Offers For High-Value Clients – Can You Offer Too Much? A Tale Of A Sale That Should Have Been…

Lots of people who build their business based on their expertise agonize about what they offer and they feel they should include even more.

Part of that has to do with their wish to serve people…

But in many cases they think that to be able to charge a certain fee, their offers need to include more.

The other day my dear German engineer husband went for a free session at a gym that offers some kind of new equipment that makes you exercise all your muscles at the same time in a short period of time. (Honestly, that’s what I think it was but in my marriage we have a clear division of tasks: he exercises for both of us. I have no idea about gyms and equipment).

The important point is that he was ready to buy.

First mistake – All the previous conversation was about the “thing”: how the equipment works, the equipment requirements, etc.

Because of the complexity of this equipment you need a person dedicated to help you do this 15-minute training, who also happened to be doing the selling.

He was very knowledgeable and competent about the “thing” but he failed to ask what was important to my husband.

TIP – People don’t buy the “thing”. They sign up because of what matters to them.

The demo went very well and my husband was very impressed with the workout and how he had been able to exercise so many muscles, including the small ones that are so very often neglected.

Second mistake – So my dear German engineer husband asked about signing up.

Here is where it got complicated because the offer included many things that he wasn’t interested in: nutrition advice, supplements, etc.

First, they didn’t take the time to know what did matter to him so when it came the time to make the offer, it was too much – too much stuff unrelated to what mattered to him at the time.

TIP – If you take the time to listen to the human being in front of you, you’ll discover what matters to them at the moment. Your offer is MORE valuable to them if it includes only that.

The situation inside his head was more or less like this: there are a lot of “ingredients” to this cake. Too many. I don’t need even half of them. And here came the moment when the potential client started to mentally list the price of those individual ingredients in his head, especially those he didn’t want or need.

Third mistake – Like one of my mentors says, the mistake is to sell the ingredients and not the cake.

Selling the cake would have been selling the ultimate value of helping him get closer to the outcomes he desired. (Since they never talked about anything related to what he wanted, that turned the whole conversation into selling the ingredients).

Selling the ingredients is talking about the “things”, the “components” of the offer, the “stuff”. The problem with selling the ingredients is that sometimes those ingredients are commodities and it gives the potential client the perception that if they don’t even need them, they are wasting their money and time.

So remember… “Lots is not better. Better is better”
With love
Ana