An offer suite is a portfolio of products and services that your company offers to your clients and customers.
Key Takeaways
- A great offer suite is well-defined and offers a clear pathway to desired results for clients, consisting of services, products, events, or experiences at various price points.
- Not every product is necessarily an offer; an offer is a conditional proposal that becomes legally binding when accepted.
- A great offer has four essential elements: results, scope, price, and a delivery mechanism.
- When designing your offer suite, identify your target clients, map out their customer journey, and break it down into milestones and deliverables.
- Differentiate between front-end offers (to attract new customers) and back-end offers (to maximize revenue from existing customers).
- The first offer to create should be your main profitable offer, often referred to as the Essential Offer, followed by adding complementary back-end offers to your suite.
What makes a great offer
A great offer suite is most importantly – well-defined. Your offer suite would have a clear pathway toward the results that your clients expect from you. Your offer suite can consist of services, products, events, or happenings. It can have tangible and intangible offers, and it should also have offers at different levels, both regarding pricing and deliveries.
Your product is not (necessarily) an offer
You might have tons of products, for example, if you sell physical goods in your e-commerce store. Not all of them are offers. Your offer, on the other hand, could be a bundle that you use to get your clients to come into the shop and buy from you. So not every product is necessarily an offer.
If you sell services, your offers could be your customized service delivery, a workshop, and maybe a few other products that you sell to your clients. It could also be a furniture package consisting of several items for their homes.
Offers vary a lot depending on your business. Here’s a definition of an offer:
An offer is a conditional proposal made by a buyer or seller to buy or sell an asset, which becomes legally binding if accepted. An offer is also defined as the act of offering something for sale, or the submission of a bid to buy something.
A great offer has these 4 elements
Results
Your offer delivers a specific result for your clients. To be really interesting, you should define the exact results your clients can expect, of course, as long as they engage in the delivery, or take part in the milestones that your offer has.
Scope
Your offer should have a pre-defined scope, detailing what exactly is included in the offer and what it takes to deliver the results. The clearer you can be with your scope, the easier you will have to define the next element and sell your offers.
Price
A great offer has a price pre-defined. The price doesn’t have to be the same for all, but it’s important to be able to answer the question: “How much is it?” with a specific answer. When the results and scope are clear, you should be able to set a price for your offer.
Delivery mechanism
Lastly, your offer always has some kind of delivery mechanism. Once your customer has purchased your products/services, or at least signed a purchase order or contract, you will deliver it according to your unique process.
How you can design your offer suite
When you design your offer suite, you need to first know who you’d like to become your client. The second step is to identify the complete customer journey; all the steps your customers take to get from their starting point to their dream destination with you.
Offer Milestones and Deliverables
After that, you can start breaking down the journey into smaller milestones and deliverables.
- What needs to happen first?
- What do you need to do?
- What does your client need to do?
- What happens then?
- When are you done?
A great Offer Suite has an offer for the different milestones on the customer’s journey towards their end results; the dream destination.
Front vs. Back End Offers
Some offers are perfect to be sold at the front end, and some others are perfect for the back end.
what’s the Difference Between Front vs. Back End Offers?
The front-end offers are the products / services that you want to sell at the start of your relationship. When I was in IT & Management consulting, our front-end offers were strategic workshops that we sold to companies. These offers were perfectly time-bound, had a clear scope and price, and were easy to deliver.
Front-end and back-end offers are two types of products or services that businesses offer to their customers.
Front-End Offers
Front-end offers are typically low-cost or free products or services that are designed to attract new customers and build trust with them. These offers are usually the first point of contact between the customer and the business. Examples of front-end offers include free trials, lead magnets, and low-cost introductory products.
The goal of front-end offers is to acquire new customers and build a relationship with them, while the goal of back-end offers is to maximize the revenue generated from existing customers. By offering both front-end and back-end offers, businesses can create a profitable sales funnel that attracts new customers, builds trust, and generates repeat business.
When we sold the front-end workshops, it was simply a method for making sure that the requirements and expectations were as aligned as possible before we entered a multi-year (and multi-million Euro) deal.
Back-End Offers
Back-end offers, on the other hand, are higher-priced products or services that are designed to be sold to existing customers who have already purchased a front-end offer. Back-end offers are meant to provide additional value to customers and increase the lifetime value of a customer. Examples of back-end offers include upsells, cross-sells, and high-end products or services.
The back-end offers are offers that might be a bit more complex to sell and require more time. The sales cycles for back-end offers are often long, which makes it reasonable to sell front-end offers to cover some of the costs.
For example, for our IT company, the sales cycle could have been years. So that’s why we sold great workshops at the front end to be able to shorten the sales cycle and recoup some of the costs.
Some back-end offers are offers that are not available for clients who have not purchased the front-end, for example, a maintenance package for the design work that your firm just completed as the Essential Front-End Offer. Alternatively, these could be offers that can be sold as the first purchase but are oftentimes expensive and take a lot of time to sell.
On top of these offers, you should also have a few Lead Offers, which are also called freebies, or lead magnets. You use them to get the first yes from your clients, and these are often free of charge.
Signature Offer
A Signature Offer is a unique and high-value product or service that is specifically designed to meet the needs and desires of a particular target market. It is typically a flagship offering that represents the core of a business’s value proposition.
A Signature Offer is often the most profitable product or service that a business offers and it can help to establish the business as an authority in its industry.
The key to creating a successful Signature Offer is to understand the needs and pain points of your target market and to provide a solution that is both valuable and unique.
What is the first offer to create?
The best offer to create first is your main profitable offer, so you know that you are ready to start enrolling customers into your services as soon as possible. So, with that in mind, I’d start by creating the Essential Offer and focus on selling that, and then continue adding the back-end offers to your offer mix.
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Frequently Asked About Creating Your Interior Design Offer Suite
What are the key elements of a great offer suite?
The key elements of a great offer suite include results, scope, price, and a delivery mechanism.
How do you differentiate between a product and an offer?
Not every product is necessarily an offer. An offer is a conditional proposal that becomes legally binding if accepted, while a product is a tangible or intangible item you sell. An offer can be a bundle of products or services designed to entice customers.
What should you consider when designing your offer suite?
When designing your offer suite, you should consider your target clients, map out their customer journey, and break it down into milestones and deliverables. This ensures that your offers align with your clients’ needs and expectations.
What is the difference between front-end and back-end offers?
Front-end offers are low-cost or free products or services designed to attract new customers and build trust, while back-end offers are higher-priced items sold to existing customers who have already purchased front-end offers. Front-end offers focus on customer acquisition, while back-end offers aim to maximize revenue from existing customers.
What is the first offer to create in your offer suite?
The first offer to create in your offer suite should be your main profitable offer, often referred to as the Essential Offer. This allows you to start enrolling customers in your services as soon as possible, with the option to add complementary back-end offers later.
