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What you’ll learn in this episode:
How are you setting up your business offers?
Are you taking on every potential offer, or are you focusing in on a select few?
If you’re overwhelming yourself with the number of offers that you’re trying to maintain, it’s not too late to take one and make that the only one you work on for the time-being. You won’t destroy your business doing so. In fact, if anything, your business will thrive beyond what you could’ve imagined.
Today, I will be giving you my very own Four-Part Offer Flow. It’s simple, it’s practical, and it works. Following this simple framework will transform your business.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
- People need to be told what to do. So, tell them, otherwise they won’t buy anything.
- You have to have a free offer. No one buys from you unless you have first provided them with a great experience.
- Free offers aren’t low value offers. Don’t be fooled by the price.
- As clients “graduate” through your offers, your offers should become better quality and bigger money-makers.
- Buy-ups or up-level offers are the icing on the cake. They make the whole experience better wherever you sprinkle them.
- Clients don’t like surprises with new brands. Save the surprises and wow factor for further down the line.
- You can start with one offer and add more as you grow. You don’t have to stick with the offer you had when you started.
- Don’t overcomplicate. Don’t confuse it. Don’t make it more difficult than it needs to be.
Mentioned in this episode:
Business and Rejuvenation Retreat
Work/Connect with me:
Business and Rejuvenation Retreat
[01:00] Jessica: Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the practical mindset podcast. I’m Jess Miller, and I’m so excited to be here with all of you today to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is making money with your offers.
[01:14] I am a huge fan of making offers. I’m also a huge fan of consult calls and reaching out to people, and touching people who are your potential clients, or people that you have worked with who you want to help more. I love talking about offers. The reason why is because I have seen so many business owners complicate offers in a way that not only makes their life difficult, but it also is so confusing for their clients.
[01:48] So, today I want to talk about the idea that if you want to make money with your offers and grow in a streamline and easy fashion, you have to have clear, structured flow to your offers. I often see that many business owners either start off with too many offers, or they start over-complicating their business with several offers before they’ve built a solid foundation, which ends up confusing their customers, so they don’t end up buying anything, and/or they waste time and energy in their business, so it burns them out and slows them down. Today, we’re going to talk about my four-part offer flow, and we’re going to talk about how to really streamline these offers in a way that makes sense, in a way that makes it easy, and in a way that allows you to make money and grow.
[02:52] I want to start off by sharing a story with you about when I first started my business. As many of you know, I was in corporate America for a very long time, and the number one thing that kept me stuck there was this belief that I was going to come out of corporate and be dead-broke starting my business. I mean, seriously, I would have visions of myself shuffling down the street in my bathrobe, dead-broke, so I stayed stuck in corporate for such a long time, and, finally, when I decided to leave, I was so excited for my next endeavor that I went out, like many of us do, with this full-blown, hell-bent for glory idea that I was going to build this business, and this idea that I was going to do all these things and build this offer and that offer, and do this thing, and help this person and that person. Like many people, I went out and started doing what I like to affectionately call “all the things” and, very quickly, what I found was that I was doing a lot of things and I was definitely getting out there, but I was confusing the hell out of people. People were wondering what did I do? What was my target? How could I help them? Was I an events person? Was I a courses person? Was I a programs person? What was I doing and who was I helping? On top of that, because I was doing all these different things, I had 10 different marketing streams, I had 17 different platforms, I was absolutely everywhere. Although, at one point it was really exciting and I was in motion, which I love to be in, and, for many of you that are listening to this, you are go-getters and you’re doers, so when you are doing and in motion, it can feel like you’re actually going somewhere, but what I was actually doing and what was happening was I was sort of spinning my wheels and staying in place more than I was moving forward. It wasn’t that I wasn’t making any headway, because I was, but I wasn’t building traction the way that I build traction when I streamlined my offers, got really clear, and knew exactly what I was doing and how those pieces fit together to build on each other to create a powerful business, with a lot of punch and very targeted, very potent offers. Once I started doing that, that is when my business really started to pick up, because people started to know what I was doing, it was consistent, it was clear, and it was more integrated than, sometimes, businesses can be when there’s all these different pieces and they’re kind of sitting out there like they’re all these separate islands. They have all these offers and all these things that you’re doing, and none of them are building on each other, so they’re just kind of hanging out out there. What was happening was, I was expending a lot more energy and a lot more time, and a lot more money than I needed to.
