There are nearly unlimited ways to package your expertise.
You can do 1:1 consulting, coaching, training, courses, memberships—you name it!
You can even combine them, sell multiple concurrently, or begin with one thing and transition into the next.
There’s really no single best way to sell your expertise. But there are a few things to consider when designing your next offering.
Questions to consider:
1. What can I offer that will actually be able to achieve the desired result?
If there is no objective, there is no engagement.
How do you know what to offer if you don’t know where you’re going?
The times I’ve had the best results were when my clients knew exactly what they wanted to accomplish and brought me along to help them do it.
On the flip side, the times when I’ve had the least success are times when the client didn’t know exactly what they wanted to accomplish. We learn the hard way sometimes (speaking about myself).
Clarity of goals creates clarity of scope—and with that, a much better chance of success.
2. How much can my target market afford to spend?
This one is tricky because it can be easy to fall into the trap that your target market “has no money”. Or “has so much of it” that it should be “easy” to sell to them.
That said, it does help to estimate based on the potential value you help them create—at least in general terms.
Starting with the price and working backwards from there can be a great way to determine what you can offer.
3. What can I offer that will be mutually profitable for me and my clients?
Related to the point above, ask yourself what you can sell that is profitable for you and your clients in terms of both time and energy expenditure and based on your own profit targets.
It might be easy enough to sell a $10k/month consulting package but if it takes all of your time to deliver, is it worthwhile for you?
Only you can decide…
4. How does my target market prefer to engage with me?
Some CEOs are extremely busy and don’t want to read your book or take your course.
They want you to do it for them. Or to advise on and lead the process.
Knowing what your ideal clients prefer—and what they don’t want—will make it a lot easier to shape your offerings around them.
You’ll only know by selling custom engagements and trying out new offers until you see that resonates.
5. How do I prefer to work—and what constraints do I use to accomplish that?
This point is underrated. Doing work that isn’t in your zone of genius or that drains you of energy is a recipe for failure in the long term.
You don’t have to love every part of what you do. We’re paid to be uncomfortable and do hard things.
But it’s worth considering what style of work suits you best so you can at least factor that in and optimize for those kinds of offerings.
In closing…
There are a lot of other questions, but these are big ones for me when it comes to designing my offerings.
What do you consider most when designing yours?
—k