Irresistible Offer Component #4. Unique Mechanism, Naming and Messaging

One of the ways to strengthen your offer and demonstrate your value is by finding your unique mechanism and naming that mechanism.

Ask yourself the question – what is the conventional wisdom in my marketplace and why is it wrong?

We often become entrepreneurs because we’ve had a difficult problem that we’ve overcome…but we’ve done it in a specific contrarian way.

I needed to lose 100 pounds and I tried everything… finally a modified keto diet worked. Or I’ve tried every exercise in the book to get rock hard abs…and all of them failed. Dieting? That didn’t work either. It was all about controlling my metabolism.

What is the prevailing wisdom in your market that’s dead wrong? Or maybe misunderstood?

Take that new way that you solve your specific problem – that twist on “conventional wisdom” and give it a name.

The ideal is to contain a few components in the name. Ideally include the avatar and time duration and what you do.

For example, there is a website called fitin42.com and they have what’s called the Lean Mommy Makeover.

You can see what they did: They came up with a name “lean mommy makeover and this highlights what they are about and if they were to take it one notch up then they could go with the 30-day lean mommy makeover.

I’m not sure about this company exactly – but often times the way these companies start is someone having that story and then finding out a specific way that they accomplished the outcome(say a mommy losing weight) and then they champion that to the world.

And they fight against conventional wisdom and often have these concepts in their about page and origin story to increase that unique IP in the market.

This way when customers look at you, they start to identify with your story and can’t really compare you to anyone else because…

In addition to the other irresistible offer components, you have a unique mechanism and unique name.

What not to do: If you don’t actually have something you do that is unique – that is totally fine! You will still be able to create an offer that customers will love to buy at a premium price.

Just don’t be disingenuous. The best unique mechanisms are different service formatting, containers, delivery systems, fulfillment or expectations than exists currently in the market.

If you have a good reason why what you do is different than conventional wisdom, give it a name and now you have unique IP that is more valuable.

Just don’t advertise a keto diet and then rename it to the Sanders diet. Explain why there are significant flaws in the keto diet and then demonstrate why the “Sanders Diet” fixes those fatal flaws.

Struggling with this? It can actually be quite difficult to see our own superpowers. Ask some of your customers, what was unique about your service. Look at all your competitors and see what you do differently.

Look at your own life experience (this is the best) and ask what really was the difference maker.

We don’t have to come up with something BRAND NEW, just something significantly contrarian. It is more about the name, message and container and current market expectations.

Remember curiosity is king. If you have something new to offer packaged up in a cool name – the market can’t help itself. It must take a peek.

Compete on outcomes and you'll convert more and be able to charge more. Don't compete on price, benefits or features.

Irresistible Offer Component #3. Offer a single, valuable outcome. Do NOT compete on price, benefits, or features.

Let’s revisit the commodity problem. If you want to get paid more – you can’t be like everyone else. You can’t be compared to anyone else. You must be in a category of one.

Gasoline is a commodity – why? Because it’s all really the same and has a standard quality generally. You might hop over to the next street to save 15 cents per gallon. You and your business need to shift from being a commodity that is basically the same as everyone else – to a high paid expert that is in a category of their own.

People accidentally commoditize themselves when they compete on price. Why should you hire me? I can cut your lawn for cheaper than that other girl.

It’s a terrible way to run your business because it’s always a race to the bottom.

Then some compete on value. This is where you are selling based on time or features/benefits “stuff” you are offering your clients.

If you are a fitness coach you might argue that you will get recipes for healthy eating, group coaching, accountability partners, customized workout plan, new alarm ring tone that soothes you into your morning workout.

This is OK but still leaves a lot of money on the table. Because in the end the customer doesn’t care about your price. Not really.

They don’t care about all your features and bells and whistles. They care about you delivering a specific tangible outcome with certainty.

The experts that are creating their offers based around results are the ones getting paid. If you can compete in the marketplace based on results…solving a problem for the client, you will get paid disproportionally more than if you are competing on price or value.

Why is it so much better? Because when you compete on results, It’s difficult for me to compare you with the competition…because your offer is unique. You’ve differentiated yourself. You have no comparison. You aren’t just a copywriter; you are a copywriter that builds launch sequences that triple open rates.

Say you are a violin teacher or a piano teacher: Most compete on price. Let’s say $40 for a 1-hour lesson.

Some upgrade to compete on price and value….Hey look I’m middle of the road for price, a little more expensive than some but cheaper than others….but I have all these values: You know me, I have experience, I live close by etc.

Very few compete on result. “At the end of our six-month training program, your child will be able to play in their first Christmas recital.”