[06:13] So, what I want to talk to you about today is, I call it my offer flow, and it starts with your free or your entry-level offer, that’s the first piece. It goes, then, to your growth offer. So, that’s the step that’s allowing you to sort of grow your business and grow your following. Your main offer, and then what I call your buy-up or your up-level offer. Those are offers that you sprinkle in. So, you have the free offers, the offers that are built for growth, your main offer, and then your buy-up or your up-level offer. Today, we’re going to talk about each one of these pieces in the flow, why you need them, and how they all fit together to create a streamlined business, streamlined offers, and, frankly, a client journey that allows people to flow easily from one place to another.
[07:05] Now, I want to say that the first time I heard about streamlining this and making it very, very simple was when I came into contact with Don Miller’s StoryBrand. If anyone who knows me is listening to this right now, including my clients, they’re laughing because I talk about Don Miller all the time. Don Miller, if you’re listening to this, just know, someday, you and I, we’re going to be doing a podcast together to talk about all the things. One of the things that Don Miller always talks about when he talks about StoryBrand and marketing is that if you confuse, you lose. That concept is that when things are not clear, people get confused, and what they end up doing is they buy nothing. In this day and age, we have such a short attention span, so we need to be clear and concise, and to tell people what they need to do and where they need to go, snap-snap, otherwise they’re on to the next thing. So, streamlining these offers and creating this flow allows your client to know what they’re looking at, know what to expect, know what you offer and what you can do, and know how to buy from you.
[08:21] Total side note, I cannot tell you how many times I come in contact with a brand, and I cannot figure out how to give them my money. I was talking in my 10K accelerator with my group about this just yesterday. Don’t make it hard for your client to buy from you. That’s just a total side note. You want it to be clear, call-to-action, streamline, so it is easy. I kid you not how many times I am like “I want to give you my money” and I cannot figure out how to do it. Do not be that brand. Okay, I’ve got to jump back in now.
[09:04] The four-part offer flow – let’s start with the first one: your free or your entry-level offer. The purpose of your free or entry-level offer is to give people tons of value. You want to give them so much value and so many results for a very little investment. You want to make it easy for them to come in on this offer, whatever it is, and get results or get a ton of value that outweighs the price of the offer or the investment of the offer, and that includes time or resources, or something that they would need to give you, like any type of investment. It doesn’t have to just be money. You want the value and the transformation, and the result, to far outweigh the investment. A free offer is really meant for people to get a taste of what it’s like to work with you with very little hurdle. So, you always want that in the beginning. You want to have an offer that’s free or that is very low-cost or low investment for people to come in and get to know you and get some sort of transformation. In my world, in my business, this podcast is one of those things. If I think about this podcast, I am always “losing money” on the podcast from the perspective that no one is paying me for the information here. I don’t get paid on the platform. It’s all cost, but it’s so valuable what I put into this podcast, because I want people to be able to get a result ahead of time before they even spend 1 cent. This is also the way that I touch different audiences who are in different price points, because I believe very strongly about being able to offer a lot of people something of value, so if you’re someone who’s not ready to buy one of my programs, like my 10K accelerator, or maybe you’re looking for something quick and practical, this podcast is perfect for you, and it doesn’t cost you a cent. I also make these episodes very valuable and potent by the speakers that I bring in, by the length of time that they are, by the topics that they are, it is all designed very specifically to give you very high value that you can go out and put into practice immediately and make money or streamline your life or build your business immediately. So, this first part of the flow is you’re free or entry-level offers. Like I said, my podcast is an example of one of those things. Freebies are another example. I have a consults that convert workbook. I also have an evergreen webinar. All free, all high impact. All free.
