set up a free consultation@zellhand.com and click Get Free Consultation to get started and claim one of ten discounted spots. The link will be posted in the description of this video. If you are watching on YouTube and a show notes if you are listening to our podcast online, go to Zelahan.com and click Get Free Consultation to set up a free consultation with our team to get started and our team will handle the rest for you. Also remember that our first ten signups will get the chance to save 10% on the entire year of their subscription. That’s more than $3,500 in savings for the year and more than one month free. Conditions Apply we know what our guarantees and how they benefit your business. Let’s quickly look at the types of guarantees. Time based guarantees. 100% satisfaction guarantee. You hear that on the TV all the time. So much that it rolls off its tongue. Free trial, low price guarantee. That one is also popular. Results based guarantee. First purchase guarantee, lifetime Guarantee and Try Before You Buy guarantee. So time based guarantees. Time based guarantees is the most popular guarantee you’ll find offered on almost all products sold online. It’s a popular guarantee due to its clarity and require a little explanation. If for whatever reason, your customer isn’t satisfied with your product or service within the 30, 60, 90 or even 120 day period, then they are freely entitled to a full refund with no questions asked. And this is something that is important for you to remember because you want to make it as easy as possible for clients and customers to do business with you. Let’s say that the average service period is two years. Give them a time based guarantee for six months or a year. That’s what we do at Zillah and I’ll get into that. The second type of guarantee is a 100% satisfaction guarantee. With the 100% satisfaction guarantee, you are guaranteeing a result which further increases the credibility of your products and services. Remember though, at the start of the episode we said that it should be something that you can control and you should also remain rooted and grounded in reality by knowing what your company can do at peak performance and what it cannot do as well. So it is 100% satisfaction guarantee. If you don’t craft it rather well, you will get burned. When you get burned, don’t come crying to me. The warnings were there and I repeat them again. You’re effectively saying that if your solution doesn’t offer the satisfaction it claims the customer is free to get a full refund with no question asked by the vendor. It’s a great way to increase trust in the eyes of your customers. Of course, this all assumes that the solution you’re offering actually delivers on the promise that yet again, is alluding to the point that you must be aware of what your business can and cannot do. The third type of guarantee is a free trial and this is very different from a warranty, which is why I say you should look at the warranty and guarantee from the perspective that they are reducing friction to making a purchase. So, free trial, although not a guarantee as such, the free trial is generally common with software companies, can also be used with subscription based businesses. If you’re a newly established business with a credibility and offering a software service or a monthly subscription that you know will provide tremendous value for your customers, this is something that you can use to start getting clients and customers, clients seeing customers or users seen as software. I love this one because I use a lot of software and at times you will be searching online for a software, trying to find the pros, the cons, the reviews, have an understanding of what to buy from a list of five different options. You can bypass all that, all that struggle, all that searching, all that uncertainty and fear and go ahead, sign up, get a free trial, seven days, 28 days, see if you like it, love it or hate it and decide to spend on it or not. And that’s a cost to the company at that stage saying to you that we are very confident in the product that we have and if you’re over at your client you will like it as well. So we are so confident that we’re willing to give it to you for free. And that’s what’s happening here with the free trial. Like previous guaranteed types discussed earlier, it also builds trust and confidence in your brand which would otherwise be very difficult to build without if you’re a new business. The free trial is one that new businesses can use a lot to start getting in clients and customers or users. Think about it and see if it applies to your business, especially if you’re a startup because remember, most businesses don’t use service guarantees and you having a service guarantee is a huge advantage for your business. The fourth kind is a low price guarantee and this one is really easy. This guarantee is great if you’re in a highly competitive market and want to offer the most competitive prices you’re trying to sell more. It’s traditionally used in conventional shops that are in direct competition with each other and would often find it on market stalls and streets containing restaurants and shops that offer the same services or products. This is particularly popular in businesses certain appliances, electronics and other household items .5 we’re not going to touch on low price. It’s very easy to understand it. What’s lowest price guaranteed? Zero five results based Guarantee this guarantee is a great way to assure the customer of the results they could potentially receive if they go through your product with a guarantee of their money back within a certain period if they don’t achieve the resulted promises. I think this could be like exercise equipment or a software tool that’s supposed to carry out some function. This type of guarantee can be used in health and fitness products or markets that promise a specific result. Like I was saying, if you have a digital video course that contains a step by step process of achieving a result then a results based guarantee can potentially be the guarantee to use for your business. 