Shout It From The Rooftops

Shout It From The Rooftops: Do you know the 3 most powerful words in Marketing? The 3 words that gain the most attention from your customers / prospects? The 3 words that most cause the customer/prospect to continue reading your marketing material and listening to your marketing message?

The 3 most powerful words in marketing are:

1. Sale
2. Free
3. Guarantee

Practically everyone in marketing uses the words Sale and Free one way or another. You do. Your competition does. Sellers have used them for as long as anyone I can find can remember. But for some reason most marketers / sellers are reluctant to use the word Guarantee. It is not because they feel it is overused. Certainly the words Sale and Free are used much, much more. I ask my clients if they guarantee their product and service. They all say, "Yes" or "Certainly." Most tell me, "People will not buy much of anything without a guarantee." If you are like me and my clients and guarantee your products and services, if you repair or replace your products and services if and when needed, if you believe your customers / prospects want a guarantee when they make a purchase, why not really make your prospects / customers aware of your guarantee. Why not shout it from the rooftops?

Tout your guarantee

Emphasize it, and over emphasize it. Shout it from the rooftops and you will differentiate yourself and your business from your competition. You will get noticed, and you will be remembered. In today's fierce selling markets the business and the sales professional that gets noticed and remembered makes the sale and profits.

1. Print it on your invoices
2. Include it in all your print advertising
3. Include it in all your audio advertising
4. Include it in your sales presentation
5. Post it on your showroom walls
6. Post it on your website
7. Make it look important. It is. Give it a prominent position in all your communications with your customer / prospect.

For those of you who sell extended warranties and service contracts, and everyone should be selling them. They can easily become your #1 profit maker, you will find selling extended warranties easier once you have established yourself as the seller who provides the customer with assurance. Guarantees reduce buyer resistance, because a guarantee reduces the customer's fear of loss.A guarantee will increase your sales and profits. In 1989 my tire retread shop was producing 100 tires a day. We had the equipment that would produce 200 tires a day without increasing our labor cost, only increasing our utility costs (gas and electric) slightly. Our only real increased cost would be raw materials (rubber and old tires to retread). But if you manufacture 200 tires a day what do you have to do? You have to sell 200 tires a day. So I thought what can I do different than I am now doing and different than my competition is doing to sell an extra 100 tires a day. What could I do to attract new buyers to my tires? We guaranteed our tires the same as our competition did. On a pro-rated basis. If a tire you purchased went bad from a defect in materials or workmanship you paid for what was wore off and received a new tire. I increased my tire sales to an average of 200 a day by increasing the guarantee. No charge for replacement if the tire became unusual for any reason. We called it Janet's 100% Free Tire Replacement Guarantee. No new tire manufacture and no other retreader guaranteed their tires 100% free replacement. We immediately began selling an average of 200 tires a day.