Monday, April 30, 2007

Your Guarantee

Strategy 4: Your Guarantee
Your guarantee is a strong selling tool. It shows your customers how much you trust your product offering. Do you have a great product or service? Use a strong guarantee to tell your customers how much you believe in the products and or services you sell. Conversely, a poor or unpopular policy will chase customers away or at least offend them so that they will never shop with you again.


Examples of Great Guarantees


Neiman Marcus’s Guarantee
If you are not completely satisfied with your Neiman Marcus purchase, please return it for exchange, credit, or refund.

Williams-Sonoma Guarantee We want you to be perfectly satisfied with your purchase. If for any reason a selection does not meet your expectations, please return it to us for and exchange or refund.

L. L. Bean’s Guarantee
Our products are guaranteed to give 100% satisfaction in every way. Return anything purchased from us at any time if it proves otherwise. We do not want you to have anything from L. L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory. What a great lifetime warranty!

Filson Clothing’s Guarantee
Our guarantee for over 100 years has never changed: "We guarantee every item purchased from us. No more, no less. Your satisfaction is the sole purpose of our transaction." —Clinton C. Filson, 1897

eBags.com Guarantee
eBags.com 110% Price Guarantee appears on every page. Customers feel comfortable when buying from eBags.com, so much so that they have bought 6,322,834 Bags Since 1999.

Examples of Unpopular Guarantees

A popular online (overstock.com) retailer charges a 20% restocking fee.

An auto manufacturer charged a 25% restocking fee.

An in-home party company only gives credit for returns.


These examples produce customers that may never shop with them again because of their policies. Is it worth it to alienate customer from a lifetime of purchases? It might be, but weigh the impact carefully. If you choose to implement a guarantee such as these let your customer know up front so there is no surprise. This way your customers will be able to make an educated decision when they decide to purchase from you.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Tout Exclusive Items

Strategy 3: Tout Exclusive Items
Do you carry any items that no one else has? Many smaller retail shops do. Maybe you have items that you have exclusive rights in a given territory, that’s good enough? Let people know that you are the source for these items. Tell them why you carry such items. What are the advantages of buying these “Great” items from you? Talk to your customers. What features does your product have that others don’t?

If you don’t have exclusive items tout your exclusive internal benefits… It may be your warranty or your return policy. Tell your customers how they will benefit from these exclusive benefits &/or products? Show your customers how you have helped them make an educated decision. If you can, seek out exclusive products from your manufacturers so you can set yourself apart from your competition.

If you are a manufacture investigate this matrix. If you sell products into a number of stores in an area, what would the effect be if you gave each store one exclusive item to sell? What an advantage it would be to each shop to have exclusive items. They can tout that they are the only shop in town with the model.

If you provided an exclusive item from each class or category you offer each business could add that to their benefits list? There is no greater selling point when a shop can say, “No one else in town has this great product!”


Examples of Touting Exclusive Items
The cataloger Filson thinks this is so important that they dedicate an entire spread, two pages of their catalog, valuable selling space, on their exclusive fabrics.

The spread features four fabrics: Filson’s 100% Virgin Mackinaw Wool, Filson’s Tin Cloth, Filson’s Shelter Cloth, and Filson’s Cover Cloth covering 2/3 of the page.

The remaining 1/3 highlights 6 additional exclusive products: Filson’s Feather Cloth, Filson’s Sarari Cloth, Filson’s Brushed Twill, Folson’s Moleskin, Filson’s Rugged Twill, and Filson’s Bridle Leather. No selling only touting their exclusive products.


This strategy can be used to give more meaning to your advertising and give another reason for customers to come in and visit. Tell them what they are missing by not stopping by!



This strategy was taken from my forthcoming book called "Benchmarked: What The Best Of The Best Do To Keep Customers Coming."

Monday, April 09, 2007

Providing More Content On The Web

Have you looked at websites that want to sell products and noticed that they don't give any information for you, the customer, to make an educated buying decision?

There are many lessons to learn from these sites that do a poor job of promoting their products. And many lessons to learn from those who do a good job of using the web for what it is used for.

Here is a good example.
Here you can see the additional information provided to help the customer make an educated buying decision.

Here is a typical example. Here is what most customers see. A few bullet points. A photo and a buy now button. Who can make an educated buying decision with this type of content? No one.

You decide. The web is used by most people for research! Are you providing them with quality information that they can use to make an educated buying decision? They want it and more and more people are providing it.

Ask yourself, "Does the info on our website lead our customer to buying our product?"

See some examples of ways to lower your customers buying risk here.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Another Strategy To Get More Customers


Additional Strategies to Build Customer Loyalty

Strategy 2: Comparison Charts
Do you have a great product? Should customers be busting down you door to get it? And you don’t know why they aren’t? If so, you can benefit greatly from this strategy. Make posters, banners, and tables that compare the features of your product to that of its competitor: us vs. them, this vs. that, etc. Explain to your customers how these additional features will benefit them. When your customers can plainly see why your product is superior to others, they will do most of the selling for you. Your job is to give them the facts that they can use to make an educated purchase choice. Use call-outs, such as “3 easy steps for choosing the right paper for your printer” that note benefits which both set you apart and highlight the extra services you offer—value added services. Selling is a battle of perception. What are you doing to win this perception?


Examples of Comparison Charts
Filson’s catalog does an excellent job of this. Get a copy and see (filson.com). They have a picture of one of their duffel bags with a Volkswagen Engine in it hanging from a peg followed by this copy—“Our duffel bag will carry a Volkswagen engine. Will yours?” Not that’s a comparison you can see.

On Kimberly Clark’s website www.block-it.com you will find charts that compare each car cover fabric to a number of possible damaging items to your car and it’s finish.

The goal of these strategies is to give your customers more information so they can make educated buying decisions. If you can successfully engage your customers spend time with you and your products you increase your chances that the purchase is made through you not your competitors.