Every offer change has a price. Do you know yours?
Have you ever thought about changing your product or your offer?
Maybe because you want to be less hands-on, work less, or make things run more smoothly. Or maybe you want to change the whole format, because someone told you the latest thing is to write a book, make a course and start earning passive income.
I have, and so have many people I work with. But changing your offer has consequences, whatever the reason, and most of us forget about that part until it bites us in the ass.
A few weeks ago, a member of my group came to office hours with that problem.
They run a live course with fixed dates and a small group, and they teach live every single session. They wanted to turn it into a guided self-study course, where people go through the material at their own pace and join a few optional calls, so they could spend less time on the business and work less.
We went through what that would actually mean, and it would have had the opposite effect.
With a self-paced course, people join at different times. Three weeks after the first sign-ups, two more people join. The first group is on module two, the new ones are just starting, and they have different questions, so you need separate calls. Then another group joins, the calls start to pile up, and the time you wanted to free up is gone.
You could end up with more work than with the live course.
Then there's the price. A self-paced course is perceived as less valuable than a live one, so it sells for less. Unless you have a big brand behind you, it's hard to justify a high price for something people do on their own, and instead of selling five seats, now you need to sell 20.
That means less time in the live course and much more time on marketing, selling four times as much at a lower price, with the number of calls rising anyway. The whole point was to work less, and the change would have meant working more.
I see this a lot. We change the product to fix one thing, usually to make it more affordable or to work less, and we only look at that one thing.
But your product decides how many clients you need and how you find them. It decides how long a sale takes, what your weeks look like, and which problems you solve. Change the offer and all of that changes with it, whether you planned for it or not.
For a long time my main offer was Zero to One, a 1:1 high-ticket package. Clients found me through my content, this newsletter and referrals. Sales were slow and conversations took a long time, but I only needed a few clients.
When I built the Solo Accelerator, things changed dramatically, because selling 1:1 services and selling to a group are two different businesses. They're promoted differently, sold differently, and run differently.
I made the change because it matched what my clients wanted and needed, and what they could afford, and because I wanted to work with more people. Now I need about five times as many clients. I have to promote all the time, I need many more sales calls, and I hear many more no’s. I have to invest in tools, learn to communicate with a group instead of one person, and deal with problems I never had with 1:1 clients.
My delivery grew too, but in a more structured way, so it could take more people without taking more of me each time.
It also gave me things Zero to One couldn't: my work scales. New kinds of partnerships became possible. Referrals went up, and members started connecting with each other, bringing more members.
It might look like I just added a new product to my offer, but that’s not true. I had to change my whole business.
I knew I was making a trade-off, and I was OK with it, because I wanted what was on the other side. I was also at a point in my business where it made sense and allowed me to have such a product. I had a solid brand, testimonials and a track record, which is what you need before you can sell to many more people at a lower price.
Before you change your offer, make sure you're solving the right problem for your clients, that the format works for you, and that you're aware of the consequences.
If you’re thinking about changing something right now, the price, the format or who it’s for, take a few minutes before you do anything.
What’s motivating you to do it, and how do you expect this change to help?
Where would you feel it first: your marketing, your sales, your delivery, your week?
What else would have to change to make it work?
I’m curious about what you find out. Hit reply and tell me. I read every one, and I'll write back.
If you want someone to think it through with, that's what my free 45-minute call is for:
