When you ask for a sale, you’re asking a customer to take a risk. They’re risking their money, their time, and depending on your product, they may be risking their health or personal well-being. So how do we remove (or at least minimize) risk? Here are a few ways that I recommend to my clients.
Customers need a clear path to do business with your brand. You need to (literally) give them a few, easy steps to follow. In the StoryBrand framework, created by Donald Miller, this type of plan is called the “process plan.” that is, what’s the process for buying from you? Here’s an example. Say you’re a lawn care company… your process plan might look something like this:
Are there more steps than that? Definitely. But giving a 15-part plan to your customers is confusing at best. Give your customers 3, simple steps to follow and you’ll remove the risk of doing business with you.
When my wife was studying for her nursing license exam, we were trying to find a great study program for her to use. We stumbled across a program that was $500. That’s pretty steep! We liked what we saw, though, so we scrolled a little further down the page.
We saw, in bold letters: “Pass the NCLEX on the first try or your money back.”
At that moment, there was no risk for us. They were so confident their product would work, they would give us all of our money back if we didn’t get what we needed. We ended up (happily) dropping $500 just because of that. Can you provide some type of money-back guarantee? Or maybe free returns? Providing a guarantee will help remove risk for your customers.
People want to be taken somewhere. They want you to tell them what’s next. On the contrary, if you don’t tell them what to do next, they’re going to take their money elsewhere. The easiest thing to do is provide a direct call-to-action like “buy now,” or “schedule a call.” After they buy now, what’s next? Communicate your customer’s next step at all points of the purchase process and you’ll remove risk.
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