Almost everyone selling on the Internet will agree the easiest way to sell a product is to do a "bill me later" or "try it before you buy it" offer. In other words, you send them the product and don't charge their credit card or cash their check for X number of days. The only problem with this is, it almost always tends to explode refunds. In fact, you can strangled by refunds if you don't really understand how this works. One expert on this is a guy names Vic Conant (of the world famous company Nightingale Conant). I recently had a chance to interview him and I asked him how his company deals with this issue. They send almost everything out "on approval" and yet, they get a low refund rate. They have been doing it since 1978 and their business has never looked back. His secret for keeping refund rates down? Simple: 1.) They only mail to highly qualified lists -- lists of people who are serious, have spent money and not likely to take advantage of the situation and be shady. 2.) They have a sophisticated collection process. Frankly, and I've witnessed this with my own business, having a great collection process is almost mandatory with a try-it-before-you-buy-it offer. Especially if you sell on the Internet, to people all over the world. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be a bully or threaten them or anything. In fact, Vic Conant told me they basically use guilt. They don't yell and scream or anything like that, they use good old fashioned guilt and it works very well. Anyway, if you want to start exploding the sales for your Internet marketing business, test a try-it-before-you-buy-it offer. Just make sure you have a good collection system in place and you are only going after your list or a highly qualified list. |
