“Susan, I gave my prospect three offers, as you recommended. But they were sort of angry. They told me that they don’t want to pay the highest fee just to get what they really needed.
Clearly, I didn’t get it right. Please help.”
I went over the scenario with Paul. He’s a fractional CFO.
The mistake he made was to create Good, Better, Best offers.
He made his prospective client feel badly about choosing anything other than the Best.
Making clients feel bad is not the way to their hearts and their business!
Help clients feel great
You must make three offers that the client will feel great about.
They will be able to say, “I got just what I needed.”
I reviewed the concept behind my Choice Framework:
You, the provider, can deliver a range of life changing differences to your clients.
To do this effectively you have to ask the client what they need, want, or desire. (These are different, that’s a topic for another newsletter.)
Then design three offers that clearly deliver their need, want, or desire.
The key difference is the extent or significance of the IMPACT.
When a buyer chooses the IMPACT offer, they will get the main, central, or key IMPACT they’re looking for.
The point is that this is exactly right. They will feel happy and relieved that they chose the IMPACT offer.
IMPACT PLUS
The IMPACT PLUS offer goes beyond the IMPACT they were calling you about. You build an IMPACT PLUS offer based on your experience, expertise, and understanding of the possibilities that they don’t even know about.
For example, during my Getting to Know You call with an Owner, he told me they have several thousand past clients plus names of prospective clients and that someday they’d like to be able to market to them. I included that in the IMPACT PLUS offer I made. I know that their Critical Path/10 on the Continuum was the IMPACT offer. Once we succeed with that, they’ll be open to the PLUS offer.
The Owner was thrilled with the IMPACT offer, rather than feeling ‘less than’ because they chose it rather than PLUS.
You absolutely never want to make someone feel that the only way to enjoy the life changing differences you deliver is by choosing the IMPACT PLUS—and highest priced–offer. That feels so manipulative to the prospect.
That’s how Paul’s prospect felt. “I poured my heart out to you, and you’ll only really help me if I buy the most expensive offer.”
What about IMPACT Light?
I have found that we experts know that some help is better than none. We know we can deliver some level of life changing differences to clients.
The point is that IMPACT Light does change their lives in a meaningful way. The quality is still there, unlike the “Good” option which is understood as lower quality.
The significance of IMPACT Light would be a 5-6-7 on the Continuum of IMPACT, rather than an 8-9-10.
My point is that IMPACT Light still changes their life in a way they feel good about.
Naming Your Offers
I coined the phrase IMPACT Based Pricing when I was naming my concept of pricing that is proportional to the life changing differences I deliver to my clients.
Thus it made sense to call my offers IMPACT PLUS, IMPACT, and IMPACT Light.
You may want to use other names. Some of the synonyms for ‘impact’ are effect, influence, impress, act, change, and transform.
Of these, I think change and transform could work well for professional and business services firms.
Prospects typically call when they’re looking to change something. That could be changing something bad into something better or eliminating it. It could be to change their revenue or profit by increasing them. It could be to change their cost structure, address a legal matter, change their branding and media, financial management and so on.
I could see three offers called CHANGE PLUS, CHANGE, and CHANGE Light.
The same could work with Transform or Transformation.
You might discover the right word for your offers by listening to what prospects and clients say about how you’ve helped them. “This firm changed my life!” “That firm transformed us from struggling to successful.” “This firm transformed us from constant worry to confidence.”
The key to successful naming is that your names convey success for the buyer, no matter which offer the buyer chooses.
Good-better-best or silver-gold-platinum, or other hierarchy is about your firm’s inputs, not the client’s outcomes.
Using the Choice Framework has resulted in about 90% of buyers accepting of one of the offers by my client’s clients and prospects.
If you want to enjoy the IMPACT of a strong proposal acceptance rate, text CHOICE to 703-801-0345.
