The Five Things to Check When An Offer Doesn’t Sell

When you run a micro business you’re often on the edge of your seat with each offer. Will the class fill? Will clients come in? Will we make enough sales?

When it works, it feels fantastic! And when it doesn’t, it’s scary and sometimes puzzling. What happened? Where are those clients?

In those less-abundant times, there are five things to look at. Of course it helps to look at these five things before you make your offer, but show yourself some compassion! We, yes me included, all make miss-steps and miss even really obvious things. Even if it’s afterward, you can learn a ton to make the next offer even better.

The Five Things

1. Your intention.
2. Size of audience.
3. Problem addressed.
4. Campaign details.
5. Price.

Each of these requires a little more explanation, so let’s dig in.

First, Your Intention

Our needs for love, approval, acceptance, and security are extremely powerful and subtle, for good reason. No matter how heart-centered you are, you can be at risk of having your intentions subtly overcome by neediness.

This can color your decisions and your self-expression. You can miss cues of internal guidance, and you can write your emails, or hold conversations in a way that pushes people away.

Taking extra time in spiritual practice, such as the Remembrance, can make a tremendous difference in how well your offer goes out into the world.

It can be tricky, because the other side is that you can get too lost in spiritual practice and perfectionism and never take action. So at some point you do have to step out and do it however you are.

Second, Audience Size

You never want to treat anyone like a number. Each person you reach has a heart, with hopes and dreams. Yet, not everyone is ready, or even appropriate to jump in with you.

In order for an offer to work, you have to reach enough people so that the much smaller percentage of those people who will respond is large enough to meet your goals. If you need to fill five spots in a group, if you’re reaching only 50 interested people, I can pretty much guarantee you won’t fill all five spots.

How many people do you really need to reach? There’s no hard-and-fast rules, but you probably need to reach more people than you think. This is why it’s so important to work on building your audience.

Third, The Problem Addressed

Your offer solves a problem. If it doesn’t, you need to think about this long and hard. Although solving a problem isn’t all you need, it’s a necessary ingredient.

People put off action, sometimes from overwhelm, sometimes from fear and uncertainty. But when they are stuck facing a problem and can’t get past it to where they are trying to go, then they are often willing to finally get help.

It’s imperative that you talk about the problem that your client wants to solve, plus something else.

Fourth, Campaign Details

When I say “campaign” I mean the effort you put into letting people know about your offer. You don’t need to hammer someone with emails every single day, but you also can’t get away with one single email or, worse yet, advertisement or announcement.

How many times are you letting people know about your offer? Is there a deadline? Do they have all the information they need to make a decision?

Really critical. One more thing I’ll say here: if you’re heart-centered, chances are what you feel is “too many emails” is probably barely even getting their attention.

Fifth, Price

Pricing is so important. You know this. A price has to be right in order for others to resonate with it. Too high, and people shy away. Too low, and people wonder what’s wrong.

You need to find your just right price.

Make It A Checklist

Look at any previous offers you’ve made, or upcoming offers and run it through this checklist. What was missing? What could’ve been better? What can you work on for next time?

And, anything you would add to this list?