6th type of guarantee is a first purchase guarantee and I think this one is because when you have a client or a customer is either to sell to your current client or customer and it’s cheaper than it is to sell to a new client or customer. So first Purchase Guarantee this is when you want to get new clients or more new customers. One of the key things you can do in your business is to make a good first impression. With a first purchase guarantee, you’re offering first time buyers the opportunity to replace their product with another product in your catalog that is potentially a better fit for what they’re looking for. This is commonly offered in retail based stores where losing money and instead offering customers added free vouchers of equal value to the initial purchase or an item replacement if this product does not work, we allow you to take something in return for free. It’s good though, because what it’s doing is saying that they are willing to give you another product if you don’t like our service, if you don’t like the service, but it’s also allowing them not to lose the money that they would have to pay you if the product or service that you initially got didn’t work. And it’s also giving them a second chance to serve you and impress you and make you a lifetime customer. It’s very tricky and it’s very clever if you ask me. The 7th kind is a lifetime guarantee. This type of guarantee can be a little tricky and will require a thorough explanation of what it involves in order to explain what the customer is entitled to throughout the lifetime of their purchase. In most cases, a lifetime guarantee usually contains conditions of what a customer is able to do with a product in order to be viable for the guarantee. With appliances or electronics, for example, a guarantee may be null and void if the customer dismantles the product, like for example, your iPhone. If your iPhone isn’t working, this might have changed recently. You were not allowed to hire a technician to get a screwdriver and open your iPhone and try to fix the screen or anything else that might not be working. This is the last type of a guarantee. This is the Tribe before you buy guarantee. Similar to the free trial guarantee. A try before you buy product guarantee provides the customer with the option to try the product before deciding to keep it or return it to the manufacturer. I think it’s Cars.com that company that does the advertisement carfax with the yellow and brown fox, I believe, or the brown fox with yellow clothes, the company that Stefan Curry does advertisements with. They have a policy, I believe. I think it’s them that says you get to try the car free for 30 days and if you don’t like it, you can bring it back. That is something that’s a try before you buy a guarantee. It says that this type of guarantee is great for clothing and selling cars, apparently, and would typically find them in popular online retail stores or in commerce. You never know if you’re a small retail store and would like to get an edge over your competition when starting out, a try before you buy a guarantee will be a great opportunity to get you started. Those are the eight types of guarantees. We’re going to repeat them right up quickly time based guarantees 100% satisfaction guarantee free trials, low price guarantee, results based first purchase, lifetime and trial before you buy guarantees. All different types of guarantees. At this stage, I’m going to tell you a bit about zelhan’s guarantee. In front of me is a proposal I sent over to a prospect, not yet a client, and what we’re working on is a major ecommerce project. The client will remain anonymous. The details of the work will remain anonymous. I’m just sharing with you the project details so you can understand how this guarantee fits in. So it’s an ecommerce client, a major project, very big project, mind you. And what we’re looking at is to work for up to a year putting a system together for their online business success. Here’s what the guarantee says. It’s ecommerce. Remember, ecommerce based on performance will do some marketing as well. The guarantee says if after eight weeks we haven’t fulfilled our end of the bargain in getting the job done and delivering your new website, then here’s what we’ll do. The reason why we have eight weeks is because the design process, from design to development to delivery for an e commerce project, is about eight weeks. Based on this magnitude, we want to ensure that a customer feels confident that we will do what we say we would do to ensure that the project is up in eight weeks. Because eight weeks is already a long time to be paying money for something that is supposed to help your business grow, correct? So we say that if after eight weeks we haven’t fulfilled our end of the bargaining, getting the job done and delivering your new website, then here’s what we’ll do. We will work for free for an additional eight weeks or until your website is completed, whichever happens first. If this happens, we forfeit the third month payment. So they’re paying monthly because remember, website, online business, we’re going to be doing some marketing. It’s a twelve month agreement, eight weeks for delivery of the project. Because it’s ecommerce, it’s a massive project. But if we haven’t delivered the project or the website, because the website, like we’ve discussed in the previous episodes, is the very first step, if we haven’t delivered the website in eight weeks, we will work for free for the remaining eight weeks or until the website is delivered. So if it takes us three more months to deliver the