How To Design Guarantees For Your Work + Products

Having trouble closing certain kinds of assignments or selling complex products (say with an extended cohort component)?

Offering the right guarantee might just de-risk the buy enough for your ideal client or buyer to belly up and say yes.

Jonathan and I address when and how to use guarantees without exposing yourself to a very expensive mistake:

What exactly is a guarantee and why/when does it make sense to offer one?

Why you are probably already offering a guarantee even if you haven’t explicitly stated it (and what to do instead).

How to develop meaningful guarantees when the client is intimately involved in the outcome.

What happens with your client conversations and relationships when you offer a guarantee.

How clients are (already) telling you which guarantees they’d value most.

Quotables

“The thing with guarantees is as a buyer, everyone automatically knows they’re a good thing and what they’re for.”—JS

“One has to kind of punch through the fear of making a guarantee. And it always feels a little bit easier on products to make a guarantee—just give it back.”—RM

“I’m sure everybody who’s ever billed by the hour has eaten hours because they’re like, man, that took me six hours and I thought it was gonna take me one…they are honoring a guarantee that they never made.”—JS

“If you really listen in your sales conversations, they will tell you what they’re worried about…it’s like big old giant neon signs pointing you to a potential guarantee.”—RM

“You could address that fear (when they’re afraid of themselves) with something like a red alert guarantee.”—JS

“This is what goes through their head: ‘I’m gonna mess this up…I will never be hired again, I’m gonna have to go be a Walmart greeter.’”—RM

“For an info product, it makes a lot of sense to just offer an unconditional 100% money back guarantee—if you’re unsatisfied for any reason, I’ll refund your purchase in full, no questions asked.”—JS

“Acknowledging their fear…will make offering guarantees more smooth, because you’ll see the ways that you can make it more comfortable for them at no cost to you.”—RM