Offer
Offer is the work of packaging your solution into something a customer can clearly understand, evaluate, compare, and say yes to — including the on-ramp that makes a first commitment possible.
“Can a qualified prospect, at the moment of evaluation, understand in two minutes what they get, what it costs, why it’s worth it, why now, and why you specifically — and is there a low-commitment way for them to test the relationship before making the full commitment?”
Best practice for Offers
- Productisation — You have turned your expertise and time into named, scoped, defined offers with clear deliverables, durations, and outcomes. (e.g. NOT just time and materials, and NOT ‘tell us what you want and we will price it for you’)
- Offer ladder — Your offers have progression from low-commitment entry products through to higher-commitment engagements. Includes paid diagnostics, audits, sprints, retainers, and project work.
- Pricing logic — You have defined the marketing-facing aspects of pricing: how price is communicated, anchored, presented relative to alternatives, and justified. Strategic pricing (cost modelling, competitive analysis) is operational and lives elsewhere.
- Differentiation visible in the offer — For each offer your features, structure, guarantees, and inclusions make the offer recognisably different from cheaper alternatives. You have included risk-reduction features for high-switching-cost services.
- Scope and proposal design — Your offers are documented, scoped, presented in proposals, and protected against scope creep. The marketing-and-sales-facing aspects of scope.
- The on-ramp — You have a low-commitment way for a target customer to experience your work. For high-commitment services, this is often the most important offer in the ladder.
What it doesn’t cover
- Strategic pricing strategy (cost modelling, competitive analysis, margin engineering).
- Operational delivery design (how the work is actually done — that is Experience).
- Contract drafting and legal terms.
- Internal capacity and resource planning.
Sub-structure
Three operationally distinct activities: defining the offers (what’s in the ladder, what each offer contains), articulating value (pricing logic, differentiation, justification), and designing the proposal (how the offer is presented at the moment of decision).
Further reading on the Offer link?
We cover the Offer link in detail in these articles:
- The Offer: How B2B Service Businesses Lose (and Win) Deals on the Commercial Package Itself
- The Offer Diagnostic: Is Your Problem Positioning, Traffic, Conversion, or Offer?
- Productising a B2B Service: When, What, and How
- Hourly to Value Pricing: The Transition Playbook for B2B Service Firms
- Tiering and the Three-Option Proposal: Anchoring, Decoys, and Good/Better/Best in B2B Service Offers
- Guarantees and Risk Reversal in Professional Services
- Scope, Change Orders, and Protecting Margin on Fixed-Fee Work
- Sector-Specific Offer Design: Accounting, Legal, IT/MSP, Agencies, and Consulting
How can we help you?
Our Offer based recipes are coming soon!