030: How To Make Your Offer Better!

Hi, this is Action Taker Tribe. I'm Jo Ingram and welcome to the 30th episode of my podcast. I'm absolutely astounded that I'm at 30 episodes already, and so grateful for you, my listeners, and all the input that you're having for my podcast.

As I’m moving forward, I’m also starting to think about how I can develop, change, and iterate my own podcast. Lately I've been thinking a lot about inspiration. Perhaps you've been listening and tuning into my podcast episodes about raising your vibe, about overcoming the entrepreneurs dip, about allowing that divine download - the inspired action - to come through you. Not having to push so hard to get the results that you want. I've been applying this thinking to my podcast too, asking myself how can I work in a way where I feel inspired and in the moment? How can I create my podcast without it taking so much time?

One of the things I realised was that I adore walking around the woods every single day. I take my journal and I meditate. It's a really important part of my day, making sure that I'm set up to do my best work. In fact, as I walk around the forest, I’m frequently inspired by something I want to talk about in the moment. Quite often it's inspired by things that my own clients have asked me either the day before or that week and have been going around my mind, and I've wanted to share in a broader way with you on this podcast – and so I started to record as I walked. Sometimes the sound wasn't so good, and I worried about that, but I am hoping that the occasional blast of wind and the birdsong in the background does not distract. I'm going just a little bit messy and I'm so excited to share the inspired action ‘minisodes’ that I'm recording.

What's going around in my mind is that I will launch a series two, that will be frequent minisodes of maybe five or six minutes long, and see how you, my lovely listener, feels about that. For today's episode, I'm actually taking two minisodes that I've recorded recently, and I'm putting them back-to-back to share with you. They both share a common theme, in that they're about offers.

Offers are so fundamental because without them we can't make money.

In the first one I'm going to talk about how important it is to have a framework for your offer. In my second little minisode that follows immediately after, I'm going to talk about the power of bundling and how that's going to be so advantageous for you, enabling you to make more money and have your clients get an even better transformation. I hope that they inspire you.

My intention is to provoke, encourage and invite you to take a little bit of inspired action too, that perhaps you wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

We're going to dive in. I hope you enjoy.

Hello there. I'm Jo Ingram, and this is today's inspired action minisode. I apologise if you can hear a bit of wind, because I'm out in the woods doing my morning meditations, and I love to record these minisodes whilst I'm doing this because I just feel such an amount of inspiration. That’s really what these minisodes are all about.

It's about feeling a bit of inspiration in order to take action, so the action doesn't feel so hard, you enjoy what you do, and you bring great energy to it because you create fabulous transformation for your clients as a result.

I was on a coaching call this morning with a client. It was 6:00 AM for me, which is a bit of an early start, but I just love the fact that with running your own business you have the flexibility to work the hours that suit you and work with a global audience of wonderful clients, which I absolutely adore doing. So, for me, doing a 6:00 AM is an absolute gift because right now it's 10:00 AM and I'm in the woods, meditating, journaling, and recording this.

A question that came up this morning was what do I offer? How do I offer it? This is such a general question, and it comes up so often. I’m making the assumption that you already do understand who your avatar is, and you understand what you have to give to the world - what your purpose is.

The next thing that crops up is something that I deal with in my framework when I teach my clients - you really have to understand what your personal framework is.

Let me explain. Once you've understood your avatar and you know that you need to get them from their pain point, point A, to their solution, which is their needs, wants, or desires - let's call that point B - in the middle of that is the transformation and the middle is what you offer. That is your promise, your offer - how you get them from point a to point B. Now all too often when asked to consider this people drop into saying, ‘well, I think it's a membership’ or ‘I think it's a three-month program’, whatever it might be.

Perhaps it is, but you're missing a really vital ingredient, which is actually working out what it is you teach, what your promise is and how you actually express that to your future prospective clients.

If somebody has a problem for which they want a solution and you tell them the solution is an eight-week program, they're not really going to understand why they should buy it from you. However, if you tell them that the solution is a framework, which has a catchy name, and it's these six steps - of which you can clearly articulate and they can see that they're going to get them from point A to point B - first of all, they're much more likely to buy. Secondly, they're much more likely to get the transformation, because actually what you're teaching is now structured - they understand why they're doing each piece and what the outcome and results will be.

So many people skip this vital step, but I would encourage you to consider what it is that you teach and whether or not it's actually a framework, a method, or a blueprint.

Now, I suspect that you're already thinking along these lines because you’re probably thinking what the modules are, or what the pillars are of what you teach. This is simply an invitation to consider them as a framework, a method, or a blueprint. Give it a name that makes it very, very clear to your avatar, to your ICA, what it is that they are actually getting in this framework.

Here's something that not everybody puts two and two together about, which is once you understand what your framework is and can speak about it, suddenly your content areas can speak to your framework as well. This gives your followers and audience a taste of what you talk about within your method, within your framework. Then the question as to whether it's a membership, a one-to-one or a program is secondary, because indeed that framework could be relevant across any of those formats, which is a different matter.

Firstly, before you leap into the question of, for example, ‘should I do a membership’, ask yourself what is your method, your framework? What is it you teach? How do you articulate that in order to make this an irresistible future offer for your clients?

So, inspired action for today - look at what you teach. What it is you've got inside you? Ask yourself how is this a framework or a blueprint or a method? What could it be called? How could I structure that to get maximum transformation for my future client?

Today's question was how do I create an offer that is more valuable? How do I charge my clients more? How do I do the best job I can possibly do? A lot of icky stuff comes up when it comes to pricing.

Particularly when you're new and you first price your offer, you think to yourself, how can I possibly charge more? How can it be worth more?

How could I keep a straight face and actually ask someone to pay more than whatever number it is that you've got in your head. Quite often it's connected to creating the right amount of value in that offer, which is of course connected to the transformation, but it's also connected to the offer. The perception of what it is that you give in order to help your client get from point A, which is of course their pain point, to point B, which is their needs, wants and desires.

Quite frequently when you start out, you have an offer that's very much a one-to-one offer, and I'm a big fan of starting where you're at. If that means you offer an hour of your time and you help someone make a small but significant transformation and get paid to do so, then that is your testing ground. That's where you cut your teeth. That's where you get to build the confidence and also the knowledge about your avatar to enable you to build on that going forward.

Perhaps you're already at the stage where you're offering small programs. Perhaps you've got a membership.

Whatever it is you've got, I'm assuming that you are keen to move yourself to the next level, both with regard to the impact and of course the income that you make. One way to do this is bundling.

Let me explain what I mean. This is simply a matter of providing more elements to help your client with their transformation than just the basic offer. Let's take the example of a one-to-one offer. Let's say you help your client make a transformation, and you do this in the course of six sessions. You could simply say, I'm going to offer you six sessions and this is the price. Now that's something that I have done for a period of time, and it's done really, really well. I'm really delighted with the one-to-one service that I've provided and the transformation that my clients have made as a result of working with me. However, as you progress the amount that you know, the amount that you can teach, and the transformation level that you're capable of achieving, you also want to start being able to charge higher prices.

One great way in order to do that is creating bundles that give more value and more elements than just the basic one that you may have been offering so far. Now, these work best if you design them in a way that answers something that your client really needs.

Let's take the example of a client that I might work with, who is a business coaching client. I discovered quite quickly that my clients needed to speak to me between sessions. Typically, we're meeting once a week. However, between sessions I set assignments that keep them pretty busy and quite often questions crop up throughout the week. There are things that they need to double-check or things they feel insecure about, or perhaps simply things they want to share and celebrate. Accountability is so fundamental and key to so many of the transformations that we as coaches and course creators want for our clients. For me, having that ability to be in connection with my clients between sessions became extremely important, so I added a Voxer offer - or office hours offer as I call it, because not everyone likes to use Voxer. It's simply a matter of opening up access to me between sessions, so we've got an open dialogue. This helps in so many ways.

First of all, my clients are getting a faster and more confident transformation. Secondly, I'm feeling great that I'm in touch with them throughout the week. Thirdly, it's obviously a premium offer, which you can offer as a bonus or as an extra charge. I'm not saying that you should add office hours or Voxer, but I am illustrating that when you layer on different elements into a bundle for your offer, it becomes so much more attractive to your client. It helps them create their transformation so much more easily and of course it's much more profitable for you in the longer term.

Other ideas for things you could bundle include coming up with a small video series. Obviously, there's some great tools out there like Kajabi or Thinkific, and you can house mini courses or a series of videos in there. Now you might be more familiar with these tools being used to create mini courses to sell, which of course is a brilliant idea if that's the route that you're going down right now, but what I'm suggesting is that you actually create a vault of videos that you could bundle in for your future client who might be working with you even one-to-one.

This is exactly what I'm doing at the moment. I've recorded a whole productivity series and a tech series that in the future I'm going to be offering to one-to-one and group coaching clients as part of a bundle – so that when they work with me, they get not just the solution where we meet, but also a lot of other training that they absolutely need to support their progress, that we won't need to discuss on our one-to-one calls. This therefore ensures that we're moving faster.

It makes for a really attractive offer when you're able to offer your clients a bundle of things when they work with you.

Take, for example, the difference in these two offers, which are an exact illustration of the offers that I have gone from, and I am going to.

Offer number one. ‘Hi, would you like to work with me to get the transformation for your business in order to take you from being overwhelmed and confused, to being absolutely clear about how you need to build your business and move to your next level? We can do that in six sessions.’ Or the new offer, which has exactly the same promise, but we're able to meet every week with accountability check-ins throughout the week in real-time.

Whilst you might be concerned about finding the time and being productive in order to make the most of this, I've got a bonus video series that's going to give you all the skills you need in order to become more productive. If you get stuck on any of the starter tech, I've got simple videos that are going to unlock the ease of using online business tech, so in our one-to-one sessions, we can focus on actually making massive step change for you rather than learning the tech and productivity basics.

As an inspired action invitation for today, what could you add to your current offer? What could you add that would create a small but impressive little bundle for your avatar, that would really appeal to them and make them feel so much more value in which you're offering? An offer that's going to get them better transformation and that you can charge a premium for in the future?

I hope you enjoyed these two minisodes back-to-back talking about offers today and that you take a little piece of inspired action. If you think that this is some information that could benefit somebody else, please do send a link on so they can listen to it too. Don't forget to subscribe and if you feel called, please jump in, and leave me a review on Apple podcast today. Have an inspired action week. Take care. Bye now.