Marketing Tip – What’s Your Guarantee?

About seven years ago I was working with a company that
built custom parts for their customers. They charged what
is call and NRE, which stands for Non Recurring Engineering.

This is a one-time fee to do all of the R&D to get the first
prototype built.

There is a whole process of meetings and paperwork that goes
on to develop a specification that the customer agrees to
before anything is started. Once everything is agreed to
the R&D begins, and half of the NRE is paid up front. This
fee was between $50,000 to $100,000 dollars.

Here is the interesting part that the customers never knew
about until I came along. If this company built this
prototype and it didn’t meet the agreed upon specifications
you could get all of your NRE money back!

Does that sound like a guarantee to you? It did to me too.

So I did some checking and found out that in sixteen years
they had always met the customer’s specifications, so I put
the guarantee on paper.

Of course before anything goes public many companies look
over all of the collateral (marketing materials) when they
are first developed.

I got a call… the President of the company wanted to meet
with me. He handed me a copy of the guarantee and told me
he didn’t want to use it, because he was uncomfortable with it.

So I asked him a few questions.

In sixteen years have you ever not met the spec? He didn’t
know I had to tell him that he hadn’t.

In sixteen years has anyone ever asked for a refund? He didn’t
know I had to tell him that he hadn’t.

If someone gave you $100,000 and you couldn’t deliver and the
customer was on the phone yelling and screaming and threatening
a law suite what would you do? He said he would give him their
money back.

Then I asked him doesn’t that sound like a guarantee to you?

He kept the written guarantee and it improved his sales.

As a consumer if you are not happy with a purchase what do you
do?

Most people complain, ask for a refund, or worst case they never
do business with that company again.

If a business doesn’t make things right, how do you feel?
Most people get ticked off, tell everybody they know what a
jerk the business owner is so the business doesn’t just lose
one customer it loses a lot of customers.

What do most business do with an unhappy customer? They try
to make it right. Doesn’t that sound like a guarantee to you?

Do you have a guarantee?
Is it written down?
Do your employees know what it is?
Most of all do your customers know what it is?

Now go work on your guarantee.

For more ideas and thoughts about guarantees go to www.GSSAM.com
Take care,
Blase