[12:08] The second part is what I call your growth offer. That’s something that might be a little bit more expensive or a little bit more involved. That’s going to give people a bigger or a deeper transformation. That gets them to know your work at a deeper level. For me, personally, when I started my business, I had a group, a six-week program called “master your mindset”, and what it did was it was inexpensive, I think at the time it was $97 or $197.00 for six weeks and you would come in and you would have a private group, and you would get coached once a week, and I would be there to support you as we learned different topics that you needed to master your mindset around, in a practical way, in order to build your business quickly. So, we touched at all different things, offers, money, mindset, of course, sales, it was all very mindset-driven around building your business with, of course, practical and tactical applications. So, that was more of a growth offer. It was a little bit more of an investment. It gave people a little bit more of a transformation and it really helped them get that traction in a way that they wanted more, that they were basically getting a lot of good information and a lot of value, but it wasn’t super deep like my main offer, which was my one-on-one coaching or my accelerator, but it was enough that was giving people transformation. It always delivered on the brand promise, but it was leaving people wanting more, and when they wanted more, they would flow into the next part of the four-part offer flow, and that next part would be my main offer.
[14:04] For me, personally, let me take a step back, the main offer is really your main offer in your business. I call it the star of the show, the one offer that’s really going to be the backbone of how you make money in your business. For me, that was one-on-one coaching, still is, and my 10K accelerator program. So, as people moved through the growth offer and warmed up, and got results, and saw that there was so much potential, and stepped into possibility, and trusted me, and knew that I could help them get where they wanted to go, they would then flow into this main offer. The main offer, my one-on-one coaching and my 10K accelerator, is the hallmark program in my business. It is where I spend the most time, it is where I pour the most value, it’s where people have the most access to me, and that is really my main offer. When I constructed my business, I constructed the business with that offer in mind as the backbone and, from there, the other offers sort of came off of it. If I knew, for instance, that I wanted most of my time to be spent with my one-on-one clients and with my 10K accelerator, then I reverse engineered “what would I need to break out to make part of my growth offer that was going to warm them up, and what things that were in the accelerator and the one-on-one coaching, what made up my process in my program that I could then come and sprinkle in to my podcasts, for instance, in my free offer?” or “I broke out the consult piece because it’s something I love and it’s something I really want to talk to people about”, so I put that into a freebie. So, the main offer is really the backbone. It’s that main foundation that your business is built on and how the other things sort of sprinkle off of that. So, that’s the main offer.
[16:14] After the main offer, I call it the buy-up or the up-level offer. Those are sort of ancillary things. They’re things that enhance the experience, they’re things that maybe you offer at just particular times during the year, or maybe it’s something that people graduate up to, but it’s something that you sprinkle in so that you can just give your clients even more of an up-levelled experience outside of your main offer or the more entry-level growth offers. Those things might look like, I’ll just say in a coaching business, but this could be for any entrepreneur, it could be things like retreats or maybe a one-day event or, for me, personally, it’s VIP events or it’s a two-day year-end event. So, it’s something that takes either a piece of the business and goes really deep or really focused, but on a more up-levelled experience, or it could be something that you break out and you just offer your program in a different form or in a different way. Like I said, it could be a retreat or an in-person event, or something like that. It could even be a membership. A lot of times, people have clients graduate up into a membership or a VIP group of that nature. So, that would be your buy-up or your up-level offer.
[17:47] The thing that’s beautiful about the flow is that people can see easily where they’re going and there’s a place for people to easily move through, and you can pull your branding and your messaging, and your value, through all of those different layers in a way that people can really gain traction from and they can grab on to, and they know exactly what they’re getting. I will tell you, one of the biggest things that moves the needle for people is when their clients know exactly what they’re getting, and, as human beings, when we buy, we like this. I know the element of surprise and wow is awesome, but, frankly, that’s usually awesome once there is trust. When you’re just coming in and interfacing with the brand, the more you could help someone understand what they can expect to get out of something or what the experience is going to be like, or a taste of what it’s like to work with you, the easier it will be for them to convert, because people don’t really like surprises when there’s risk involved. They don’t like that, and this is true at anything. This is true in medicine, this is true when you go on vacation, I mean, it’s true of everything. Just think about this like you want to know what to expect, people want that comfort of knowing where are we going, what’s going on?
