I was recently asked what my thoughts are on using guarantees in business and what I've experienced as the most common pitfalls of their use.

My immediate answer is every business should offer a guarantee; they're a strong element of reason to believe in your offer and company. Used effectively, guarantees can reduce purchase barriers and enable sales. For guarantees to be effective, they have to offer value to your customer.

I like to use guarantees specific to each deal, tailoring a guarantee to remove a barrier to a sale or create a competitive position. For example, if I have a prospect that is concerned about commitments, volume agreements, prepayments, scalability of a solution, etc. I'll tailor a guarantee to address their specific concern. Working together, we can establish terms and guarantees that make them comfortable with beginning a project that otherwise might unnecessarily be delayed due to risks they feel are too great. Often this creates a strong competitive position and decreases price as a component of the purchase decision.

Here are the two biggest pitfalls I've seen with companies offering guarantees:

1. Never guarantee something you can't control. It sounds simple enough however, it's a trap many vendors set for themselves. For instance, never guarantee a cost savings or cost reduction unless you control all aspects of the cost savings process.

2. Keep your guarantee simple. There's nothing that creates more distrust and skepticism than offering a guarantee with caveats that protect your part of the deal. If you guarantee something, state the guarantee straight forward, don't offer caveats, and back the guarantee 100%.