Your Guarantee Is About More Than Money
By Sandi Krakowski
The first time. It’s a full gamut of emotions. You might judge yourself, check your copy, feel like you’ve failed or worse yet, be mad. Furious! You might even want to challenge the situation! What am I talking about? The first time someone asks for their money back.
If the first place you look is your bottom line, I’m going to challenge that perspective today.
Reading through the archives of our newsletters it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that we’re serious about our customers and passionate about what we do.
A casual reading of our mission statement shows that our focus is always our customer. Delivering the best service, at the best prices, with the best guarantee. It’s a business plan with a long term focus and it’s rewarded us handsomely!
With less than a dozen returns each month, and thousands of sales, you might be shocked to find that we get very few money back requests. We get even less complaints and disappointment letters. For today’s discussion, let me share with you five key factors that I believe hold our guarantee and our profits solid.
1-Mirror Your Mission
Our mission statement can be found here: A Real Change Mission. In this mission statement you can see that we align ourselves with the best in the marketplace, we seek to be the best in all that we do and we attract some of the best customers the world has to offer.
When your return policy and guarantee on your offer is mirroring your mission statement it’s not hard to put things into place. Create a “Standard Operating Procedure” and have full confidence in it.
If you mirror your mission statement you’ll remove entitlement, cutting corners and shoddy practices instantly. Sadly, we’ve all seen guarantees that don’t mirror a ‘so-called mission statement. Our data shows that this isn’t the case with A Real Change.
Mirror your mission statement and you’ll have fewer refunds.
2-Serve With Excellence
What is excellence? Well it certainly isn’t showing up in the government lately! But before you think I have any interest in having a political discussion, think again. Excellence is defined by Webster as: setting a high standard, known for being excellent. Related words are: choiceness, distinction, excellency, first-rateness, greatness, perfection, preeminence, primeness, superbness, superiority, supremacy.
Is your company known by it’s first-rateness? Are you known for being preeminent in the marketplace, set apart by greatness because of the way you treat people? If you are, you’ll have a supreme, known for it’s greatness, guarantee.
Sadly, the standard being set lately is ‘do what you can’ and hope it works. The philosophy of ‘getting by’ has nearly run over the standard of excellence so many of our leaders in the past deemed normal, not above the average.
A choice distinction will set you apart in the marketplace so highly that even if someone does ask for their money back or has to return something you won’t lose a customer or a referral.
3-Ditch The Dough Heads
Be prepared, just because you live and act in excellence and serve others with a choice ability above the norm doesn’t mean you won’t have a few dough heads visit your establishment. Or in plain English, idiots still shop online.
My normal mode of operation is to not get into heated debates, squabbles or even conversations with people who have no standards and make it their aim to infect their miserableness in the earth. You know, people who buy products, never even use them, ask for a refund 6 months later and think you should have pity on them? Yeah. That kind of person. Or the one who says they’ve ‘fallen on hard times’ and you should give them their money back 4 months later. Try that at Target. Whatever…
They can show up on your website, flood your email, attend your classes and even pay for a plane ticket to your live events! But this doesn’t mean you have to roll over, play dead or even get defensive for one second. This is where you must shine and they must falter. How do you do that? Give them their money back. Give it fast, give it with a smile and a blessing and be on your way. Sometimes, you might want to remind them that what they’re attempting to do is against the law- it’s call fraud. Other times, just give them their bloody money back, wipe yourself off, and go make some more.
In some rare cases, you may wish to give a referral to such dough heads, to your competitor. Because most likely they are from the same crowd.
I’m very grateful that like breeds like and that these kind of interactions are very few and far between in my career. But let me add this snippet of wisdom, “Answer a fool according to his foolishness and you will be like him. (or her)!” So rise above, be excellent and go serve the rest of the millions who are not of such low degree.
4-Clobber Your Competitors
How you treat your customers could not only make or break your business but it could equally make or break the success of one of your competitors.
If you spend any amount of time reading our materials you’ll soon find out that we don’t spend much time worrying about our competitors, knockoffs or copy cats. People can’t copy who you are, your heart and soul. But the truth of the matter is, there is a higher level of competition the higher you go.
My main motive in business is not to put someone else out to business, but it is to serve at such a level that we organically and naturally rise above and to the top.
One of the best ways to bring a healthy dose of competition to those who are in your niche is to serve with a guarantee, policy and heart that no one can touch. Be yourself, give from your heart, live from your core and you will, ladies and gentleman, clobber your competitors.
There’s no sword of war quite so sharp as being true to you. Your customers will love you, they will be loyal to your brand and they will recommend you to everyone they know. Give with your mission, your excellence and a guarantee that is flawless and you could be the inducer of insomnia to those watching on the sidelines. What a sweet and ethical victory that will be. I’m sure you agree!
5-Blueprint Yourself And Your Sincerity On The Heart Of Those You Serve
Lastly, but definitely not least is the case of creating long term business relationships.
Invest into yourself, your skill & who you are… and rise to the top of your niche! Rise with excellence and honor and YOU my friends will stimulate the economy in a way the Federal Reserve could never touch!
The things that make a strong economy are the same things that make strong relationships. In your marketing, your branding and more, blueprint yourself, the sincerity of your message, the excellence in which you serve and the honor that you live in, on your customers heart. Your customers will follow you anywhere.
We used to live near a large Amish community. These are hard working people who build houses in groups in less than a week, work from 3 am- 10 pm without complaining and take very seriously the relationships they have with their customers.
One day as I went with my boys to a local farmer to get some fresh dairy products, I asked him what the most important key to his business was. I’ll close with his profoundly insightful words,
“Your customers are everything. Without them, there’s no one to drink your milk. The cows don’t amount to anything if there is no one to serve. We’ve built our business one family and one serving at a time.”
A falling economy won’t even matter to you if you apply these to your company policies and standards. Let’s rise above, serve with more and make a big impact in our world, with the work of our hands and the service of our businesses!
With love,
Sandi Krakowski
