"That's too risky!"

All consumers (aka human beings) are risk adverse, albeit to varying degrees. Less risk is better.

Lovelock, Patterson and Walker in their excellent textbook, Services Marketing, propose six main types of risk consumers experience when making a buying decision.

1) Functional risk is concerned with performance outcomes. For example: How can I be sure this accountant will gain the maximum tax return for me?

2) Financial risk is concerned with monetary loss and unexpected costs. For example: Will this electrician add extra costs to my final bill that were not quoted or mentioned to me?

3) Temporal risk is concerned with wasting time and consequences of delays. For example: Will the cafe have my lunch order ready on time, so I am not late back to work?

4) Psychological risk is concerned with personal fears and emotions. For example: Will I feel stupid if I don't understand the diagnosis given by the doctor?

5) Social risk is concerned with how others think and react. For example: Will my colleagues dislike my new tie and make wrong assumptions about me as a result?

6) Sensory risk is concerned with unwanted impacts on any of the five senses. For example: Will the restaurant still spell strongly of new paint like last time?

Knowing what are the main risks typically experienced by your customers is step number one. Next, you need to develop performance predictors to eliminate (or at least reduce) each of these risks. In the first example above (How can I be sure this accountant will gain the maximum tax return for me?), you could promote a client success statistic stating that '94% of clients are "pleasantly surprised" with the tax return received from XYZ Accountants (source: 2007 client survey, audited by PWC)'.

When you have completed the process of eliminating risks with performance predictors, you need to select your flagship performance predictor from the list.