How to Frame Your Consulting and Coaching Services [Behind-the-Scenes Tutorial]

Have you ever wondered...

"What services do I offer my consulting clients? How to frame my products and services in such a way that they will be irresistible to executive clients?"

If so, you're gonna love today's training on how to design consulting offers...that convert. 

I walk you through the general principles of what you need to include in an offer, how to position them to attract and land clients as well as how these principles uniquely apply to consulting and coaching businesses.

Creating great offers that will attract and impress your consulting clients starts with falling in love with your consulting clients and serving them to the best of your ability. Your offers aren't about you and showcasing what you know and can do. It's about creating tangible value for your future clients...at each step of their relationship with you.

Transcript

Betsy Jordyn: Hey there, it's Betsy Jordyn. I've been asked quite a bit about offers and how to make relevant offers, particularly in crazy times, like now. I decided just to put together a quick PowerPoint to go over that with you. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen on how to create relevant offers. 

Consulting and Coaching Offers (00:22):

The first things first, as it relates to relevant offers, one thing you don't want to do is set yourself up to feeling like that ambulance chaser.  None of us want to have that icky, yucky feeling. So that's really important is you want to make sure that you set up offers that set you up to relate to your clients from a place of service. What I want to go over in this quick video is how do you set up an offer that converts? I also want to talk about the difference between B2C offers and B2B offers.

Meaning a B2B business is a business that's positioned to help an organization. A B2C business is when the actual buyer is an individual, and you need to think about your offers differently. And then I want to talk to you about the importance of creating a lead magnet and list building.

One thing that a lot of consultants just sort of totally neglect doing is even thinking about a list. We think about growing a network and getting out there and finding leads, finding leads, finding leads.  We neglect to look at how do we build a list and a following because that's going to be a better way to have a group of people who love us and follow us that we would be able to actually create meaningful offers to. ]

Related: Consulting vs. Coaching

How to Create Consulting Offers that Convert (1:35):

Let me talk to you about offers that convert.  

1. Balance wants and needs: The thing is, is that you want to have an offer that gives a client what they want and what they need.   And you need to balance both because what your clients might be asking about, isn't ultimately what they need, but everything that you should do should be geared towards creating that transformation that your ideal clients want, but they also are really looking for.

Related: 7 Steps to Establishing Credibility with Your Next High-Paying Client

2. Be flexible: The thing about offers is they aren't static, but fluid. One of the things I tell my mentees all the time, the path to consulting success is not a straight line. It's like an ice skater. It's like you're moving side to side. For a potential client to notice what you have to offer, you have to communicate it in such a way that it joins the conversation that's going on inside their head. The biggest tip that I can give you of all is always think through who do you serve and how do they experience the problems that you want to help them solve.

3. Tier and align your offers: And then the other thing about offers is you need to tier and align them. You need to make sure all your touch points relate to one another. I'm going to explain more about that in a second. Let me first get us on the same page on content marketing and all the pieces and how they all fit together.

The reality is content marketing is not dead. I know that some people think that their people don't need content anymore, but they do.  But it's all around having good content.  You do need to have free content out there, especially as a consultant and a coach, because you're selling your ideas as well as you're selling yourself.  You need to have all kinds of stuff out there, but all roads lead back to your website.  And on your website, if you do not have a lead magnet of some kind or a way for people to give you their email in exchange for something, you are leaving money and opportunity on the table.  Because people might be visiting your website, but if they're not ready to buy, they just might pop on off. So you want to make sure you do that.  

Related Video: 5 Effective Content Marketing Tips for Consultants

Types of Paid Offers (3:22):

Then you might want to be looking at a low-ticket item.  What's an easy offer that you can provide your clients that makes it like a no brainer thing. And you're not giving them the entire solution, but what can you do to get them in the door. And then there's finally your high ticket offers. So all of these things need to link to one another, but no matter what you do a paid offer of any kind needs, these four P’s.

• Promise - It needs a promise. Meaning what does it solve? The promise is, is how do you convert a pain into something of value?
• Person - It needs to be super clear around who this offers for. You will not be able to sell anything to anyone unless you know, who it's for.
• Process - how it’s delivered.
• Price - And then of course price how much it costs.

