The Sale Does Not End After They Buy! Here’s Why…
Requesting for refunds is one of the worst nightmares all network marketers can face. Imagine that you spend so much time and effort to get a sale, and suddenly just to receive a call that your customer wants a refund the next day. That is indeed disappointing after all those small celebrations you just had some moments ago.
Anyways, back to the main topic, why do refunds happen? In this article, I will explain what causes a customer to ask for a refund from you, as a network marketer. It happened to me before during my journey and I would like to share this lesson with you too.
Back when I just got started and not knowing about doing MLM online, I managed to recruit one of my friends as my down line, hoping he can help me out easily by doing the same. As time passes by, I realized that he joined just “for fun” and was not serious about developing his network at all. Eventually, he quit and I had to refund him the money that he spent to join under me. That feeling sucks, and I am very sure that you can relate too.
From that day, it got me wondering how I can get the right people to work within network marketing, moreover having the right customer to choose to buy products from me instead of the others.
Alright, enough storytelling. Let’s move on to the content that you are waiting for.
What makes a customer request a refund from you?
If customers request a refund from you, it usually means that they could not justify why they purchased themselves or their loved ones. I know that this may be confusing at first, but let us dive into how customers make their buying decisions when they saw an advertisement, reading a sales letter or walking around the shopping mall.
Natasha Wahid from Widerfunnel, she mentioned a case study conducted by Paul MacLean which is the triune brain theory. The theory stated that the brain consists of 3 major parts.
- Reptilian (Old, sensory) → This part of the brain develops first before the other two. It is tasked to control the body’s core functions such as breathing, heart rate and balancing.
- Limbic (Middle, emotional) → The second part of the brain to develop after the reptilian brain. Manages your emotions and value judgement, and is influenced by pleasant or unpleasant experiences. Also known as the “subconscious” brain.
- Neocortex (New, rational) → The final part of the brain, and the last to evolve. This is where all our consciousness, learning abilities, imagination and thoughts come from. Often used when attempting to learn new things, making rational and logical decisions.
We often conclude that the neocortex brain is the part since that is where most decisions are made, especially in large purchases like mortgage, insurance or huge investments. However, for purchases like the needs and wants of a consumer, emotions play a large role in making the buying decision and it comes from the older parts of the brain: reptilian and limbic.
You may think, “How does this happen in a sale?”, “Why emotions matter?” Let’s take a look at one of the most common decision problems we face every day.
It’s lunchtime after your college class. You and your friends decided to have lunch outside instead of the usual cafeteria. But, where should you go to have lunch today? Most of the time, everyone will have a hard time deciding where to go, although there are a few suggestions given in the group. Nobody can make the final decision. In the end, one of your friends suggests to go to McDonald to have lunch and everyone ended up agree to his or her decision. Is this decision rational? Maybe yes, or vice versa. But, what motivates that friend of yours to do so? It could be due to one of the reasons below.
- It could be just a random craving for a certain item McDonald is selling
- McDonald is having a promotion right now.
- It’s been a while he or she did not go there.
- McDonald is convenient with its fast serving time.
- The food at McDonald is delicious.
From the statement above, we can see that the final decision is mainly influenced by feelings and emotions.
How to minimize refunds of your offer?
Before the Sale
When refunds occur, one of the main reasons can be that your audience misinterprets your sales message or your offer is not satisfying enough for them to convince themselves.
To fix the problem, you got to evaluate your target audience first. Did you target the right audience? If no, then you got to re-target your audience until you get the right ones that are satisfied with your offer. Otherwise, you got to evaluate your sales message and your offer. Sometimes, your audience will leave comments and feedback to you on how they feel. Please do take it seriously because they are telling you what they want.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself while making those evaluations:
- Does my sales message perfectly state the pain points of my dream customers?
- Is my offer actually valuable? Does it solve all their pain points or does it create additional follow-up problems?
- Does my price point make sense according to the market value? If not, should I further increase my offer value or should I reduce my price point? What is the estimated spending capability of my dream customers?
- If possible, do you have any guarantees that reduce any potential risks your customers need to take after buying from you?
- Is there any urgency presented to your customers why they must act now?
Once you modified your sales message or offer or your target audience, re-launch your campaign again to get more feedback. Keep doing it until you start getting conversions and lesser refunds.
Remember that once their buying emotions settled down, they must have enough reasons to convince themselves and their loved ones that they have made the right decision. Help your customers save face! Otherwise, your customers will enter into a condition known as “buyer’s remorse” and ask you for the refund because they aren’t good at telling your story and will struggle to justify why they buy your offer.
After the Sale
So you have customers actually buying from you? Great! But you don’t just disappear right away. You must continue to build your relationship with your customers that just bought from you. Ask questions on their feedback and reaction towards your product.
If your product is a physical product and it is shipped along the way, try to provide some digital bonuses that they can consume right now during the wait. This will make the customers appreciate you more because you show that you care and are willing to help them, and create returning loyal customers in future.
This is also a good time to receive testimonials from your customers. Testimonials can be in the form of videos or written reviews. Collect as many as you can because these can further increase the authenticity of your products and services you are selling to those who have not bought your product yet. Your testimonials are expected to have a mix of good and bad ones, so you can analyze how good your offer is and make appropriate adjustments.
In conclusion, always provide tons of value to your customers to ensure maximum satisfaction from them and build up a good reputation in the marketplace. Before you go, please do not forget to check out my other publications at
Facebook -> https://www.facebook.com/MarketSolversIsAwesome/
YouTube -> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgd41HgCVaMaLdvTSfRvwDA?sub_confirmation=1
Spotify -> https://open.spotify.com/show/2hLPUkmed4fMBVsrsJ3Fhe
More awesome tools -> https://www.themarketsolvers.com/softwaretools
I also will be releasing a free training video series, especially for network marketers/MLM to show how to build and recruit your own elite marketing team and sell your products without bugging your friends and family. If you want to be the first to get my video series, please leave a message below this blog or you can email me at support@marketsolvers.zohodesk.com.
Till then, take care!
Update: The free training video series has been released! Be the FIRST to get yours now at https://lnkw.co/mlmtutes.
