Your Offer Should Never Stop Evolving

The concept of the evolving offer is fairly simple––it's the process of selling an offer that you are always going to be improving, changing, and evolving. This is especially important when you’re just starting out with a new offer because it means that in order to sell your offer, all you need to do is identify the transformation you’re helping your clients achieve and the high-level steps you’re going to take them through to achieve it.

That means we’re not obsessing over the specifics like the number of 1:1 calls, number of group calls, or the clients-only Facebook Group. It’s important to have some understanding of that, but at the end of the day, those specifics are always going to be changing and evolving.

That high-level stuff, though? That’s pretty much going to stay the same. You’ll tweak it as you go, but it’s the delivery of the offer that’s always going to be evolving so that you can help your clients get the best results.

The reason we take this approach is that we want to do two things:

1. Start getting clients quickly. We want to start getting people in the door, making sure that you have the tools to deliver the offer but knowing that the way you deliver the offer is going to change as you take on more clients and grow.
2. Put the clients first. Your top priority is always the client––helping your client to get results. That means that for your first few clients, you’re probably going to be doing more 1:1 coaching than anything else.

The reason you’re likely going to start out with mostly 1:1 coaching is that it is an opportunity to get even clearer on what they need––and to give it to them. In theory you could create a ton of pre-recorded content. But what happens time and time again is that one of the following situations occurs:

1. You pour time, energy, and money into creating that online training portal…and then don’t make a single sale because the offer or the messaging wasn’t tuned into what your ideal client needs at that point.
2. You do bring on a new client, and then in the first weeks of working with them realize that all the content you created for them isn’t actually what they need. And you can’t just force that content down their gullet anyway because if it’s not what they need…it’s not going to help them get results (and may actually hinder their ability to get results).

These two situations can both be prevented by validating your offer first. What we mean by validating your offer is making a sale––taking a credit card number and getting a new client. You might think that the first thing you need to do is market research, but each strategy session you have, each prospective client you talk to, anyone you talk to who could be a prospective client––that’s your market research. You’re not just having those conversations to convert them to a new client; you’re having those conversations to continue to learn about your ideal client and hone in on your offer.

When you’re creating a new offer, sure, be thinking about how you’re going to fulfill it, but allow yourself some flexibility so that you can serve the client in the best way possible. But to start off, you probably want to put the emphasis on 1:1 coaching because if you’re below $10k/month, it’s not worth your time and energy into creating that content. It’s way more valuable to spend that time and energy attracting new clients and serving them on a more personal level.

In order to sell your offer, all you really need is clarity on the result you’re going to help them achieve and the process you’re going to take them through to achieve it. That’s it––a skeleton outline that you can then fill out for each client.

Don’t worry, though––if you don’t want to exclusively be doing 1:1 coaching for the rest of your life, you don’t have to. As you begin to take on more clients, you learn even more about your ideal client––it’s the process of continually conducting market research, learning and hearing what people are actually saying so that you can give them exactly what they need.

As you get even clearer about who your ideal client is, and as you begin to validate your offer over and over again (i.e. making sales), you can do less tailoring––and even less 1:1, if you want––because your offer is so dialed in.

At the end of the day, you don’t want to do work that you’re not paid for––it’s important for your mindset, your business, and your cash flow. If you don’t have a positive cash flow, you’re not going to be in business very long––and that’s why your top priority right now is to get you those first clients.

 In today's episode, we are going to be talking about the concept of an evolving offer, or the fact that your offer should really never stop changing and evolving. To start off, I want to quickly define what we're actually talking about when we say offer. Your offer is how you package your expertise. It's how you package your coaching. It's not just how you package it, it's how you talk about it and present it and price it. Your offer’s all of the above, and when we're talking about your offer, it's really important to understand that your offer is always going to be changing. So as you're creating an offer, or if you already have one, it needs to always be improving, changing, and, like we said, evolving. 

This is especially important when you're just starting out with a new offer, because it means that in order to sell that offer, all you need to do is to identify the transformation you're helping your clients achieve and the high-level steps that you're going to take them through to achieve it. What this means for your business and for your sales process might seem a little bit counterintuitive, because it means that you're not obsessing over the specific, nitty-gritty details, like the number of one-to-one calls, the number of group calls, or a, say, clients-only Facebook group. Now, it's important to have some understanding of concrete deliverables, but at the end of the day, those specifics are always going to be changing and evolving, because you're going to change them to suit what works best for the client. 