See it’s a category of one. There is very little competition if any and it doesn’t compete on price. It gives me a specific tangible result that I would like to see for my child and consequently I’m willing to pay more for it.

When thinking through this process keep the following concepts in mind:

Clarity – The clearer something is the more it’s worth. If your offer isn’t clear about the specific outcome you are providing…prospects subconsciously mutter to themselves:  “Not worth it, won’t work for me specifically, won’t be able to stick with it, external factors will get in my way, effort and sacrifice is too much, I won’t enjoy it, I will be bad at it, it’s too confusing.”

Certainty – the more certain you are you can achieve the advertised result = the more you can charge.

Repelling – We want our offer and the results we deliver to repel clients that aren’t our ideal client. For example, my offer is to help you increase your prices by building you an irresistible offer.

I assume that you have prices to increase and you have clients and you have something of a business. Why? Because if you are brand new – you don’t feel the same amount of pain of being an overworked underpaid expert. You may not have the funds to pay me. You also might think that it’s all about just running some “Facebook ads” to get a customer or two.

Again – it’s not that I won’t take on these types of clients, it’s just that they aren’t ideal. But the way I’ve set up the offer specifically repels low quality clients and attracts ideal high paying clients.

Focus your messaging on a single dream outcome, and your dream clients, dream price and dream workflow will follow.

Re-Assess what your ideal clients truly values. Trim low margin difficult work. Add high margin work that you love and that you client values.

Irresistible Offer Component #2: Find what your ideal clients truly values. Trim low margin difficult work, add high margin work that you love.

Who did you do work for that was completely amazing and you loved doing work for them? Now keep that person in mind as we proceed.

You don’t have to solve every single one of your clients’ problems with your service. In fact, you want to be specific on what outcome they can expect which likely won’t solve everything.

Think about it like this: I help xyz(people) with (specific result) in (xyz time period) without (bad thing they are terrified of).

So identify a dream outcome you can help your client achieve, one that you are passionate about…not just one that you think can make you money.

Then list out all of the real AND perceived problems your client is struggling with. Then your service is the solution to those problems.

But in this process: In wanting to do a great job for our clients we often impose our idea of a great job on them.

Which leads us to create many components in our service that are very difficult to deliver and very low margin…. components that the client might not even value.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you are a model living near El Paso, TX. Your product is an hourly rate for businesses and photographers to shoot you at White Sands National Park.

You spend many hours working on your body, outfits, poses and recent styles that you think are trendy.

A photographer reaches out from Tennessee wanting to hire your services for 2 hours to shoot to build their portfolio at White Sands National Park.

You are ecstatic! Someone is paying for your services! After all it’s hard to make it in the modeling industry until you are really big and have a massive portfolio, right?

So you explain all of the styles and themes you’ve developed and all the hard work you’ve put in.

Once you meet the photographer and go on the shoot – you discover what they really value:

1. That you were super responsive and not arrogant.

2. That you knew specific locations for cool spots – which would have taken hours otherwise to research.

3. That you let the photographer have some creative control on the shoot instead of forcing the shoot around your exact style.

4. That you used your connections to organize one other model on location to shoot as well saving the photographer time and effort.

It turns out there was immense value in what you were already doing for free.

Now that same modeling professional can build an offer around helping photographers shoot at White Sands explaining the above values and packaging everything together for 2-10X the amount they were charging for two hours of work. (Assuming they applied the other 9 aspects of irresistible offers, of course 😉)

Ask yourself the question: What might be a low-cost thing to you that might be of immense value to your prospect?

Your ideal offer is going to give your clients an excellent outcome. But the steps in your offer to achieve that outcome should be built by trimming difficult, low margin services that you dislike doing and add simple high margin elements that your prospect values.

I was once working with a survey company for small businesses. They help startups test their idea against the marketplace by surveying hundreds of real people to get their opinion.

This founder would talk to each client and help them develop specific questions to survey the general public to see if their startup idea was viable.

He had two goals: To sell more product and to be less involved in the business.

He needs a way to increase the value so he could charge more– and start to trim the parts of the fulfillment that was sucking up all his time and energy.

Now his company had surveyed thousands of people including some big companies like Axios and SpaceX. He had access to incredibly valuable data.

So one component of improving his offer would be to compile the most incisive questions that top companies have asked prospects when testing a new startup idea – around concept and price etc – then give that away as part of his offer.

“Now the small startup can survey the market with the same types of questions that SPACEX is asking when they are testing their ideas.”

See? It would take that founder maybe a few hours to compile that data…but would result in a MASSIVE value increase to the product. Something they really couldn’t get anywhere else.