website, we work for free. And if it takes a week, then we’ll work for free. But we will always forfeit the third month payment for the third month we won’t be paid. So that’s a month free. If we don’t deliver the project on time, we also say, or we give you back the equivalent of all the money you’ve paid us for this project and we’ll pay you 100% commission on all your fees to date for this project as payment for wasting your time. Let’s say it’s $10,000 a month. And after eight weeks, two months, $20,000 paid. We haven’t delivered e commerce project, then we’re going to work for free. The third month they get $10,000 off. At that point. We can also at that point give them back $20,000 because they would have paid us $20,000. That’s 100% commission that they get on their fees to that date. So they get the third one free, they get back $20,000 as well for us wasting their time. And we also give them another $20,000. So that’s like getting 100%. So we give them back the money that they paid us, that’s $20,000. I’ll give them back 100% of what they paid us, that’s another $20,000. So they’re going to save about $50,000 on that deal if we don’t deliver the website in eight months. As I tell you about this guarantee, somewhere I’m feeling that our prospects, when they get these guarantees, they will be like, you know what if it doesn’t deliver? If they don’t deliver the project or they don’t meet the requirements, I’m not going to be so aggregate $50,000 for $10,000 a month project. This is crazy. But it works. And we’re going to tell you why it works shortly. So we’re continuing to guarantee, let’s be clear, we are not guaranteed any sales or marketing goals. If we or anyone else could guarantee that, then we’d be making billions of dollars on Wall Street each day. And this is the part where we say that we have to make a guarantee about what we can control. So we’re not saying to them that we’re setting out to make $100 million, and then at the end of our time ticket that we will make $100 million because we can’t control the market. And that means that COVID-19 might happen again. God forbid it does, and everything goes down. No one’s working, no one’s going out. The products can’t be sold. There might be a shipping incident like what happened in the Swiss Canal two years ago, where the Swiss Canal and nothing could be shipped a lot of ways were food, for example, on the ships spoiled, and the Suez Canal blockage was costing the global economy about $9 billion, $9 billion per day. And that’s what this guarantee right here is saying. The things that we can control, we promise we’ll do it. And there is a little bit of tongue in cheek where we say, if we could guarantee results, that would be making billions of dollars on Wall Street each day. Because no marketer can guarantee results. Anything can happen. But what they can do is do everything possible to get you the results, which is what we say. What we’re guaranteeing is that we will do everything we promised in our agreement and the project timeline that we agreed to do to ensure that your project is delivered on time and at the highest quality. What we’re saying here is that we can’t guarantee that we will make you $100 million if that’s the goal that we set. But what we can promise you is that we will do everything in our power to help you achieve that goal. And that’s the best guarantee we can give. For example, we can be getting them customers, and they have terrible customer service. And that’s costing us, the marketing team a lot of money because we have to be spending more to get more customers for them because they don’t have repeat customers, because their staff is rude, for example, or product is not delivered on time or quality or anything that can be out of foreign control. And that’s it with Zeldhan’s guarantee. How does this work, though? I have never had a client who has not liked this guarantee. And I’ve never had a prospect where we sit in a meeting and I bring up this guarantee and I say, all right, this is a problem that we’ve had in the industry. And it is where clients and customers, clients in our case, would be worried about doing business with a new agency that they don’t know, because what if I give them the money and they don’t do the work? I know someone who paid a developer and he did not work. He ran off with the money. Our company is based in Jamaica. Our team is international. Our clients are international. They can be fearful. They’ll say, well, we don’t know where you are. We can come to your place of business with the police if you don’t know what you say you’re going to do. And this guarantee here, we have variations of it because as you would realize, there’s a marketing and a web development aspect to the guarantee. Some products are marketing, some are consultation, some are web development. And we’re looking to get into software. So we’re going to tailor guarantee for each situation. But a guarantee is always going to be doing the very same thing for all of our clients. It is going to make it easier for them to do business with us. Now that we understand what Zillow’s guarantee is and what it’s doing, how do we get here? Well, like we said, and this is a global situation where a lot of times companies will hire developers and they don’t know the work. They’ll hire marketers and they don’t know what to do. They will over promise and under deliver. They will flake the time for work to be done, completed, submitted will arrive and the company will say nothing. Nothing will be presented, and the client is there having paid 50% of the invoice, having paid 80% of the invoice, not being able to contact anyone from the company, rudeness, disrespect, a lot of abuse out of things can go wrong in a business relationship. And when something goes wrong, believe me, even if you’re not the one doing it, someone is paying