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Your Offer
Spread the Word – Friends Don’t Let Friends Work With Bad Clients
  April 16, 2012
Sedona, Arizona
Over the weekend, I listened to a great ILoveMarketing Podcast where Dean Jackson discussed the concept of “making an offer.”
When you’re selling professional services, “the offer” isn’t always so simple.
You’re not selling lawn mowing services, you’re selling professional services, which is a little bit different in my opinion.
But here’s why getting your offer clear is important.
According to Dean, if you’re not making an offer, you’re just making yourself “available.”
He described “making yourself available” this way:
Imagine you have some friends over for dinner. After they enter your home, you invite them to sit and relax. And then you say something like, “There’s plenty of stuff to eat and drink in the fridge. It’s out there, to the left, in the kitchen. Help yourself.”
Then he compared that scenario with one where you approach your guests with a plate of cookies and ask, “Would you like a cookie?”
Now there’s a simple offer.
The other way just falls flat.
As Dean explained, when you make yourself availabe, you put the onus on the customer/client to intitiate the business.
And for the most part, you can wait a long time before that happens.
In professional services, the challenge is to be creative about how and when you present your offer.
Generally, I don’t “ask for the sale.” (Read this and you’ll get a good idea why.) That’s just not the way I sell.
Instead, I do my best to provide enough value that they ask me for the sale.
But that’s a lot harder for them to do if I don’t give them any framework. That’s what an offer does. It gives them something to consider. A starting point for a discussion.
With that information to think about, it gives them something concrete to make decisions with.
Do you have an “offer?”
Is it a good offer? Is it an irresistible offer?
Think about it.
See you next time,
Jason Leister
Editor, The Client Letter
Creating Success for Independent Professionals
ClientsSuck.net
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