To attract more of your ideal clients, you need to present your expertise in a way that makes it easy for your first choice clients to invest with you and to pay higher prices.
When we talk about “packaging” your offer, that doesn’t mean you have to put it in a real box and deliver a physical product.
However, most experts make the mistake of talking about the process of what they do or using a label like “coach” or “consultant” which doesn’t usually give people any reason to invest with them.
Presenting your services in that way is a bit like a restaurant telling you they serve food or listing the ingredients and equipment they have in their kitchen without offering any more information.
You need to be able to present what you offer in a way that encourages your prospective client to:
- Make the decision to buy
- See the extra value in the price you are charging
- Try you out at a level appropriate to their immediate needs
- Stay with you longer and upgrade to higher value services
Dan Kennedy, one of the world’s leading experts on marketing for entrepreneurs and small businesses describes this as creating a “widget”.
A widget is really a package of products or services that people can identify in their mind and therefore see how it could help them.
He says that the ability to package your services by consistently creating the right widgets that appeal to your ideal customers is one of the most important business skills.
So there are five key elements to packaging your offer effectively:
- Proposition
- Presentation
- Pricing
- Profit Ladder
- Production and Delivery
Defining the Proposition
The first key to packaging your offer is defining exactly what you are offering to do. This follows partly from your positioning but clearly you can have a range of propositions to offer as part of your positioning.
The key is that you need to define your proposition in terms of the results and transformation you can deliver.
For example, if you are a coach, you may struggle to attract clients by trying to convince people of the general benefits of coaching. It’s much better to talk instead about a specific service that delivers a desired outcome such as:
- Attracting more clients
- Meeting your ideal partner
- Speaking with confidence in meetings
People then find it easier to see the value so they are more likely to buy.
Deciding the Presentation
The presentation of your offer is what you put in the “box” and how you describe it.
Again, it doesn’t have to be a physical box – although it may include physical elements – it is simply a way of presenting less tangible services in a way that people can get their head round and understand how it might benefit them.
The five key elements of presentation are usually:
- Personal Contact such as meetings or coaching
- Written material like books and reports
- Audio / Video with more detailed information and guidance
- Resources such as spreadsheets, checklists and recommended service providers
- Services which deliver specific solutions
The exact mix of those will depend on your business and the price being charged.
One of the keys to success with presentation is to ensure it links with the proposition – usually by giving it an appealing name.
For example, if you are a coach, you could try inviting people to an initial meeting or you could instead create a package featuring your book, several worksheets and an initial meeting and call it the Ultimate Goal Setting Workshop, linking it to a specific result you offer.
Similarly, you could offer a coaching program or you could offer a 12-month Personal Transformation Program with a range of different elements included.
The key is that you need to find a way to enable people to understand exactly how you can help them, what exactly is included and how they will be transformed.
By the way, the fact that you offer services in a packaged way does not mean you don’t continue to offer many different solutions. In the same way, a restaurant may have a weekly special offer that attracts people in and then many actually order something entirely different when they come in.
The key is to make the initial purchase decision easy and to build from there.
Pricing for Success
There are many different ways to package the same solution and the key to success is being able to find the best mix of ways to present your offer. If you want to make $120,000 in a year, there are various ways of doing that. For example:
- Sell 1 person something that costs $120,000
- Sell 10 people something that costs $1,000 per month
- Sell 1,000 people something that costs $120
- Sell 10,000 people something that costs $12
All of these (and many other variations) are perfectly feasible business models, depending on your offer and your market. The secret is to find the mix that is right for you. Ideally you want to be able to package your expertise in several different ways so you can reach different markets and also give people different ways of trying out your services before they make a major commitment.
Somebody may buy your $12 book today and then be a customer for a $20,000 consultancy project in a few months’ time.
Creating Your Profit Ladder
The approach to organizing your offers can best be described as a “profit ladder.” At the bottom end of the ladder, you have lower cost offers where people can try you out with a small purchase and you are likely to make more sales.
As you go up the ladder, the investment and commitment increases. At the top, you have your VIP customers – a relatively small group buying your top services. You can break down these steps in any number of ways but there are five key stages:
- First Step: A way for people to begin the relationship with you – may be a free report or an initial consultation for example
- Easy Purchase: A simple decision that turns a prospect into a customer such as a small project or a low cost product
- Upsell Process: A system for moving people on as quickly as possible to larger purchases and longer commitments
- Ascension to VIP: A range of higher priced offers for best clients
- Services: Doing things for people rather than advising them
The keys to success are that, as quickly as possible, you should get people on the ladder (investing something with you) and then move them up the ladder using a planned system.
This is sometimes also referred to as a product “funnel.” The concept is the same but one drawback with the funnel concept is that it can focus too much on just getting people into the funnel – whether or not they are likely to be ideal clients.
The fact is it is often better to start by focusing on the small number of people who will pay high prices – and at the very least to get people buying something as quickly as possible.
While creating a high-priced offer takes more work, the potential return is much greater so you can often reach your objectives more quickly. But the key is to have the right mix so that you can deliver the right range of offers. The reality is that some people always want the biggest package you have available and others will always stick to lower cost options.
A successful business caters for both. But often the best approach is to build your business around the smaller number of people who buy your highest price offers as that is where most of your profit will come from.
Producing and Delivering Your Package
When it comes to delivery, one factor to take into account is that some people prefer to write, others prefer to speak and some are more comfortable giving personalized advice.
Some people would rather sit at home one weekend and write a 20-page report, while others would prefer to get up on stage and do a live presentation. We’ll talk more about production in the next step.