for it. These guarantees help in our situation, in our industry. It helped to put our clients at ease. I’ve had clients where we’ve been talking and I say to them, what is their guarantee? And they say, well, we don’t have a guarantee. And I remind them of the guarantee that they have with Zelda. And they’ll remind us that they’ll tell us at that point that, you know, one of the reasons why we went forward and did business with you is because this guarantee was in place. It made it easier for this agreement to come to fruition because we knew that there was something in writing enforceable by a law that was protecting us. You must make it as easy as possible for your clients and customers to do business with you. And that’s mantra right there, that’s business mantra right there. So now that we’ve understood where he guarantees from in terms of how did we engineer, how do we come to that solution and why is it worded the way it’s worded? I have to be complicated, but because it’s covering for different scenarios, different services, different situations that we can control, how can you put together a powerful guarantee for your business to get more clients or customers? We’re going to start what is a good service guarantee. And remember that product guarantees and warranties are very similar in that what we’re looking at right now is just how well they can remove friction and uncertainty and fear from customers who want to do business with you. So it’s a good service guarantee. It is one unconditional. It is easy to understand and communicate. It is meaningful, meaning that it addresses the issue. It’s easy and painless to invoke and it’s easy and quick to collect on. To get started, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your client or customer. What are their fears and concerns? What are their dreams? What could make the deal go bad? What are the top reasons they won’t sign? And you want to write down all these reasons, all these fears, dreams, concerns, and you want to rank them in terms of highest weight in. So weight as in we, Ight, heaviness. Which one matters more and the ones that matter the most, the ones that would make it most likely a client wouldn’t do business with you, a customer wouldn’t buy a product or service. Those are the ones that you want to address in your guarantee. The other thing you want to look at is your industry. What are the current guarantees in our industry and how can I best the current guarantees out there? Think Bbbk. They promised well, they guaranteed no pests and everyone else was guaranteeing pest control and they put together the guaranteed too much. They would repay the customer and the business that was suffering from any pest at all, even one cockroach being found on the premises. That’s powerful guarantee right there. You should also consider this. What can I offer my client or customer as a guarantee that will make it hard for them to say no, surprise them that I’ll offer that and keep me and my employees up at night at the risk of not honoring our commitment with Zelan. We probably you’ve heard the numbers for $10,000 per month for the deal. If after two months we haven’t delivered their website, then we’re going to have to pay them $20,000. So we give them back $20,000. That’s what they paid us. We’re also going to work for free the third month. So we’re losing $10,000 there and you’re saving $10,000. That’s $30,000. And because we haven’t delivered a project, we’re also going to pay them 100% on the money that they paid us for the two months that we did not deliver the website. So that’s another $20,000, $10,000 a month, twelve months, 1000, $120,000 for the year. And we’re saying that if within two months we haven’t delivered your website, which is the first part of the project, ecommerce website with a few features, online payments, 24/7 checkout, stuff like that, if we haven’t done that within two months, we’re going to give up up to $50,000. Now you tell me if if we have five clients and twelve of them do that, we are in a bit of trouble, aren’t we? And that is why it is so important that I ensure that the team and I not all remember this commitment that we have with our clients, but also that we honor it in terms of we show up every day and we do the best work possible. Because like I said, whenever something goes wrong in business, somebody is always paying for it. And $50,000 of $120,000, that’s what, about 45%, 60,000, about 42 and a half, 45%. That’s a lot of money to give up from a deal. And the profit margins are 100%. So keep that in mind. I would like to thank you for listening to episode seven of Online business systems on Zelhan’s Podcast, brought to you by Zelan Systems Limited and our online business suite, where we build and optimize your business for online success. Your optimized online business comes with a conversion optimized online business from our expert development team, a strategic and systematic online marketing system for short and long term success, and a team of certified and experienced developers, marketers, website security specialists, and business strategists that are working twenty four seven to ensure your business succeed. Get started with our microplan that comes complete with website developers, UI, UX designers, email marketers, SEO specialists, premium hosting and website security, your personal account manager, a business development strategist, and a PPC campaign from Facebook. Our microplan starts at $5,000 per month, or less than $165 per day, or less than $7 per hour. 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On the next episode of Online Business Systems, we will discuss how to get more sales and clients with social proof. This has been episode seven of Online Business Systems brought to you by Zelhan podcast. I’ve been your host, JBIS Roberts. Take care until next time.