But that high-level stuff, that's pretty much going to stay the same. You'll tweak it as you go, but the delivery of your offer is what's always going to be evolving so that you can help your clients get the best results. The reason you want to take this approach is so you can do two things. The first is to start getting clients quickly. You want to start getting people in the door, making sure that you have the tools to deliver the offer but knowing that the way you deliver the offer is going to change as you take on more clients and as you grow. 

The second is so that you can put your clients first; your top priority is always the client, helping the client get results. That means for the first few clients, you're probably going to be doing more one-to-one coaching than anything else, and the reason for that is that one-to-one coaching is an opportunity to get even clearer on what your ideal clients need and then they give it to them. 

In theory, you could create a ton of pre-recorded content, but—and I see this over and over again—if you do that, one of these two things tend to happen. First, you might pour time, energy and a lot of money into creating, say, an online training portal, and then you don't make a single sale, because the offer or the messaging wasn't tuned in to what your ideal client needs at the time, so you've just wasted a whole lot of resources there. The second scenario that I see a lot is you do bring on a new client, and then in the first few weeks of working with them, you realize that all the content you created for them isn't actually what they need. And you can't just force that content down their throat anyway because, if it's not what they need, it's not going to help them get results and, in fact, may actually hinder their ability to get results. 

Both of these situations can be prevented by validating your offer first, and what I mean by validating your offer is making a sale, taking a credit card number, and bringing on a new client. You might think that the first thing you need to do is market research, but in all honesty, every strategy session you have, a discovery call you have with each prospective client you talk to, that's all market research. You're not just having those conversations to hopefully bring them on as new clients. You're also having those conversations because it's an opportunity to continue to learn about your ideal client, and hone in on your offer. 

So, when you're creating a new offer, yeah, be thinking about how you're going to fulfill it, but allow yourself some flexibility so that you can serve the client in the best way possible. To start off, you probably do want to emphasize one-to-one coaching. If you're below, say, 10k a month, it's not worth your time and energy creating an online training portal or getting a group coaching program going. It's just not worth the time and energy. It's way more valuable to spend those resources attracting new clients and serving them on a more personal level. 

The important thing to note here is that we hear a lot about needing to scale your business—”Make sure that you're designing an offer that is infinitely scalable.”—and the truth is when you're at the point where you're just bringing on your first few clients, you don't need to be thinking about scalability at all. Think about scalability when it's time to start thinking about scalability, when you're approaching your max capacity. Before then, it doesn't actually make a whole lot of sense to be thinking about how you can scale the business. 

First, before you can scale the business, you have to have the business. At the end of the day, in order to sell your offer, in order to convert new coaching clients, all you really need is clarity on the result that you're going to help them achieve and the process that you're going to take them through to achieve it. That's it. All that really is is a skeleton outline that you can then fill out and personalize and customize for each client.

Don't worry if you don't want to be exclusively doing one-to-one coaching for the rest of your life. You don't have to. As you begin to take on more clients and learn even more about your ideal client, and as you validate your offer over and over again by making sales, that's the point where you can start doing a little bit less tailoring because you're more tuned in to those specific needs, and that's when you can start doing less one-to-one if you want. You’ve been able to get that offer so dialed-in that you don't have to do as much customizing and tailoring. 

At the end of the day, again, you really just don't want to do work that you're not paid for. As entrepreneurs, we're already doing a lot of work that we don't get paid for, so why would we want to do any more that we're not getting paid for? Getting that group program going before you validate it or creating, say, an online training portal before you've actually gotten paid for it—those are all examples of doing work that you're not paid for, and it's important to minimize the amount that you're doing stuff like that. 

It's important for your mindset. It's important for your business. It's important for your cash flow. If you don't have a positive cash flow, you're not going to be in business very long. If you don't have a positive cash flow, you really need to be focusing on getting more clients, getting new clients, rather than serving clients that you don't have yet. That's what you're doing if you, say, create an online training portal before you have clients; you're focusing on serving clients that you don't have yet, when, really, you should probably be focused on getting those new clients so that you can then serve them. 

As always, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Client Attractor Show. I'm your host, Jacob Ratliff, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow for our next episode. Take care.