Reduce Your Refunds

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. Customers 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 lessen refunds.

Following up with your customer 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 customer 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. It will really give you that extra edge in and raise you above the competition. People really appreciate those kinds of things.

We're going to explore 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. The idea behind a stick letter is that you want to up-sell them. It's 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. Often times, customers purchase out of a whim or impulse which often results in refunds. The stick letter is the opportunity to convince the customer that they made the finest 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. The more you offer your potential customers, the more likely they are to purchase or not want a refund.

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.

Issuing refunds can also hold great customer relations value. Refunds are a great opportunity to connect with the customer and offer them a different product at a discounted price. For example, you send a customer their refund check and also send them a sales letter telling them about a similar product or even an affiliate product. Furthermore, you can give some sort of incentive so that they will go on the internet to fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire itself can be peppered with ads for your or affiliate products that they may become interested in. These are just some of the approaches I use to minimize refunds as well as taking advantage of refunds. Any situation can be turned into an opportunity!