Customers Can Easily Understand And Appreciate The Value.

You’ll Get More Sales, More Referrals… & A Tremendous Competitive Advantage When It Comes To Contractor Marketing.

By Rich Harshaw

I was a kid in the ‘70s, when angry, frustrated moms would chill the spines of their naughty children with the dreaded phrase, “Just wait until your father gets home.”

The tension would start building around a quarter to six; when the garage door finally opened and my exhausted dad shuffled into the house, my blood would freeze in my veins.

During the rigors of an epic backyard snowball fight, my older brother had packed an ice ball, took aim, and beaned it at my head. Instead of absorbing the blow and enduring (another) trip to the ER for stitches, I decided to duck and let the house take the shot.

Except I was standing in front of a window.

And windows don’t stand up well to ice balls.

Luckily, dad wasn’t in a spanking mood that night. Not that my dad was Adrian Peterson or anything. He was just a typical 1970s dad who used the belt to make a point with rambunctious boys who almost always deserved it when they got it. Or at least when they got caught.

But there was no hiding from a broken window.

But dad decided to teach us a lesson that night instead: he’d deduct the money required to pay for the window out of our allowances. I don’t remember how much allowance we actually got back then, but it took something like 174 months to pay it off.

The belt would have been much easier.

Which is why I’m going to encourage you to include a free glass breakage warranty on every window you sell.
Not to let ornery boys everywhere off the hook. But because it’s actually a good business decision for you.

To understand why, let’s talk about warranties in general.

Forget about your business for a minute—think about stuff you buy as a consumer.

Do you purchase warranties? Why or why not?

The fact is that warranties are purchased (and valued) on the basis of how likely people perceive things are going to break, and how expensive they perceive repairs might be in the case of a problem.

Take cars, for instance.

Everyone loves new car warranties because—besides being “free” (included)—cars have a pretty good chance of SOMETHING going wrong, and there’s a possibility that a car repair could be devastatingly expensive. For used cars, the breakdown risk is even higher, and the uncertainty in the cost of the repair is enormous, so warranties are frequently purchased.

When it comes to cars, warranties have a high perceived value because it’s easy to envision disaster.

What about electronics?

Many electronics are so cheap and so unlikely to break that the value of a warranty is low. Why would I pay $19 for a 5-year warranty on a $118 inkjet printer? I’ll just buy a new one if it breaks. On the other hand, it’s probably worth paying $6.99 a month to get a full replacement warranty on a teenager’s $650 iPhone that will almost certainly be lost, damaged, drenched, or maimed sometime in the next two years.

For electronics, the perceived value of a warranty is dependent on the perceived threat (or lack of threat) of large repair bills.

All of which brings us back to your window warranty.

Many home improvement companies love to talk about their great warranties. Roofs that are guaranteed for fifty years. Five-year labor warranties. Twenty-five-year windows. Like that.

But the problem is that homeowners have a hard time envisioning what kinds of things can actually go wrong with their siding. Or their windows. Or their kitchens. Roofs might suffer storm damage—that’s easy enough to understand. But that’s a homeowner’s insurance thing, isn’t it?

Stated differently: If you tell a customer that you have a twenty-five-year warranty on your windows, it means very little to them because they can’t—for the life of them—comprehend what kinds of things can even go wrong with a window that would necessitate using the warranty. And in the event that something does go wrong, they think it will be so far in the future that it’s not worth worrying about right now.

So your awesome warranty becomes just another semi-meaningless bullet point on a list of cool features you offer.

But broken glass—everyone can identify with that.

Everyone has dealt with a broken window at some point in their life. They’re like flat tires—it’s just a matter of time.

But here’s what’s cool: broken glass is the one thing that nobody would expect would be covered by a warranty. Why? Because just like my older brother’s ice ball accident, broken windows are almost always the customer’s fault! Nobody would ever imagine that YOU would cover THEIR negligence.

Which is exactly what makes it so powerful.

If you offer a broken glass warranty on every window you sell, you now have a distinct selling advantage against your competitors. As soon as prospects hear about it, they’ll get some kind of image in their mind of a baseball or golf ball or football—or snowball—flying through a window.

What? You’ll fix it for FREE?

That’s an easy value to see. That window just became instantly more valuable.

But what about the liability? Won’t you get killed on service requests? Surprisingly, very few people actually take you up on the offer. Many forget that you even offer it. Others are embarrassed to request free service because they know the broken window was their fault and they don’t feel like you should have to pay for it. And at the end of the day, there really just aren’t THAT many broken windows.

I called one of my customers, Steve Rennenkamp of Energy Swing Windows in Pittsburg, to get his two cents on the topic. Here’s what he reported:

• He’s been offering a glass breakage warranty for over fifteen years now
• Over 20,000 windows sold under warranty to over 3,000 customers
• Only four or five broken glass requests PER YEAR
• Cost to make repair: About $100 including labor and glass
• Most customers expect to pay something; are thrilled when there is no charge
• Leads to happy customers, referrals, and even more TRUST
• See Steve’s website with the warranty here

Want more referrals? Offer a glass breakage warranty.

Want a selling advantage against your hundreds of competitors? Offer a glass breakage warranty.
Want to become beloved by little boys and girls who won’t be doomed to forfeiting their allowance for years to pay for accidents?

Offer a glass breakage warranty.

OFFER: FREE Website Checkup: How’s your website doing? Is it pulling in all the home improvement leads it should, or are you turning prospects away? Find out for sure for FREE… just fill out the form below and we’ll give you a free “Website Checkup” and rate it on the following factors: professionalism, identity, headlines, social proof, evidence, and more. What are you waiting for? Fill out the form!

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© 2014 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.