I had two conversations this week that prompted this post.
1. A very new business owner reached out to me to review the materials she was going to send to potential wholesale accounts. Her work is beautiful and speaks for itself, but her materials left me (if I'm pretending to be the wholesale customer) with a million questions and decision to make.
2. A very experienced business owner asked me for help building out a sponsorship program to pitch to a number of large companies. He has a super compelling opportunity for partners with loads of possibilities, and he's eager to get his partners to think outside the box. But in doing so, he also left me (again, if I'm pretending I'm the possible partner) with way too many options.
It was interesting because both of them were coming from the perspective of not wanting to be too rigid. They wanted to create options to fit whatever the customer wanted/needed, which in theory is a great idea. Create the thing the customer wants, right?
In the case of the new business owner, she just wanted the sale—any sale!—so she didn't want to have too many restrictions. The more experienced business owner was tired of the same ol' boring proposals and was hoping to do something creative with his potential sponsors, so he didn't give any parameters either.
But the problem was that instead of keeping things open ended and easy, they essentially put the burden of decision making on their potential client.
By not giving at least a basic framework for a starting place, whether it was minimum order amounts or minimum sponsorship packages, these business owners were now depending on the client to do heavy lifting for them.
Let them be lazy!
We are BUSY people. We already have to-do lists that are way too long, and decisions we all needed to make yesterday. And a whole bunch of things we've been meaning to get to for a while now. By placing ANOTHER decision on your potential client or customer, you're almost guaranteeing that your order/idea will go on the back burner or you won't get a response.
Instead, try this:
1. Give them a starting point
You can give your customers flexibility to customize what they really want, but don't make them start from scratch. That's like opening a restaurant and not having a single thing on the menu. It might be as simple as guidelines like:
- Custom projects start at $X.
- Minimum order is X widgets and includes ___.
- One-on-one services require a minimum of X month commitment.
2. Offer Packages "Plus"
There's a reason that so many companies have a some sort of gold, silver, bronze offer structure. It's nice to see what you can get if you spend a little bit more compared to the bare minimum offer. But as with the examples above, many people feel that it's too "cookie cutter." My advice is to create a few tiered offers/options, and then say "let's customize it to create the right package for you." That way you can get creative, but you'll both be on the same page as to what might work.
3. Create clear next steps
I talk a lot about hand holding so that your customers know exactly what they need to do to move from one phase to the next. They're not trying to figure out whether they should email you the form first, or when to pay, or how they'll reorder more from you. Spelling out the exact next steps makes it easy for them. No guessing means no delays. I recommend quite literally writing something like:
Ready to get started? Here are your next steps:
Step 1: Fill out the order form here.
Step 2: Once we receive it, we'll send you an invoice which you can pay via credit card.
Step 3: After that, we'll get to work. Your order will ship in 2-3 weeks!
Spend a little time allowing them to do less thinking and take more action with less effort! It's your job to give them the opportunity to say yes and make a move, without feeling like they need to reinvent the wheel.