It would also start cutting down the owner’s involvement as the questions would be premade and he would have a foundation to train a replacement or work toward complete automation.

Since he increased the value, he could also charge marginally more for just this one tweak. A higher price put him closer to trimming his involvement in the business.

In the end, find  and cut down the difficult, low margin work that the client doesn’t even find that valuable. Start stacking up the high value and high margin components of your service.

To help you with this process – think about the following questions: what/why does the client truly value? What’s the biggest problem/pain your ideal client has encountered? What frustrates your ideal client the most? What keeps your perfect client awake at night? What humiliates your perfect client or is embarrassing to them?

THE most critical component of charging more and converting traffic to cash comes down to refining your 'who.' Go toward the subniche that is experiencing the most pain, has the most money and is the easiest to find.

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Show Notes:

Irresistible Offer Component #1: Who exactly are you serving?

You might be working doing a little bit of everything for everyone…which means that it’s very difficult for the market to see that you are any different than anyone else.

Ok so you are a copywriter? There are a millions of other copywriters looking to do work big and small.

The types of clients you are attracting are bottom-dollar Walmart shoppers. They just want the lowest price and a quick job.

As soon as you become a “copywriter for Facebook ads” you have immediately added $$$ to the amount you can charge, simply because there are less copywriters for FB ads then copywriters in general.

And because there is a high value in your perceived expertise in a specific subject matter.

But prospects that I talk to often want to go to the next level – “yes Paul, I understand, and I have niched my service or product somewhat. But what else can I do?

Focus on the following principles to increase your leverage:

1. Go toward the niche/subniche that is experiencing the most pain. For example – you could be an Infusionsoft expert. Cool – you aren’t just a CRM expert; you are skilled at Infusionsoft. But which types of Infusionsoft prospects are experiencing the most pain or have the most need? Or let’s say you are a health coach for business lady bosses. Do you want to help them lose their first 5 pounds or their last 5? Generally losing your last 5 is the hardest – thus more difficult and painful. Focus on this segment and you’ve just given yourself a raise.

2. Let’s also talk about purchasing power. Focus your niching efforts on those clients who can actually pay you long term. So you are a photographer who does branding shoots for businesses. Who will have more money? An artist looking to sell their art or a certified nutritionist?

3. Focus your niching efforts on clients that are easy to find. Let’s say you sell PPP advertising services to small businesses. Who will be easier to find? A real estate agent or a roofer? Real estate agents live on their phones and in communication. They are way easier to prospect.

4. Niching properly allows you to build standardized systems making your workload easier. And it makes your work faster as you won’t be “task switching” as much.

5. Want your referrals to start pouring in? If you focus on a particular client to serve, you are at a huge advantage. Why? Your clients hang out, know, and communicate with people just like them. Word of mouth is much stronger if you helped a dentist with SEO when he mentions your services to another dentist. If he mentions your services to a law firm, the lawyers might wonder… “I know she does good work and is trustworthy, but will this work for my business?”

6. Every business runs into problems in their fulfillment at some point. It’s way easier to trouble shoot those problems when you are going after similar clients – as opposed to reinventing the wheel each time when a problem comes up because you have 5 different types of clients.

7. Getting really focused on who to serve will give you the perfect balance between following your passion and cash. It’s not all about money. If fact if it is – you won’t last. But sharpening your focus on who to serve give you 2 advantages: #1 – More cash in the short term to then diversify and pursue your passion. #2 – More clarity immediately to find the balance between monetary goals and personal goals.

Sharpening up your Niche is key because you’ll make more money as an expert in the field, your systems will become more standardized – making your life less stressful and you will attract better prospects. Best of all, you will have a pathway to pursue what you love.

Think about this: How much does it cost you to survey the people you’ve worked for and choose one type of avatar? One who’s easier to find and in significant pain? One who you know can pay more on average?

Virtually zero. What’s the payoff? A lot more than zero. For some of you, it will be a 10X multiple.

Your goal is to find that one ideal client who you love to serve and get really good at serving them.

Objection #1: “I don’t want to Niche because I enjoy serving a lot of different clients.” Excellent, You will get no objection from me! If you enjoy it, go do it. However, if your primary goal is to make money and you value that above serving many different types of clients: get good at one avatar first and then branch out.

Jeffy B himself – just started with books.

Objections #2: “I’ll lose out on business, because I’m not appealing to more people.” Not true! Just because you are more focused as a business doesn’t mean that people outside your avatar won’t contact you or think that you can’t help them. It means that you are positioning yourself as an expert rather than a generalist which increases your product or services value.