Lessen Your Refunds

This week's topic will be covering the follow-up system after the sale has been made. The best way to continue having regular customers is to create a relationship. With a product that sells well, you can expect to see refunds. Refunds are a red flag that something in your sales system is not working. We will be talking about how to see less refunds as well as taking advantage of issuing refunds.

Following up with your client with a phone call makes a strong impression. It takes 30 seconds to 2 minutes. After you get an order, at the end of the day(or whatever time works for you), call everyone who ordered the previous day saying, "Thank you for your order. It will be shipped _____." You should be prepared to speak to the client or leave a message on their voicemail. I do this with a lot of my clients and it works extremely well. You or your assistant should do these calls. By taking these further steps to connect with your client, your company and products will become a trusted brand.

We're going to talk about the stick letter. The stick letter will be sent to the client at one stage or another, for example, along with the product, in an e-mail, fax, or even just sending them to a website. There are various ways to send a stick letter. The idea behind a stick letter is that you want to up-sell them. It is almost 10% of your initial sales letter. This letter will attract your client back to your site and product; perhaps to a new product that they had not seen before. Often times, customers purchase out of a whim or impulse which often results in refunds. The stick letter is the opportunity to convince the client that they made the best investment and that the product will be everything that they expected. The next thing you are going to want to do is offer them limited bonus. If you give people over-delivery, you are always going to end up on top. You're going to have fewer refunds, happier customers, they're going to love you for it, and you are going to get referral business.

So one of the things I like to do in over-delivering product is giving a gift certificate. Yes, it does take some of your time. It could be a gift certificate to another product you have. A gift certificate can be modeled after a simpler version of your product or fifty percent off of one of your other products. I charge $600 per hour for my consultations. So I will offer somebody a gift certificate towards that - 20 minutes or half an hour is a $300 value gift certificate! Make sure there is a progression by which the client 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 client, even though they may not take the offer. These small steps will help a business gain long term customers who will also refer their friends to your product.

When you do get refunds, we're going to talk about a recycle strategy to recycle your refunds. Refunds are a great opportunity to connect with the client and offer them a different product at a discounted price. Obviously you want to refund them in a timely manner. It's preferable to refund them by check because you are then able to send them a letter that may notify them of a special sale for a different product or even and affiliate's product, if you are doing affiliate sales. 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. "Go to this website at www.yourwebsite.com/refundquestionnaire." Have them fill out a quick little survey using the AskDatabase to ask why they are refunding. You can do that on the front end before they get their refund, or on the back end. It is probably better to do it on the back end and give them incentive to fill out the questionnaire. The questionnaire itself can be peppered with ads for your or affiliate products that they may become interested in. So that's the strategy for this week. In summary, client service and following up on a client will prove to be a lucrative tactic to add to your sales system.

Segovia Smith is well known for is accelerated learning and teaching style. When he's not designing new software, split testing his web site traffic or working on developing new business ventures he can be found answering questions and helping people with their web site conversion through various forums and discussion groups online. For further information visit: www.SegoviaSmith.com