What is a Guarantee?

A guarantee is something we normally think of as being a part of a product or a service. A 30 minute guarantee on pizza delivery, or a life-time guarantee on kitchen utensils. When used in coordination with marketing, a guarantee can be a powerful selling point for your product - however, when dealing with matters of your business, you'll likely never hear a guarantee.

There is no guarantee your idea will make money. Katherine Arno of MaineToday's business section even goes as far as to say that acquiring an expensive patent is an even longer shot than playing the lottery. The television advertisements and late-night paid programs will often advertise that you need to protect your idea, that you're losing valuable time and that another person may be on the verge of capitalizing on the idea before you get a chance to. While it is possible to wait too long to patent and develop an idea, the guarantees that these advertisements try to sell you are designed only to win your confidence and get your money.

Other guarantees may include bank guarantees that advertise that practically anyone can be approved for a low interest rate loan. But in truth, there are a multitude of conditions, requirements and prerequisites that one must meet in order to be approved for this rate, and this guarantee is only applicable to a small percentage of applicants. But you actually have to go in and apply for financing before they tell you this - and if you are doing that, the guarantee has done its job in winning your confidence, and you may be offered another product.

Be wary of any guarantees in running your small business. More often than not, they are confidence games; deceptive, sometimes clever methods of winning confidence and trust from an unwitting business owner, only to switch the "guaranteed" product or service out for an inferior one.