[19:13] I’ll tell you; I remember the first time I got a GPS or tried to use the map on my phone, and I was like “no, no, I need to see the whole route. Where is this taking me?” I don’t want, you know when they zoom in and they just show your car on the map, and you can’t see where you’re going? I’m like, “Nope. I want to see the whole map.” I always zoom out to make sure that I’m going to end up where I want to go, and once I can see it, then if I don’t know every single step in between, I’m kind of okay with that, but I want to know what to expect, like how long is this going to take me? Is this a route that I generally want to go on and am I going to end up at my destination? That flow is really important, and the more confidence that you can instill, the more certainty that you could provide by showing people that journey and making that movement for them very easy, and then warming them up and having them trust you, the easier it is for people to move through the journey of your offers, move through that flow of your offers, and stay with you for a long time, and go in and out of that easily.
[20:25] I also want to say that when it comes to streamlining your offers, it’s not just for your clients. It’s also very much for you. When you are confused, when you have all these splintered pieces, it becomes a ton of effort and you have to think about every single piece, and every different audience that you’re touching, and all these different moving pieces, it becomes very hard, but, as you solidify one thing at a time and you grow it to mastery, then you can layer things on.
[21:04] I also want to say as a side note, for anyone who’s listening to this who’s like “do I need to only have one offer for evermore?” The answer is, absolutely, no, you do not. But I highly, highly, highly recommend that you start with one thing, you master it, you fine-tune it, you get it to where it’s awesome and it’s growing, and then you layer. In the beginning, especially if you’re an entrepreneur that’s just starting out, let’s pretend, I would say, you want to have something free, and you want to have something that is an easy “yes” for people so that they can buy-in and get a transformation from you quickly. You want to establish your brand, you want to start making some money, you want to get your name out there, the visibility is super important, and, for you, personally, I want to build the confidence that comes with talking about one thing over and over, and over, until you get so good at it, until you figure out exactly who you’re talking to, and until you know all the in’s and outs of the objections and the marketing, like you could do this thing in your sleep, then you layer on. But, in the beginning, your free or entry offer, that initial growth offer, and then, frankly, your pitch, and a way to take payments. After that, you can layer on. For more established brands, if you’re finding yourself spinning your wheels, exhausted, feeling like you’re pulling your hair out, it is time to take a step back and streamline. Where can you make this more efficient? Where can you combine things? Where could you give a ton of value without giving more time or needing to put more things out there? I will tell you, for my more established clients that are entrepreneurs that are established, this “I need to add more, I need to get more time, I need to overcomplicate it” it’s like the kiss of death. Pick one thing. It doesn’t mean you need to blow your business up completely. You don’t have to do that, but you can just decide “I’m going to pick this one thing that I’m going to focus on now and I’m going to pretend it’s my only offer, meaning I’m going to give all my time and attention and marketing to this one thing”. It doesn’t mean the other things can’t still be part of your business. Like I said, you don’t need to burn it to the ground, but you want to really focus it on that one thing and fine-tune it, almost as if you were starting it again. Once you do that and catch your breath, and see all the efficiencies, then you can start to dial all these other things up. You’ll also really be surprised at how much wisdom comes out of it. As a business owner who’s been doing this for a while, you know so much, but when we get so bogged down on all the things we have to do, it becomes almost like a point of diminishing returns, because we are trying to keep all these balls in the air and, therefore, we’re doing nothing really well. When we decide we’re just going to put some of those balls down, we’re not going to throw them all out, we’re going to put them down, and we’re going to focus all of our attention on this one thing, and regroup, and regroup our energy, and refuel, so much comes out of that. I can’t stress it enough. We could find that sense of self and we could find that vigor again that comes from it when we just focus in. So, if you’re a more established entrepreneur, try to look at your business and see if you can just streamline it into these four parts. Make sure you have your freebie or your front-end entry offer, make sure you have a growth offer, something that people can buy that’s a little bit lower ticket, your main offer, like what is that thing that you love, that VIP main offer, and then, where can you sprinkle in some fun things?
