Launching an Offer: 6 Questions & 3 Tips
Welcome to the Courage & Clarity Podcast! This week we are talking about launching your offers, and the questions you need to ask yourself before you do so. If you are out there thinking about trying to earn an independent living doing something that you care about, you're going to reach the point, if you haven't already, where the time comes to put a paid offer out there, to have something for sale. And no matter how experienced you are, it can be a really scary thing.
I am just coming off of a launch myself with my signature program Crickets to Customers, and since I am just fresh off of that experience, I thought this would be a really good opportunity for me to share some of the things that came up for me.
This was not a picture-perfect, smooth launch -- there was a lot of muscle and elbow grease involved to reach the numbers I wanted to reach. I've had to troubleshoot along the way to create more revenue and more opportunity for my students.
I collected the questions that I asked myself throughout the process to better my results. So this episode is broken down into 6 questions and 3 tips. I'm going to save the full debrief with numbers and statistics for another episode, but for today I want to keep it high level and get into things to think about.
Here's a sneak peek of what's in store:
Q #1: What is your good, better, and best goal? [09:13]
Q #2: Who can you partner with to make things go faster? [13:40]
Q #3: What free value are you providing to create an even ask exchange? [16:24]
Q #4: Why should someone continue on with you after the free value? [20:30]
Q #5: What is the payload of your offer? [22:14]
Q #6: How are you going to react if it flops? [24:29]
Tip #1: If you're not annoyed by yourself, you aren't talking about your offer enough [27:23]
Tip #2: Have a plan for staying present when things get hard [29:53]
Tip #3: Decide that it's going to work [31:31]
Q #1: What is your good, better, and best goal?
If you have been around the podcast for a while, you know that I learned about this framework from my good friend Megan Hale (check out her website in the show notes below). The basic gist of it is, that if you're a high achiever, the goals you naturally want to set for yourself are usually pie in the sky goals. If left to your own devices, you're going to make your goal to blow things out of the water with a really big, audacious, crazy goal. And when you don't hit that goal, you're going to feel really bad about yourself and chalk it up to a failure (when in reality, it's good enough).
So don't fall into the trap of always going for the "best" goal -- make sure that you have a good and better goal as well. If you only look at the best goal, you are setting yourself up to feel continually disappointed and frustrated. And too much disappointment and frustration in your business, just like anything in life, is going to make you eventually quit (and of course I feel like my mission here is to keep people from quitting who should not quit).
Absolutely make sure you've got good, better, and best goals in place before you move forward with an offering.
Q #2: Who can you partner with to make things go faster?
I love this question because I don't think it gets asked enough. I'm not sure why or what the psychology is behind this, but there is a huge temptation to do everything by ourselves. I don't know if it's an ego thing, or if we're just scared to bother people, or we want to prove to ourselves that we can do it on our own.
It often doesn't occur to most people to raise their hand for help and say, what contacts do I know that could help me spread the word about this? What peers of mine might be willing to help me promote something that I have going on?
It's tempting to skip this step because you just want to put it out there and see how it goes, but I'm telling you, that's the kiss of death. Don't forget that mediocre effort translates to mediocre results. You have to get scrapy, and you've got to ask yourself, who can I ask for help. You're not putting those people out -- most people are honored and want to help their friends.
Thinking that you can do it all by yourself is a critical error, so don't make it harder than it needs to be and ask yourself who you can partner with to make it go faster.
Q #3: What free value are you providing to create an even ask exchange?
It's no secret: your people ask that you provide free value. That's why they show up to your Facebook page, Instagram page, email, etc. That's their way of saying that they are hoping for and expecting some free value. So when you create an offer and are putting it out there, that's what you do -- offer a free challenge, a series of webinars, or something along those lines where you are giving, giving, giving free value.
Before you provide this free value, ask yourself: even if someone doesn't become a customer of yours, what can you provide them that would make it worth their time to come to your challenge, workshop, etc? You want them to feel like they got value, because that's one step closer to building that all-powerful know, like, and trust factor. So that's one part of the ask exchange.
The other part of the ask exchange is that, in exchange for them getting free value, you earn the opportunity to ask that they consider going deeper with you in the form of a paid offer. When the ask exchange is equal, it makes it so much easier to make sales. Instead of thinking about how you're going to sell people or position your offer, those questions now answer themselves when you focus on awesome free value.
Q #4: Why should someone continue on with you after the free value?
So you've done a five-day challenge, or a webinar, and you've given people some great free value, you've got them excited, and they've seen themselves take a step. They're building trust with you, and lots of cool stuff is happening for them. Great! Why should they continue to take that next step with you after the free value?
