Shrink Your Refunds

The end of the sales method, after the sale has been made, can often be overlooked. The goal is to make sure that your customers continue buying from your company. The best way to continue having regular customers is to create understanding. With a product that sells well, you can expect to see refunds. Refunds are signs that your sales tactics are not strong enough. As I have heard many times over, if you're not getting refunds, you're not pushing and selling hard enough. This article will be explaining some ways to shrink refunds.

Clients will always welcome a follow-up call, which won't take up much of your time. It takes 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Preferably, make the follow-up call at the end of the day after receiving their payment and thank them for their order. It is also a good idea to prepare what you are going to say, whether it be with a live person or a voicemail. I do this with a lot of my clients and it works extremely well. If you have an assistant who can do this for you even better. Hopefully at some point in your business you will get to that. By taking these additional steps to connect with your customer, your company and products will become a trusted brand.

We're going to discuss the stick letter. A stick letter is something that you would send to your customer either attached to the product, via email, via fax, sent in the mail as a follow-up letter, or send them to a web page. There are various ways to send a stick letter. You will want to keep your company and product in the mind of the customer. It is almost 10% of your initial sales letter. This letter will attract your customer back to your site and product; perhaps to a new product that they had not seen before. People sometimes make impulse buys, and that's when you get refunds. Just type in "stick letter" on the Internet, and I'm sure you'll find some things: Marlon Sanders The next thing you're going to want to do is offer them exclusive bonus. If you give people over-delivery, you're always going to end up on top. You are going to have fewer refunds, better customers, they're going to love you for it, and you're going to get referral business.

A proven item to offer is a gift certificate. Yes, it does take some of your time. It could be a gift certificate to another product you have. It could be a gift certificate to a consultation, a percentage, or smaller version of your service. My personal time is valued at $600/hour for a one-on-one consultation. If I turned one of my consultations into a gift certificate for a twenty minute one-on-one consultation, that would be a $300 dollar value! Make sure there is a method by which the customer can claim their gift certificate. The thing is, they've got this printed gift certificate in the box with the rest of their product, and they think, "Wow! This is a huge value. I didn't even know this was coming." A lot of times, they're not going to take the necessary action , but they still have that perceived value. These unexpected gifts will impress a customer, even though they may not take the offer. Statistically, customers will not claim their gift certificate, but because you've added value to your entire product, your customer will feel that your company is striving to give them the best offer and will convert to being your lifelong customer.

When you do get refunds, we're going to discuss a recycle strategy to recycle your refunds. When someone refunds, you don't simply refund them. Obviously you want to refund them in a timely manner. However, you can refund them and say "By the way¡Ã" and do a "By the way" sale. So if you're refunding them for Product X, you might say to them, "Sorry it didn't work out for you," and send them a letter with a check, or through your credit card terminal. I feel that a check is of benefit. It always feels good to get a check. That way you have an excuse to send them a piece of mail, and in that piece of mail you can give them a sales letter. That sales letter is for either another product that you offer that they may be interested in since they weren't interested in the first one. Or something that's selling an affiliate's product if you have affiliate marketing going on and there's some sort of product that's similar but different that may be for the target market. You could even give them incentive to fill out a questionnaire online. You can also have the refundee go to a questionnaire online where they can answer why they were unsatisfied, but you can also expose them to ads with your product or affiliate products. The questionnaire itself can be peppered with ads for your or affiliate products that they may become interested in. These were just a few ways to enhance your present sales ideas. In summary, customer service and following up on a customer will prove to be a lucrative tactic to add to your sales system.