When you craft an offer in your business, do you go for the full meal deal, and offer a 12 month, in-depth program and maybe no one enrolls? Or do you go for a quick 3 session program, but it doesn’t generate much revenue, and after three weeks you have to do it again?
It’s a big question, and the first-glance answer is “It depends.”
But what does it depend on? There are at least three considerations you need to know about and reflect on. Let’s go there for a moment, so you can make profitable decisions that don’t sink you or burn you out.
First This
You know a LOT about your subject area. Even if you’re a newbie, you’ve spent time and effort learning about what you’re doing. Please honor that.
Listen to me: honor the learning, growth and transformation you’ve gone through to get where you are. Your clients cannot catch up to your level of knowledge and experience without going through a similar process for themselves.
I was talking to a colleague who was realizing this truth about some of the reaching she was wanting to do on relationship and sexuality, “I had to honor in myself that it had taken years for me to not just understand what was going on, but also to feel comfortable. The topics I’m introducing are just flipping my clients out, and they need more time to get comfortable.”
Even if you’re not dealing with a topic as charged as sexuality in relationships, your clients are still really vulnerable to this process.
Take a moment now in your heart to see the path you’ve walked to get where you are. Honor it, every twist and turn. It’s been the long walk, hasn’t it? Honoring that in you means your offers can be both more gentle and more effective for your clients, because you won’t be rushing them through 10 years of learning in 6 weeks. 🙂
What’s Next?
When you create an offer, think to yourself, “What’s next?” Remove the wall that can make your offer seem like a dead-end, and instead understand that once your client finished the current offer, they’ll be ready for the next step.
What is that next step? Identifying the next step can help you relax into a smaller offer now, and it can also help you step up into getting your clients what they need.
Not to mention that the best way to make a business profitable is to sell additional offers to people who already love and trust you and what you’re doing.
Catch the Balance
As I mentioned in the beginning there is a balance to catch. On the one hand you’ve got the short, easy, low-priced offer that gets people in the door. Low commitment can sometimes mean an easier time enrolling folks.
Unfortunately, it also means not a lot of revenue. Plus the offer comes to completion quickly, and so you’re back where you started, needing to make another offer and enroll people.
This dynamic is one of the reasons I recommend that folks start by creating an individual services package of some sort that lasts at least two to three months, if not a little longer. It can be more profitable, easier to get great results, and you don’t have to constantly re-enroll every time.
Three scenarios to consider:
1. If your offer is short in duration, small in scope.
You’ll want to get clear on what the next step offer is before you even launch this first one. You’ll also want to integrate the promotion and enrollment of what’s next into the first offer.
Why? So it can be non-sleazy. So you can think it through so that it makes sense and is a real service to folks.
Offering a short course with a next step of individual or small group coaching can be a really powerful combination. Just make sure the short course is something real and useful on it’s own, and not just an excuse to try to sell to them.
2. If your offer is high-priced, premium, and long in duration.
Look for natural dividing lines in the content. Could it be a little shorter or easier? Or are there organic places where there could be different levels of commitment, engagement and price for your clients?
There are those who want to dive into a 12-session, six month course on treating diseases naturally. Some may want just the course, and others may want some private or small group coaching support.
Or, it could be two courses, the first is four sessions, and the second is eight sessions. The four session course could hit highlights and most common and necessary information, and the the follow-up could be more in-depth.
3. If your offer is in that middle place.
Make it long enough so that there is some rest between promotion cycles. If you promote to fill a course or other offer, the promotion runs 2-3 weeks.
If you run a one month course, you’ll need to start promoting again before the course is over, with hardly a few weeks between promotions.
If, however, you design the course so it lasts at least two months or even three, you’ll have some fallow time, a month or more, before you’re promoting again.
I’ve just scratched the surface on this topic, so I’m curious to hear from you. What do you do or have you done that has worked well, or perhaps hasn’t worked well at all?