For all business models, there's two types of paid offers. There's the low and the high-ticket offer, but there's a big difference as it relates to the monetization path, as it relates to a B2B or B2C business. So just to make sure we're on the same page, a B2B business is when an organization, when you go to an organization and the person who is hiring you on behalf of the organization is not using their own money. They're using the organization's money. That is a B2B consulting business.

A low ticket offer for a B2B consulting project would be somewhere around $2,500 to $19,000, maybe $20,000. It could be depending on which way your pricing typically is, but that's usually a 10% to 25% solution. I usually look at these as sort of one-offs, a facilitation of a strategy retreat, or a business audit.

The higher ticket item is when you provide that end to end solution. This is when you're looking at how do you position your consulting against solving those problems? And that's where you're going to be looking at the higher ticket offers.

From a B2B standpoint, here's the good news for a B2B, you really do need less leads. This is what's exciting. If you have an ability to convert a client or not a low paying client into a higher paying client, you don't need a lot of leads. You just need high quality leads and you need to have your content marketing system working.

So this whole system that you see in front of you, you need to have it working to be warming up those leads, but you've got to be amazing at that partnership set up. I've got a ton of material on partnership set up.

Related eCourse: See my Contacts to Contracts eCourse for the partnership set up 

Key to land high paying clients (05:45):

This is so important and I'm so passionate about it. Please, please, please go over to my YouTube channel. You'll see a whole, whole playlist I have on contacts to contracts. I have a whole eCourse on it. I put it into my Consultant's Toolbox, which is my premium eCourse. And I teach it all the time. This is my secret sauce because you don't need a lot of leads. You need to be really great at setting up partnerships set up. And that's where you can in many ways, kind of skip that low ticket solution.

Consulting vs. Coaching Offers (6:13):

B2C businesses, so for those of you who are coaches, this is going to be more where your world is.  It's not that when you're working with an individual, they just typically have less money. That's not really the issue. It's just that they're using their own money. When you're working with corporate, as long as you can establish a business case, somebody will be willing to go with you on the return on investment, regardless of the price, because it's not coming out of their own personal salary.

When you're dealing with a B2C meaning business to consumer, when you're working with individuals, it's more challenging from the standpoint around how you think about your offers, because that person is deciding between, do I hire you or do I buy groceries? Do I hire you or do I provide for my kids and their education?  All that kind of stuff. You need to be really, really strategic about your offers in a way that's different from a B2B business.  But usually low-ticket item, that's usually it’s $997 or less, and it's a 10% to 25% solutions. That's where you can start offering courses, courses with support, or you can be looking at the higher ticket items, which is a thousand plus. That's usually the breaking point.

That's where you can start doing VIP days, retreats, mentoring, all that kind of stuff. Here's the difference with the B2C business.  And if you're trying to figure out which business model works for you, this is where a lot of people are going to make the decision. Some of it is “do I want an individual to hire me”, or “am I looking for a company to hire me?” And what pressure point am I willing to live with for a B2C business? It's really important because you need a lot more leads. You have to really be great at marketing. So that's going to be a key part. This funnel, you don't have a lot of ways around that one. You've got to do all these pieces. You need to make sure you get that low-ticket item in there.

Think through, what is your business model? How does your business model affect and influence the offers you're going to create for your clients? Be thinking about that one. Begin with the end in mind, think about where you want to take your clients, what you want the transformation to be, where you ultimately want to offer your clients and then figure out how do you make all of this happen?

Another way to think about this is who is this person that you want to help? And what is the problem that you solve? How do all of these pieces work together and tier together to get to that promised outcome? That's how offers all work together, but it all begins and ends all roads and everything that I teach all of my mentees all the time it's first who…then what.  If there's one thing that I know for sure, is you need to take your business and build it on your ideal client, who you serve. 

And it's not really about you and what you want to offer first.  That's the second decision. The first is who is that person that you cannot wait to get up and help.  And learning how to join the conversation that is going on in their heads. That is going to be the key for writing excellent marketing copy. That is where you're going to really create those meaningful offers, because you're going to know what kind of offers they want. It's not about what you want all the time. It's really looking at that mixed together.

Staying relevant too.  Here's the deal. So here's how this all fits into this crazy world where we're in the middle of a pandemic. We're in the middle of all kinds of unrest that your clients prior to this situation, they might've had one conversation that was going on in their heads versus where they're at now.

