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Another free Sales article for you by Segovia Smith
Titled: Lessen Your Refunds
Lessen Your Refunds
Article Summary: There are several approaches you can implement that will shrink your refunds. A free 20 minute consultation as a gift certificate can create very loyal clients who can refer you even more clients. Or, even if you have to give a client a refund, try to redirect them to a different product or an affiliate's product.
The end of the sales process, after the sale has been made, can often be overlooked. The goal is to make sure that your customers continue buying from your company. Clients return to a store because of the trusting relationship between the store and the customer. Refunds are a good measure on how your sales are progressing. Refunds are a sign that your sales tactics are not strong enough. This article will be explaining some ways to shrink refunds.
Clients will always value 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. You should be prepared to speak to the customer or leave a message on their voicemail. I do this with a lot of my customers 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. It will really give you that extra edge in and raise you above the competition. People really appreciate those kinds of things.
A tried and true technique is the stick letter. The follow-up letter is sent to your customer by using any methods possible (email, fax, mail, or to a website). 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's almost 10% of your initial sales letter. You want to re-sell them on why they bought the product, that they're going to love the product, and that they should keep the product. People sometimes make impulse buys, and that's when you get refunds. etc. In addition, you need to take a further step and make an exciting offer to your customer. This extra step will make the difference between the mediocre seller and a professional high-income seller. You are going to have fewer refunds, happier customers, they're going to love you for it, and you're going to get referral business.
The special exciting offer can be anything creative, such as a gift certificate. A gift certificate can be modeled after a simpler version of your product or 50% off one of your other products. I charge $600 per hour for my consultations. 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! 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.
Now, let's address how to make the most out of issuing a refund. Refunds are a great opportunity to connect with the customer and offer them a different product at a discounted price. Obviously you want to refund them in a timely manner. It is 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. Furthermore, you can give some sort of incentive so that they will go on the Internet to fill out a questionnaire. "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's probably better to do it on the back end and give them incentive to fill out the questionnaire. Of course, you can use marketing drips all the way through the questionnaire and try and get them to click onto other ads and other recommendations that you have. So that's the strategy for this week. It's all about taking care of your customers - going that extra mile and giving them a little bit of value to keep them on board with you.
Article Source: http://www.upublish.info
About the Author:
Segovia Smith
Segovia Smith is your source for all things internet marketing. Questions? Send them to him. Go to: http://www.howimademyfirstdollar.com, and get your free MyFirstDollar Membership!
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