Building Your Offer They Cannot Refuse
Over the last few weeks, we have talked about your market dominating position, generating leads, following up with your leads using a drip campaign to grow your business. We have also talked about the impact of cutting costs and increasing your pricing on your profits. It might still be hard to resist giving away all of your hard work with big discounts. Dont forget, if you have a 20% margin and do a 10% discount, you give half your profits away. Let us first work on developing an offer your customer cannot refuse.
This week, we want to talk about how to build your compelling offer your prospect cannot refuse.
You might think at first the offer is a product or service you want to sell. Yes, that makes sense, but many times that may not be the first item you offer. While you might have some ready to buy now, remember only 1-3% of those checking you out are actually ready to to give you their credit card. The larger pool of 97% to 99% of the people are trying to get information first. You must meet the prospect where they are. How can you help the prospect get the information they need? Would it be a report? A video? Even if you are just starting, you know more about the subject than the people looking for information. After building your report, then you can use a squeeze page to make your offer of the free report you will email them. On the squeeze page, a great practice to make your offer is to include a 1 to 3 minute video on the left hand side and your offer on the right hand side above the fold (meaning, you should not need to scroll down to see the video or offer). Once the offer is taken, your report email should be setup to automatically go out once the prospect submits their email.
This begins to set you up as the expert and who does not want to work with an expert.
Once you have their email you will continue the prospects education. Example, if you finished garages, you might talk about how the finished floor will improve the life of the concrete, how the wall hanging system will organize your garage, and how it will boost their home value, etc. You get the point.
Internal Compelling Incentive
An Internal Compelling Offer is an offer of something you have or control. So let us take a look at what that could look like..
Versus giving away discounts, make a list of product or services you could include in your package. Let us say your gross profit margin is 50%, anything you build into your package will have a perceived value that is twice the value.
First, think of additional services that could be added to your package. Your prospect would otherwise expect to pay, but you provide. Think of a dry cleaner service who will pick-up and drop off your dry cleaning to and from your work place. For you, this saves you a ton of time and for them, they may have 30 clients at the office with 10 shirts each.
How about the martial arts program that offers transportation versus the one that does not. Which will likely have more students.
A second option would be a free or discounting item to be added to your package. If you have an item that has high margin, it will have a perceived high value, but really has a low cost. I have one client who has an item that sells for $150 and she will gift another item or two that she sells for $40, yet costs her $4 to help close the sale. Now the prospect is walking away thinking he or she got a great deal with all of the free gifts. If she gave two items away, it cost her $8, but the customer feels like she gave away $80.
Do you offer a subscription? How about a free trial. If you have a great product, a free trial is a great way to build a long-term customer.
Another value add could be Value Bucks or a gift certificate that can only be redeemed at your business. Example, if your offer was a $60 gift certificate for a $200 or higher purchase, the qualifying carts will likely average over $200 (some might get close, but others will go over) and your Gross Margin was 70%, then the gift certificate would cost you about $18. Plus when they redeem the gift certificate, they will likely spend more than $60.
External Compelling Offer or Incentive
In some cases, you can get a strategic endorsement partner who can absorb some or all of the cost of your free offer. Example, if your compelling incentive included a free trial of this partners product or service, then they will benefit from the long-term customer.
Example would be a home builder or remodeling contractor could offer a free interior design session with a retail value of $100. A carpet retailer could offer a new customer free carpet cleaning for a year. The key is that the strategic endorsement partner has a repeat product or service with a strong lifetime value or the partner believes it will lead to a large purchase.
So to close, you can see how building up the value of your package will allow you to protect your margins but still gives the prospect the feeling they received a great deal. Now begin thinking of your packages.
If you have questions about your compelling offer or interested in a free business assessment, feel free to connect with the scheduling button below.
To your future success,
Robert