I was meeting with one of my mentees today, and he was sharing with me that how the conversation has changed, like maybe before he was working with high achieving men who are on their career path, moving to the next level, moving to the next level, but in today's world, they got shaken off the tree. So now that has changed because it's not about going up, it's around. How do I recreate my career?

When you're looking at companies right now, they're not looking at double-digit growth.  Double-digit growth that they might have beforehand. They're thinking about something different. They're thinking about how in the world are we going to stay in business? How do we bring employees back in here and customers, and how do we make everything feel safe? What do we need to do right now?

You need to stay relevant and be a mind reader, if you will, around what the conversation might be. And if you don't know what it is, just ask somebody.  Think through how has that conversation evolved. 

Building Your List and Opt-in's (10:39):

And then don't forget the value of a free offer and list building.  At this point in time, maybe you have some clients that you could help right now, or maybe you could start building a relationship with clients so that when business turns around, you're the one that they think about.  Maybe you need to be focusing on list building.

List building, there's a lot of different components. And there's a lot of things that Jen and I offer to help build a lead magnet type of path. But it begins with having some sort of opt-in page, either on your website, or maybe you use a system like we love.  We love Kajabi.

Maybe you do something like that where somebody joins in, they get a thank you page. And then you email that lead magnet. The lead magnet is really just a freebie that you offer in exchange for a name and email. And then you start developing the relationship with that particular person.

And then at a certain point in time, it seems natural where you can start offering a free consult. And that's when you move into that partnership set up conversation.

But the beauty of actually offering a lead magnet is it gives you an opportunity to develop a relationship with a client long before they ever get on the call with you.

Ways to drive traffic to your free offer (11:41):

Once you have a funnel like that in place, and you can start driving traffic specifically to this particular funnel, you can create a promo post on social media. You can run Facebook ads. Facebook ads are a whole lot cheaper than LinkedIn ads, and they're actually more effective.  But you have to look at your clients and say, well, will they hang out there?

You could send emails if you do have a list.  You can offer to do a guest blog post somewhere that was somebody who's maybe serving a similar audience, but they have complementary skills. You can do interviews and make sure that you have the call to action back to your freebie.

There's a lot of different things that you can do. You might have your static offer. And then you might think about how you create a lead magnet, put it in your website, but you could also be looking at how you can make that a separate pipeline if you will.

Get Started by Being Bold and Clear

My partner Jen and I got tons of stuff that we could do to help you out if you want to implement that particular idea. But one thing I would just love you to do when you're done with this video is just think through what is one thing that you can create that would be of meaningful value to your potential clients. Think that through trying to find some way to get it in their hands, try to show that you are somebody who is there for them in their corner, even if they don't buy right now.

The last thing I'm going to leave you with before I turn off this particular video and let you get to work in figuring out how you apply this information, no matter what time period you're at now, or in regular times, you really have to manage your own scarcity fears and your own money fears.

Because if it, if it comes through in your marketing, that's when it feels slimy. I mean, let's be realistic. Does anybody really want to buy from somebody where it seems like they need you more than you need them? I mean, there's something about that.

 The other thing about like your money fears, which totally makes sense right now, this is a very stressful time for everybody. But the fact of the matter is your money fears is the worst strategist on the planet. It is horrible. It is the worst copywriter. You're just, you're going to wind up spinning.

But in order to resolve this, it's not like you have to magically get a ton of money in the bank to get over this. What you need to do is just tap into all of those mindful practices that you already know how to do breathe deeply, do whatever you need to do to remind yourself that you live in an abundant universe and that you will be provided for and make sure that you redirect everything that you do from a place of service.

I'm going to leave you with that. Take some action.  The big things you need to do is think through your overall funnel, make sure it's all working for you so that you are consistently attracting your clients into relevant and meaningful offers. And then if you need something to augment it from a time-based standpoint, look at how you are growing your list and use it as a way to build your list for the longterm, but also get some instant traction now. Hopefully, this helps and I'll see you soon.

Next Steps:

1. Please share this article if you found it useful

2. If you want personalized support figuring out an offer that you can feel confident will resonate with an executive client, schedule a free consult with us. We can show you how to frame your expertise in a way that attracts and engages your potential clients.