![](https://www.salesoutreachheroes.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Creating-Your-Offer--scaled.jpg)
This part is absolutely crucial, and this is where a lot of people get lazy by offering something boring like price discounting or by copying what their nearest competitor is doing.
Remember, if you don’t give your potential customer a compelling reason as to why your offer is different, they will default to price as the main criteria for making their decision.
If someone was selling something for £100 and another supplier B was selling what seems like the same thing for £75, which one would you buy based on the information you have at hand? Yep, the cheaper one. Therefore, we can’t stress enough how important it is that you create an exciting and radically different offer from that of your competitors.
Here are two great questions to think about when you’re crafting your offer:
- Of all the products/services you offer, which ones do you have the most confidence in delivering? For example, if you only got paid if the client achieved their desired result, what would you offer? Phrasing it another way, what problem are you sure that you could solve for your target market?
- Of all the products/services that you offer, which do you enjoy delivering the most?
Answer the following eight questions to help you to craft your offer:
- What is my target market really buying? People don’t buy features, they buy
- What’s the biggest benefit to lead with?
- What are the best emotionally charged words and phrases that will capture and hold the attention of this market?
- What objections do your prospects have and how will you solve them?
- What outrageous offer (including a guarantee) can you make?
- Is there an intriguing story you can tell?
- Who else is selling something similar to your product or service, and how?
- Who else has tried selling this target market something similar, and how has that effort failed?
The offer is one of the most important parts of your marketing campaign. Don’t let your campaigns fail because the offer is weak and unexciting. Spend as much of your time and energy as possible on structuring this correctly.
Targeting the pain
You’ve got a splitting headache. You pop open your medicine cabinet and start rifling through your museum of half-used tablets, creams and vitamins only to realise you’re out of paracetamol.
So you rush down to your local pharmacy in the hope of getting the tablet that’s going to give you the relief you so desperately need. Do you worry about the price? Does it even enter your mind to shop around and see if you can buy the same product cheaper? Unlikely.
You’re in pain, and you need immediate relief. Even if the tablets were priced at double or triple the normal cost, you’d probably still buy.
The usual ways of shopping get thrown out the window when we’re in pain. The same is true for your customers and prospects.
So many times businesses talk about features and benefits rather than speaking to the pain that the customer already has. How much selling does the Tesco pharmacist need to do to convince someone with a splitting headache to buy pain relief medication? Very little.
The same is true whether you sell engineering services, consulting or any other product. You have prospects and customers who are in pain. They want pain relief, not features and benefits.
If you’re selling a TV, you could try to sell features and benefits by saying that it’s got four HDMI ports and 4K resolution. This will mean very little to most people. Imagine; instead, you target the pain point, which is; bringing it back home, unpacking it and spending an infuriating number of hours trying to get it working properly with all other devices.
Instead of price discounting and positioning yourself as a commodity, why not offer to deliver it to the house, mount it on the wall, ensure the picture quality is spot-on and ensure that it works perfectly with all peripherals. Now you’re offering pain relief, and price becomes less important than if you’re selling a commodity with a list of features and benefits.
In this example, even though the retailer may think they’re selling the same TV as their competitor, when they package it up in a way that takes away the pain, then they’ve won the business. It’s also much more likely the customer will become a raving fan and refer others to them because they weren’t just selling televisions; they were problem solvers!
So now, when it comes down to a seemingly “like for like” comparison, how do you compare this with “it’s got four HDMI ports and 4K resolution”?
Selling features and benefits alone will turn your prospects into price-sensitive buyers who will view your products and services as a commodity bought solely on price. Your goal is to be a problem solver and pain reliever, and turn any seemingly-the-same comparison with your competition into something as different as day and night.
Look for pain points in your industry and become the source of relief. Remember, people are much more willing to pay for a cure than for prevention.
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