Crafting an Irresistible “Best” Offer for Your Expertise-Based Business

If you’re crafting your offers appropriately, the investment will be perceived as a “drop in the bucket” compared to the full dimensions of the return.

It’s time to craft, present, and test your “best” offer. 

• In its most basic form, an “offer” is what your prospects receive and the action they must take to get it. 

• These offers happen when they interact with any call to action (CTA) message you put in front of them. 

• And when you think about it, with an audience-first business, you’re in the business of making offers. 

In this context, there are two general types of offers. First, there are lead-generation offers (audience-building), and then order-generation offers (getting people to buy a product or service). 

Simple, right?

Simple, but not entirely easy — the offer must be irresistible. It’s got to be so compelling to the right kind of person that they simply must respond. Note that I said “the right kind of person,” given that no offer appeals to everyone. 

Author Mark Joyner defines an irresistible offer this way in his book of the same name: 

The irresistible offer is an identity-building offer central to a product, service, or company where the believable return on investment (ROI) is communicated so clearly and efficiently that it’s immediately apparent you’d have to be a fool to pass it up. 

Ideally, you aim to make a series of irresistible offers to your best prospects at every step of the process. But it becomes crucial when you get to the “order generation offer” for your one-on-one services to your most motivated prospects. 

Soft and Hard Offers 

Another way to think about the two primary types of offers is “soft” and “hard.” An audience-building offer is a soft offer, while an offer to buy is a more direct, hard offer.

When it comes down to it, though, both types of offers have something in common.

You’ve identified a pressing problem that people want to solve. More importantly, it’s a problem that people are willing and able to spend money to solve. The only questions are how much and for what solution. 

You’re focusing on the prospect’s problem, from the initial advertisement to the event presentations to the invitation to work with you one-on-one. And in the process, you’re discovering the “triggers” that make these people take action, one step at a time, to solve the problem. 

That means you’re making offers throughout the entire process. Let’s look at the sales sequence for the example in the last lesson, freelancer-turned-digital-entrepreneur Matt: 

• An advertisement makes an offer to find out more about a workshop for DTC founders. 

• The workshop website makes an offer to register for the free live event. 

• An offer is made to purchase the presentation videos for those who can’t attend live. 

• Matt’s newsletter following the event makes an offer to find out more about his services. 

• A standalone email makes an offer to find out more about Matt’s services. 

• A free report (or video) makes an offer to take the next step with a client assessment. 

• An offer is made to have a Zoom meeting or phone call for final questions. 

• An offer is made on the call to execute a Client Engagement Agreement and proceed.

So, as you sit down to craft a hard offer for your services, it’s smart to dive back into the problem you’ve identified and go a bit deeper.

Ask yourself these questions, and spend some quality time jotting down your answers: 

1. What specific problem am I solving? 

2. Whose problem (at an identity level) am I solving? 

3. What are the benefits to my audience if they solve the problem?

4. What primary emotion (at an identity level) am I trying to spark? 

5. What specific promise am I making to my most motivated prospects? 

You’ll note in two of the questions, I referred to identity. This is important when dimensionalizing or “agitating” the problem so that the prospect is motivated to take action immediately. 

Let’s unpack that a bit. 

For example, let’s say I’m an entrepreneur who excels at marketing and product development. I can attract an audience and figure out what they want to buy like a champ. 

But when it comes to the operations and management aspects of the business, well, I suck. And this is a problem that impacts my identity as an entrepreneur, meaning I’m not a “real” entrepreneur because I’m bad at running the more mundane aspects of my business. 

Now, I can tell you that: 

1. This person really was me. 

2. A “real” entrepreneur finds other people to do the stuff they suck at. 

3. I figured that out eventually, but it took me longer than it should have. 

This is a particular problem among bootstrapped entrepreneurs. In the beginning, they do everything themselves and have unrealistic expectations that if they excel at some aspect of the business, they should be great at all of it. 

The real problem is their mindset and emotional attachment to an unhelpful and unrealistic notion of what owning a business means. The entrepreneur must overcome these mistaken ideas before the real solution can be implemented.

So, how do you address this problem if you’re a fractional Chief Operating Officer who helps startups and early-stage companies with operations? Do you go in hard with an offer for your services, or do you first lead with soft offers that battle the real problem, which is the mindset of a successful entrepreneur with growing pains who needs to realize their job is to get out of the way? 

Then you can lean into the actual value of your offer. What’s the return on investment, not only in terms of business efficiency and growth but also in the quality of life and improved relationships the founder enjoys? 

If you’re crafting your offers appropriately, the investment will be perceived as a “drop in the bucket” compared to the full dimensions of the return. So let’s now turn to that. 

Contrast the Value the Prospect Receives Against the Investment 

Have you ever watched a baseball player on deck to bat? You’ll notice that batters often place a weighted ring around the bat while doing warm-up swings. 

Why? The bat feels relatively light when the player steps up to the plate. This helps the batter swing faster when a hot fastball comes blazing down the middle. 

It doesn’t matter that the bat isn’t really lighter. From a psychological standpoint (which is where world-class athletes leave average players behind), the batter feels like he has a stronger, faster swing. That mental edge makes a difference. 

This phenomenon is known as perceptual contrast.