Please share your questions and comments here.
p.s. Faithfully Rich
A friend and colleague Leesa Barnes had a breakthrough when she realized she wasn’t living her faith. Her business had become a distorted, disconnected reality of strategies and tactics, but her heart wasn’t feeling good about what and how she was doing it.
She made a scary decision to trust her heart, and her business got a complete restart. It’s been a beautiful process to witness. And she was inspired to hold a series of calls of with folks who have also allowed their faith/spirituality to guide their business. Yes, I’m one of those folks.
Faithfully Rich is her series, and I invite you to join us for it. It’s free, and there you go:
Click here: Faithfully Rich
Yes, it’s an affiliate link. If you buy something from her, Heart of Business will receive a thank you percentage.
p.s. Early-bird extension for Toronto, Ontario workshop in October
Rob Helmer from the InnerGarden.ca in Toronto is hosting me to teach a weekend workshop, Friday evening through Sunday, October 12-14, 2012.
He also had some big family stuff come up that he had to deal with. He’s okay, everyone’s okay, it’s just that he made the very wise decision to care for his family and not stress about the early-bird deadline. So no email reminder went out.
The early-bird deadline is extended through this week. If you want to join me in Toronto before the price goes up, now is the time to register!
If you’re in or near Toronto, I hope you’ll join me–I’d love to meet you! This is going to be in-depth, nourishing, practical, nourishing.
Take a look and register: Every Act of Business Can Be An Act of Love
11 Responses
Really great suggestions on how to break down content. What a great point to remember how long it took us to get where we are at and our clients are not completely different. A really healthy process, with long-standing results, takes time.
Glad it was helpful, Michele.
This really spoke to me and was a gentle reminder to myself that I needed to honor my own journey and how long it took me to get where I am. Cramming a bunch of info in a short period of time isn’t exactly the best approach and it did inspire me to re-look at my content and see how I can break things out in a way that would allow the client the most space for growth, but with the support they need to journey through. This came to me at perfect timing, thank you!
Amy- gentle reminders… I live for gentle reminders, so glad I was able to supply one.
A friend once told me that my goal through my training programs isn’t to make the student an expert in what I do. Give them enough information to either get them started or get them motivated to move to the next step. This was HUGE for me and along with the tips provided above, I said goodbye to the over-giver living inside of me so I no longer overwhelm my students.
Sometimes, the over-giver shows up. But I now recognize her. And I have a quick conversation with her to let her know that we have to be mindful of simplifying the teaching for our learners. I feel more whole and not so exhausted any more.
(Oh and thanks for mentioning Faithfully Rich. I love how you sum up why the series exist. You have a beautiful spirit, Mark.)
Leesa- sure sounds like you’ve got it handled. Nice!
“You’ll also want to integrate the promotion and enrollment of what’s next into the first offer. ”
Mark, do you integrate this in the sales page, or do you promote during the actual class you’re teaching?
During the class, Nick, not on the sales page. Too soon on the sales page. Otherwise it sounds like an attempt to sell them a humdinger of a thingamabob.
Hi Mark
Found you quite by chance. 🙂
Love your message here. You really hit the spot with the honouring our journey.
I’ve also found It’s easy to fall into the cycle of trying to teach people everything you know too quickly for them to absorb it.
Thanks
Rachel- isn’t it so easy to fall into that? Welcome! Glad to meet you, by chance. 🙂
Mark — I was catching up on a couple of your emails this morning — this article being one of them – the CONFIDENCE article the other — and once again was just so COMFORTED by you. I’ve weened my “subscribe to” list down to the bare minimum to avoid email overwhelm . . . but you always are on the KEEP list . . . it’s just oh-so-easy to forget our divinity when we get caught up in the “Marketing Sea” . . . I feel sometimes like I go for a gentle walk on the beach, dip my toes in the water, and suddenly the Marketing Overwhelm Undertow just grabs me and drags me way too far from shore! Reading your articles always feels like someone just magically threw me a lifeline . . . back to my own divinity. I am very grateful.
Namaste and Rainbow Blessings!