"Don't forget that mediocre effort translates to mediocre results. You can't put in mediocre effort and expect big, beautiful, and profitable business gains… you just can't. You've got to get scrappy."
It's an interesting balance between having people take a first step and seeing what could be possible, and also providing what the next step is. That's where you come in with that offer. Do they need the support to continue this momentum? Do they need accountability or your products to fill that gap for them? What is the reason why working with you is that next logical step? Answering that question is going to make it so easy for you to talk authentically about your offers.
Q #5: What is the payload of your offer?
Why should somebody take your course? Why should they hire you as a coach? Why should they buy your product?
It's crucial that you should very clearly be able to articulate what results they will get after working with you, as crystal clear as possible. If you can't do this step, you have got to hit pause right now. You need to get as specific as possible, no fluffy things like "You'll feel great" or "You'll have a better mindset."
Sometimes my students get tripped up by this and start thinking that they have to guarantee results. But just because you're getting specific about what's possible, doesn't mean that you're guaranteeing that result to someone -- you're showcasing what could happen. If they were to really apply your teachings or really use your product, what could be possible for them?
Q #6: How are you going to react if it flops?
This question is all about what happens if you don't get the results that you want? What is the game plan going to be if this thing doesn't go the way that you planned? What levers can you pull? Who can you talk to?
Sometimes when we create offers, we don't even want to allow ourselves to contemplate what could happen. But I think the smartest and savviest business people are completely aware and honest even expect that it's only a matter of time before they put an offer out there that does not get off to a fast start. And the people who are going to stay in the game are the ones who don't quit when it kind of stings.
When you are crafting your offer, you've got to be ready to react quickly, and not take it personally, when something doesn't go right with the offer.
Tip #1: If you're not annoyed by yourself, you aren't talking about your offer enough
If you feel like all you talk about is the opportunity to work with you, you keep posting about it, and keep talking to people about it, that's a sign that you're on the right path.
Way too often, we assume that when we send an email or make a post that we are bombarding people. The reality is that you have got to probably do 10 times more talking about your offer and opportunities that you feel comfortable with.
We tend to assume that because we've talked about it a little bit, or we posted about it, that if people liked it they would have bought it already. I honestly think there's a critical error in that thinking. We forget that everybody out there is busy. They might have your cart pulled up and then get distracted by their kids or having to go do something else.
Don't assume that just because nobody's buying, that there's no interest. You've got to be okay with the feeling that by the end of it you feel like you talked about it so much. That's a sign that you are committed to it, and that you are talking about it as much as it might take to actually get this thing done.
Tip #2: Have a plan for staying present when things get hard
It's going to be hard, okay? It's going to be hard to make sales at a certain time. It's going to be difficult to put your offer out there and it takes trial and error. You have to ask yourself how you're going to stay present.
"The smartest and savviest business people are completely aware and honestly even expect that it's only a matter of time before they put an offer out there that does not get off to a fast start. And the people who are going to stay in the game are the ones who don't quit when it kind of stings."
When I was having a tough time with my launch, my good friend Christine McAlister (check out her website, Life With Passion, below in the show notes) gave me this advice. My temptation was to start thinking of what else I could offer since the current things I was doing weren't working. Maybe add some one on one services. Maybe create this other course. Christine asked me, what would happen if you just stayed present in the discomfort of this launch? What would you do? What would you do differently?
When you stay present and not jump to other solutions, it forces you to think outside the box. So stay present when you're putting your offers out there. Don't quit on it because it's easy to run back to the safe, comfortable place of trying something else.
Tip #3: Decide that it's going to work
This is really, really powerful. You get to decide that this is going to be your best launch ever. You get to pick whether you quit or take your foot off the gas. But that's the last thing that you should do.
If you want to be successful, it starts inside your mind. You have to decide that you are going to keep going, keep pushing, keep trying and iterating, keep doing new things. If you take your foot off the gas, people are not going to start buying.
What would you be doing differently if this had to work?
The more you show up, the more you make, period.
So that's the six questions and 3 tips for you to keep in mind next time you are launching an offer again.
Which question was an aha-moment for you, and which of these tips really resonated? What are you taking away from this episode? I'd love to hear it. You can come over to the Courage and Clarity community on Facebook - click here to join!
Links & Resources
Megan Hale’s website: Megan-Hale.com
Janna Melissa’s episode on the C&C Podcast: Using a “Good Enough” Launch to Fill a Group Program with Janna Melissa
Christine McAlister’s website: LifeWithPassion.com
Courage & Clarity Facebook community: Click here to join!