[25:02] Again, for me, personally, in my business, free entry offers, it’s my freebies with my consults that convert workbook and my evergreen webinar. It’s also this podcast that you’re listening to. Front-end offers can be very, very powerful. Don’t kid yourself. Just because they are either free or they are a lower cost, does not mean they are low value. For me, the podcast I care very much about, put a lot of time in, I love, love, love talking to all of you. So, those are where I spend my time for my free or entry offers. My growth offer, it’s more of those lower-cost things or partnership programs that I do. It could be, for instance, a free event that I have coming up right now, or something that is easier to buy, like I was mentioning, I had a master your mindset six-week program that was $97, I believe, and it allowed people to come in and get a transformation over six weeks, deeper, more access to me, it would warm people up because they would learn to trust the result that they were getting and want more, and then they would flow into my main offers, sort of my VIP offers that are the backbone of my business. So, for me, one-on-one coaching or my 10K accelerator 6-month group program, those would be the main offers, and then there’s the buy-up or the up-level offers which, in my business, just as an example, are things like my high-end retreat that I’m holding at the end of April/May 2022 at the Canyon ranch. So, it’s taking what I teach in my programs and it’s condensing it down into a luxurious four-day experience. That’s an example of an up-level experience. It could be my year-end event. I hold something called the fourth quarter comeback every year, and that could be another sprinkled in offer. It could also be VIP days. Just recently, I released a VIP Day. For any of you that haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it. It’s a very potent one-day experience to dig into anything that you want, any project that you want, offer something, sales, marketing, money-related, and get a very quick value and quick return that you can go out and implement immediately. So, that would be an example of those buy-up or up-level offers. The flow of that just makes it very simple for people.
[27:33] To recap, if you want to make money with your offers and you want to grow your business in a streamlined and easy fashion, you have to have a few clear, structured offers that have a flow. I use my four-part offer flows series, starting with that free entry-level offer, moving to a more invested growth offer, but still easy, something that you think about more as marketing and warming people up and less as your money-maker, then you move into your main offer, sort of that backbone VIP offer, really, what your business is built around and where you’re going to generate the most income in your business, and then you have buy-up offers, sort of these up-level offers that you just sprinkle in throughout the year or once in a while, or it’s an offer that you offer to your clients as they graduate up to that, that would be considered a buy-up or an up-level offer.
[28:36] So, that is the four-part offer flow that you need to use to make money with your offers. Don’t overcomplicate it, don’t confuse it, don’t make it more difficult than it needs to be. Clients need to be able to find you, know you, get a transformation and a result before they ever spend a cent with you, and then move into your offer flow in a way that feels good, like a no-brainer, and then they grow with you through your offers and move into those places where they really get the most value, and where you make the most revenue in a way that feels amazing and secure, and like they understand what’s coming, and know what to expect, and everything after that is easy-peasy. Not even just for them, but even, equally as important, for you. So, I want you to all go out today and I want you to look at your offers. Are they set up in this way? Is something missing? Is something feeling clunky? Are you a new business owner that feels like maybe there’s a gap? If there is, think about these four things and compare your offers to this framework. If you’re a more established business owner, is something feeling hard or like you’re spinning your wheels or too splintered, or too complicated? Put it through this four-part offer flow and see where you can tweak and streamline, and make it easy, and bring that awesome cadence and that awesome flow back into your business, so it’s a win-win for you and everybody else.
[30:16] If you enjoyed this episode and want to dial up your impact and success in your business in a practical way, and are needing help on converting interested clients to paying customers, please go check out the consults that convert workbook at my website, JessicaMillerCoaching.com. You can just put in your information and download it right away, and take making consults, that we sometimes have a lot of resistance around, and we think we have to get people to do something or buy something, to something that you actually look forward to and, dare I say, is actually fun.
So, until next week. See you all then.
