Week 2 – Refining Your Offer

• Lesson Three – Define the desirable outcome

Keep in mind that deciding what to offer is part of a bigger conversation about the heart of your business, your business model, and your income streams. If you continue to have questions after this week, you may want to enlist more support in sorting this out.

If you want to explore other options of what to offer during your sales conversation, let’s start here. One of the things that helps focus your business is defining a clear and valuable outcome you are confident you can help people experience.

Don’t worry for now about capturing the biggest, deepest outcome. Don’t worry for now about showcasing what makes you different. Just practice naming something you are confident you can deliver through your work.

For example:
• I can help women who want to find a sustainable way to move and eat so their bodies feel good
• I can help business owners who are feeling shaky to have more confidence and ease
• I can help couples to find more connection and intimacy in their marriages

I know this part can make you feel squeamish, but play with it any way.

What is a simple, down to earth way you can describe a desirable outcome you feel confident you can deliver?

This will also become the focus of the language you use to invite people in to conversation with you (“I am looking for women who are tired of doing the latest diet or workout and who want to find long-term strategies to eat and move so they feel good. Is that you?” Or “Do you know anyone like that?”)

If you feel that there are lots of outcomes you help people have (or are saying to yourself “it depends on the person”, then list all the ones you can think of. Or, think of specific clients and start listing the outcomes they’ve experienced.

Next lesson, we’ll start to consider what “package” of support or services allows you to deliver that outcome.

• Lesson Four – Pick a package size and shape

Now that you’ve defined an outcome you can deliver, it’s time to decide the package or packages you want to offer if someone you speak to says they are interested.

So, let’s say you are promising to help solo business owners get control of their paper clutter and their important records.

How exactly will you do that?

How many sessions? Over what period of time?

Again, don’t worry about doing this perfectly.

Just come up with what you think is a reasonable or realistic number of sessions that it would take to accomplish that outcome. The package you create reflects your experience knowing what generally allows someone to reach the outcome they desire.

Let’s say, in the example above, you know it takes a minimum of six sessions over 12 weeks for someone to really see a change. That could become a package.

If your recommended package feels too big, you might consider a starter package. If someone wasn’t ready to commit to your full recommended package, is there a smaller, “taster” experience they could have that would be valuable?

Notice that in the smaller package, the outcome might scale down. So instead of helping someone get their paper clutter under control, you might have a starter package that promises to help them clear their desk. Make sense?

Please play with some ideas of packages you might offer. Keep in mind you can have more than one.

For those in health and wellness fields, I know there can sometimes be a reluctance to do more than session by session treatment. What I have seen work is:
• Make a recommended plan of treatment for each client, even if you allow them to book and pay session by session
• Create some incentive for committing to a larger number of sessions (e.g. discount on the third session booked within a certain time frame.)

• Lesson Five – Pick a price

Yes, I am afraid it’s true. You will have to charge money for this!

Pick a price for the package or packages you worked on the previous lesson.

Again, we are not going for the ultimate, crazy, ideal price.

We are looking for a price that you realistically think you can say, that you feel good about offering. It is much more important that you open your mouth and say something than that you have the right price.

There’s a lot of talk about charging what you’re worth. I wouldn’t worry about that right now.

Here’s one simple way to set pricing, inspired by Mark Silver’s Resonant Pricing exercise.

1. Set a bottom price. What is the very least you would accept for this work? What is the price below which it’s not worth your time to do this work?
2. Set a top price. What is the top price you can imagine charging for this package?
3. Now, move slowly from the bottom to the top, noticing your body sensations. Where does the energy feel strongest? The most open? Where does it feel heavy or sticky?
4. Use that information to pick a price to go out the door with.

Here’s the good news. You can change the price person to person (I know that might not feel “right” but it really is ok, you’re not doing it to manipulate them, you’re doing it to find your right place.)

If it’s going well and you’re feeling confident you might feel like you can inch the price up. Great! Make a few more sales and do it again.

Most people tell me this is a much easier way to raise their prices than suddenly doubling their rates or something crazy like that.

And, depending on where you are in your business, you can negotiate the price.

As we finish the first five lessons, here’s where you should be:
1. You are committing to reaching out and bringing in more clients.
2. You have evaluated how you feel about your current offers.
3. You have decided on an outcome that you can offer that you can talk to people about.
4. You have decided on package of services you are comfortable offering.
5. You have decided what price to put on your offer.