Here’s a revealing truth.

What if I told you that you could drive more sales and more revenue for the type of client you desire than even the most accomplished salesperson in your business, without knowing anything about how to sell? 

Would you believe me? 

To outperform even the best salesperson, all you need to do is get one thing right.

Your offer.

In fact, a winning offer can be so compelling that you don’t even need a highly skilled sales team to sell it.

In many ways, that’s the point.

Crafting an irresistible offer scales companies and increases conversion rates unlike anything else.

Not the sales team, not the marketing team. It’s the offer.

Again, it's not the social media campaigns, not the content marketing strategy. It's an irresistible offer.

You might be sitting there thinking, BS.

The marketing and sales team are everything! Don’t get me wrong, with over a dozen full-time sales and marketing people on my team focused on successful campaigns and a wide range of content marketing, I know the importance of each department intimately.

But so much of what they do falls apart when you get the offer wrong.

So what exactly is the offer?

Put simply, it’s the construction of a series of product features, benefits, pricing, bonuses, guarantees and demand/supply dynamics.

Each of these elements when stacked together creates your ‘offer’.

The better you construct each component, the more irresistible the offer will be.

So, want to create your irresistible offer? Let’s dive into each step.

Step 1: Maximize Value

To understand what our customers value, we need to look at what creates value across 4 dimensions

  1. Wishlist: What are the dream outcomes they’re hoping to achieve? Think of wishes, needs, wants, and desires. E.g. I need more cash flow so we can invest in better marketing. I want more time off to enjoy with the family. I wish I had a crazy good offer people just love to buy.

  2. Risks: A company in the stock market is priced based on supply and demand for that company (which is determined by many things, one of which is its inherent value). Value can be thought of as the equation between risk and reward. Every potential reward carries an inherent risk (or probability) of being realized. There are all sorts of valid reasons, excuses and factors (perceivably) outside your clients’ control that they’re computing in deciding whether to buy your product. Your job is to find ways to reduce those risks to as low as possible, stretching the risk/reward (and therefore value) equation in your favour.

  3. Time Constraints: If your prospects could take a pill to get the same outcome you promise in 1/100th of the time with absolute certainty, they’d take it (and pay 10x the price). The amount of time, the available capacity they have to execute and how busy they are at that moment in time all factor into their decision-making. You need to understand all those constraints well so you can design features into your offer that reduce or eliminate those time constraints altogether.

  4. Energy Vampires: Know the old saying, if it were easy, then everyone would be doing it? The same applies here. To get the result they want they have to endure vast amounts of effort and sacrifice in order to get it (especially if you provide a done-with-you service). If the process sounds like hard work, they get a sniff that they won’t enjoy it or don’t think they (or you) have the chops to do it - they will discount the offer.

Step 2: Objection Buster

So in order to create maximum value, we need to turn these constraints on their head. The goal is to flip the script in their mind.

It’s simple. It starts by articulating:

For example, at my company Dent Global we sell coaching and training services for entrepreneurs. A common objection is:

You need to do this for each of the major objections that come up in the sales process and convert this content into your pitch and presentation materials.

Step 3: Problem Transformer

The next step is to convert all the risks, time-consumers, energy-vampires, reasons and excuses into product features (solutions).

For example….

As you go through each of the pain points and convert them into product features, you are literally building both an irresistible offer and remarkable solution to the customer’s problems.

Step 4: The Value Stack

Now we put this all together in the form of a one-page value stack showcasing the key features, benefits and value (real or perceived) of the product/offer.

For example….

At Dent, we put this into a one-page overview of the value of our product or service. See below for an example.

This builds and stretches the gap between the value of the product and the price someone will eventually pay.

Step 5: Bonuses, Guarantees, Risk Reversals, Scarcity and Urgency

This is where you keep stretching the gap between the real or perceived value of the product and the price someone eventually pays.

  1. Bonuses: Once you’ve presented the pricing, you can continue to stack value by adding additional bonuses. E.g. If you’re willing to move forward today we’ll include…

    • Bonus training module

    • Software included

    • Pre-loaded templates

    • Xyz audit

    • A free session/month with Abc Co

    • Etc...

  2. Guarantees and Risk Reversals: can come in two forms…

    • Unconditional: no questions asked 😇

      • How about this? If I could take all the risk away from making a decision today, would you be interested in learning how? ‘Look under the hood’ (informed decision).

    • Conditional: You must do x in order to receive y 🤔

      • If you do the things we prescribe / provide the ‘thing’ we need within x time frame and it doesn’t achieve y result, 100% money-back guarantee.

  3. Scarcity and Urgency: is all about bending time and demand/supply dynamics in your favour

    • Scarcity: demand supply tension ⚖️

      • Calculate your available capacity this week/month/quarter

      • I have x spots left for the month/quarter

    • Urgency: time-constrained benefit or saving ⏱️

      • Our first availability is in x (future) month. If you are happy to secure your place today with a nominal deposit, I’ll take x off the price

      • We prefer to work with decision-makers and action-takers. If you’re happy to move forward with me today, you get x bonuses or y off price.

Step 6: Pricing

Pricing deserves a whole lesson in itself, which goes beyond the scope of this article. However, here are two principles that are critical to getting the pricing to support the offer:

  1. Ensure the ‘Dollar Value’ in the Value Stack is 3-5 times the price you offer for the product.

  2. Consider two components to your pricing. A one-time ‘setup’ fee and then an ongoing monthly subscription for as long as they stay a user of the product.

These two pricing strategies will maximize both value for your client and value to your business over the lifetime of the customer (i.e. LTV).

So, there you have it - the anatomy of a good offer is about artfully blending all or many of these elements together. Every business and every customer is different, so I’m not suggesting you need to do all these components all of the time.

Some seasons of your business may call for leaning more on urgency and scarcity elements to promote a special offer (for example holiday periods, special sale periods etc).

Similarly, some customers may scoff or balk at certain offer elements (like bonuses or guarantees) which in fact hurt your offer.

It really comes down to fine-tuning what is right for you, your sales team, your market and your brand.

Because you’re so close to your own business, it can be helpful to get an outside perspective on what makes sense for your business and customers. Asking trusted colleagues, or friends, or joining a coaching environment can give you the bounce factor you often need to dial in your offer perfectly.

Thanks for reading! If you’ve enjoyed this topic and want to learn more, here are some things from my universe you can explore when ready