How do you verify customers completed the required actions for your 90-day guarantee and prevent abuse?

#188 · Why AI Voice Agents (Usually) Suck.

How do you verify customers completed the required actions for your 90-day guarantee and prevent abuse?

I’ve seen people try to abuse the 90‑day guarantee. I can’t demand a Loom video of their work, but I can usually tell if they’re legit or just blowing smoke. If they ask for a legitimate refund, I give it. If I suspect they haven’t done the work, I ask for concrete proof—like how many cold emails they’ve sent, Upwork applications, or community posts. If they lack any real activity, we talk it out, but there’s no foolproof way to prevent abuse. The guarantee works only when the revenue increase far outweighs the small profit hit; for example, tripling front‑end traffic for a 10% refund rate still leaves you 270% ahead. If the numbers don’t support that, I wouldn’t offer the guarantee.

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Related answers

youtube ↗Offers

Should I offer guarantees in my offers even if I'm not confident I can deliver them?

Offering guarantees makes you work harder and learn more because your ass is on the line. As Jack Roberts said, show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome. If you guarantee a result and must refund if you fail, you’ll push harder than if you just take money without a guarantee. You’re not just promising a result; you’re creating an offer like “I’ll get you 20 book meetings in 60 days or I’ll refund you.” That’s how it works. I was once told never to guarantee anything, which held me back, but now I believe you should 100% guarantee—it’s the minimum entry ticket these days.

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I don't have any client case studies yet, even though I know how to build the automations. How do I keep a risk-reversal offer in my cold emails without guaranteeing a dollar-sign revenue outcome I'm not sure I can deliver?

You don't have to guarantee dollar-sign outcomes — I've worked with these kinds of businesses for about a decade so I have a reasonable sense of what value I can drive, but if you're new to this it's completely understandable that you're not comfortable promising a dollar figure. Offer something else instead. A few variants: tell them you won't charge a cent unless they absolutely love it and ask you to keep going. Or say you'll deliver X, Y and Z, or you'll keep working for free until you do (weaker, but I've used it myself — we did this at Pacific Creative Group with my old business partner). You could also put real risk on the table, like offering to buy them an Amazon gift card or refund them if you don't deliver. Instead of ROI, you could frame it around hours saved per week (hard to track in practice, but usable). Or just offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee — tell them your sole goal is their satisfaction, and if they don't see the value, you won't charge them. A guarantee does two things: it makes people much more likely to want to work with you, and it makes you much more likely to actually follow through on what you promised.

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We built a tool that reconnects an agency's cold CRM leads but have no proof yet. How should we land the first three to five clients and what offer would make them say yes?

You should guarantee revenue. Do whatever it takes to get people on a call where you can explain the product. Remember, you’re not selling the tool itself but the outcome it delivers—revenue. A guarantee can be framed as: I will generate X amount of revenue for you within Y time, or I’ll give your money back. Focus on getting as many qualified calls as possible, then qualify prospects on the call to ensure you can deliver the promised results. For example, it’s easy to generate an additional $10,000 in revenue for a business that already makes $100,000 a month by identifying and fixing a few blind spots, which can boost total revenue by about 10%.

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What should I do when a client asks about my past work and I lack confidence in my capability?

When a client asks about your past work and you feel unsure, don’t say you just watched YouTube videos and built automations. Instead, say you’ve built similar systems for a software development agency and offer to walk them through the system. You can imply—without lying—that you built those systems for yourself first, which gives you credibility. To address trust, offer a guarantee: tell the client you’ll only get paid if you deliver results, and if you don’t, they owe you nothing. This aligns incentives, makes the decision a no‑brainer, and can boost conversion rates dramatically (often 300% or more). The cost of occasional refunds is usually about 10% of your margin, so financially it still works out.

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