What’s Your Warranty?

I just read the most complete, comprehensive and entertaining warranty I’ve ever seen.  I invite you to take a look at Saddleback Leather’s (whose slogan is “They’ll Fight Over it When You’re Dead”) warranty at www.saddlebackleather.com.

Saddleback offers a 100-year warranty, and the owner offers to have the customer’s descendant’s contact him if they have a problem!  Powerful.  Direct.  No excuses.  Remarkable.

There are thousands of leather goods companies in the world selling products.  Saddleback’s goods look nice, but let’s face it:  leather goods are a commodity.  Really, when you look at their website, they are selling some version of the stuff everyone sells.  But they are selling it for a premium price, and they make no excuses for that.

What Saddleback Leather is really selling is themselves, not leather goods.  In this regard, they aren’t really any different than a typical “designer” product like Louis Vuitton for example.  Vuitton makes nice products, but what they are really selling is their name.  Same for Saddleback.

The difference is that Saddleback doesn’t have the international reputation or the marketing budget that Vuitton does to drive up the value of the product.  All they have is quality and confidence.

The things I really like about Saddleback’s warranty is their confidence in their product’s quality and their willingness to stand behind them.

Something else I like is that they tell the truth to the customer about what they won’t do.  If you get fat, they won’t take their belt back. If you damage the product, they won’t give you a new one.  They make it clear that they expect their customers to have integrity, too.  In essence, they tell the world the kind of people they want to do business with.

This is a compliment to prospective customers and also a power selling technique in itself.

Contrast this to the typical insurance agency who guarantees essentially nothing.  The agency makes a lot of promises but backs those promises with nothing but hot air.  How powerful would it be if an insurance agency offered a money back guarantee or something similarly different, unique, power, direct and without excuses?

What about your agency?  Do you offer a warranty of performance of any kind?  What would happen to your sales and your retention if you did?  Take a look at Saddleback for inspiration!