How To Think About Optimizing Your Services and Products

Have you hit your ideal mix of genius zone work, expansive revenue, free time and flexibility as a Soloist?

If not, it might be time to optimize your services and products ladder.

Try starting—like I did with “Sharon”—with a deep dive into your business and revenue model.

Sharon runs a successful B2B consulting practice: a high end, high value service with an entry level introductory option.

Her services/product offerings—or ladder—look like this:

Industry thought pieces via email (2x month): Free

Entry service (1x assessment): $2,500

Advisory service (recurring annual): $20,000+

Custom consulting: $50,000+

Most clients start by buying the entry service and then about 80% go on to one of her higher options.

Her advisory service taps into her genius zone, is highly leveraged and exceedingly profitable, so her goal is to funnel her best-fit clients there.

Note: In theory, the $50,000+ custom projects look appealing. But they pull her away from the work she prefers and carry more revenue fluctuation (risk) since they are project-based.

Since up-selling 80% of her introductory projects is a pretty good hit rate, her challenge wasn’t closing on new advisory clients. Instead…

She needed to get more of her sweet-spot into the pipeline for the entry service.

It’s an interesting problem because there are many ways she could tweak her service and product ladder to solve it:

She could start a (free) podcast on her specialty and create a new avenue for fans to find and engage her, ultimately funneling them to her introductory option.

She could write a book to entice a much larger audience to engage with her content and up-sell to her $2,500 option.

She could create a self-directed course to teach an essential principle (one of several that she covers in the introductory option) and price it in the low to mid hundreds.

She could even offer a virtual, live workshop—with a still higher price point—where she teaches many how to do what she usually performs one-to-one.

She might even go all the way to a membership option where she keeps a significant cohort warm as she teaches her expertise and how to apply it to their situation.

It’s helpful to know that her typical client is a Fortune 1000 C-suite decision maker, which makes the last three of these options less attractive.

So—while intrigued by hosting a podcast—Sharon gravitated to the book concept, even though it’s a high commitment, low price point option.

She believes her audience highly values being served by an acknowledged expert—which is what publishing the right book will make her.

And that book will help grease the skids to paid speaking opportunities and invitations to industry platforms that are jam-packed with her ideal audience.

Here’s the thing with optimizing your service and product ladder: there is no universal right answer.

Start by understanding how you currently pull potential clients and buyers into your pipeline and how they work their way through your offerings.

And then evaluate how that matches up with how you most want to spend your time, grow your revenue and impact your people.

p.s. If you want some focused help figuring this out, I have 3 QuickStart spots in March (you’ll find the details here). Think short engagement focused on fast, tangible revenue growth.