6 business guarantees for design agencies

6 business guarantees for design agencies

Written by

Hector Hurtado

in

I read a recent article by Derek Halpern of Social Triggers during my slack time. It got me thinking about business guarantees that we at graphility implicitly offer to our clients, but do not communicate other than in contract. Beyond pure advertising, this is a shame because it does not present our ethical values to undecided customers, values that have forged strong relationships during long term projects or with our hosted clients. Somehow, I have always perceived business guarantees as a sales trick. Until today, I failed to notice its potential for a better business presentation.

 

After some more research, I compiled a list of business guarantees that I found noteworthy for our agency, whether currently implemented or not. If you own a business, Derek’s original article will be very useful to you. I first presented my research to the team during our retrospective, but then thought of writing an article and share. What the hell, it may be useful to someone else out there. So, true to blog etiquette, I am writing this while quoting where credit is due. If you’re in a similar industry, what follows may spark a few thoughts.

 

6 business guarantees for design agencies

 

According to entrepreneur.com, a guarantee is “a pledge, usually in writing, given by a company to any customers that something is of specified quality, content, benefit or that it will provide satisfaction or will perform or produce in a specified manner. A guarantee also outlines what will happen should the buyer not be satisfied with his purchase.”

 

While the above definition has merit, I think business guarantees often end up sounding like a cheap sales trick, and I am sure I am not alone. After reading Derek’s article, I now believe that successful business guarantees should follow the tested pattern of “under promise, over deliver”. Instead of boasting what you have not tested or could not achieve, a solid starting place is to look at how well you do today that may go unnoticed if not mentioned. Such is the nature of the game: people cannot know what you do not tell them.

 

The bonus guarantee

I really like the example Derek shares about Zippy Courses:

100% Risk Free: If you try Zippy Courses today, you get all these bonuses… and you have 30 days to try it all out. IF you don’t like it, email our support team (…) within 30 days, and we’ll give you 100% of your money back.

 

While working as consultant, I have signed a couple of contracts stating that the client could revoke the contract if the service was not satisfactory within the first week or month. While this seems daunting when you are in the position of signing, I have not known one client who was not satisfied with our performance in the first month. Whether working as outsourced agency or consultant on site, our initial analysis, user research, and proposed first steps have always made an influential impression on our clients. In fact, I am so confident about this, that I can slash the invoice at this point, and even cover ancillary costs for resources that will not be used after our departure. Basically, this is a graceful breach of contract where parties admit they are not a good match for each other. Since we are as selective about our clients than our clients are about their choice of agency, this would not be a huge risk.

 

The exit guarantee

If a business guarantee is about to trigger, the least you could ask of your clients is to give you feedback on the service offered thus far. Leave the negative behind, a complaint is a gift in disguise: it gives you a chance to improve.

 

I’ve had 7 exit interviews during my career. The initial ones were offered to me, and I saw such great value in them that I started requesting them as well. A whole other post could be written about exit interviews, the point here is that it’s a great “beginning of the end”, and a solid trigger of the business guarantee.

 

The requirements met guarantee

Have you ever had a client bust his own project by not delivering content or disrespecting his own stringent deadlines? Those are not the ones who deserve a business guarantee within the first month of partnership. Clients should commit to their project as much as you do.

 

Minimum result and on time guarantees

These two guarantees are more applicable to our photography projects. Looking at every project in retrospect, we can find the minimum amount of photographs that clients buy from us. We also consistently deliver on the promised time. Enforcing a minimum satisfactory photographs delivered at agreed time does not make for an Unique Selling Proposition, but is certainly a good selling point.

 

Another way to look at this for long-term contracts is to guarantee an improvement on an agreed metric within a certain time lapse.

 

The Buy-Back guarantee

Consider Derek’s example of U-Haul’s business gurantee:

We offer 100% buy-back of any unused U-Haul boxes, with receipt, at any U-Haul center nationwide.

 

While this works perfectly for a business producing large quantities of the same item, we could implement this onto photographic prepaid packages where the client agrees on a defined amount, but is eventually refunded for what he does not buy. Food for further thoughts on this one.

 

The fidelity guarantee

Spurred on by the No contract idea in Derek’s article, we can envision a price-lock on a subscription service for as long as service is active. Prices may even go down, but not up. That’s one very reasonable reason to sign up.

 

Consider coupling this with an anytime money back, and you have a solid long-term prepaid subscription service where the remainder of the term is refunded on cancellation — good for your clients and for your cashflow!

 

Conclusion

I hope this and the quoted material gave you as many ideas for your business as it has our team. Let us know on social media! We are currently brainstorming on the best way to rebound on this and implement in our business strategy. I see new landing pages coming soon.

 

Sources and additional reading:

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