Risk is one of the main items you will find in the “cost to me” side of the scales of sales, so what can you do to minimise it, or at least the prospect’s perception of risk? The amount of risk will scale depending on the amount of money or time a buyer would invest.
One of the most powerful tools you have to reverse investment risk is to offer a guarantee. Guarantees are consistently shown to increase conversion rates by a degree that far exceeds any rate of compensation, so I would always recommend you add a guarantee to any DIY paid products. If you are investing your own time in done-with-you or done-for-you, you should think carefully before underwriting your services with a guarantee, as you would be putting your own time investment at risk.
An alternative to the guarantee is a free trial, which is appropriate for many courses or memberships. For example, we offer a thirty-day free trial for The Human Unleashed (thehumanunleashed.com), which gives subscribers access to the first six hours of introductory content only — an amount of material that is appropriate for the trial length.
We have all seen advertisements that offer you to try out a product for a month and, if you are not convinced you love it, simply return it. There are many variants of this basic pattern, and the reason is because it works!
For services that include a time-cost on your part, you might reverse perceived risk by offering a two-part payment. I have done this for one-day consulting services, for example pay 50% up-front with the final 50% payable upon successful delivery of the consulting. (I had only ever had one client say that they did not feel they got the value and choose not to pay the balance, which was completely appropriate as the client’s area of business was not a good fit for my expertise at the time.)
I have seen a similar technique used to get people through the door for multi-day online events, which carry significant price tags. The method is to offer access to the first day for a ludicrously low price, with the message that you believe the customer will be so convinced after day one (or section one, or whatever) that they will happily pay the premium value for the remainder of the material.