Quick question: if I asked you what the main offer of your current business is (or if you’re thinking how to start a business), could you tell me it in just one sentence?
Do you even have one?
If a customer walked up to you right now and said “hey Mr./Mrs. member of the Solopreneur Grind community, I’d like to pay you money for your service right now!”, what would they be buying?
This ties into the topic of niching that I touched on previously, but now we’re going a step further.
You’ve picked your niche, you have your target market, but what is your offer to them?
Because even if you’re hitting a super specific niche (mine is immigration services for Canadian companies hiring tech workers), and convince them to buy, they’re going to ask “ok great, what’s the next step? what’s the price? what do I get for that price?”
The next step is easy
What I’ve learned in the last year and a half is it’s best to have an offer crafted way ahead of time so you can answer those questions before they even come up.
You can answer them in your sales call, an email, etc. This is key for small business owners or a new business just starting out.
And if you answer those questions in your communication, the question from the client isn’t “what’s the price?” or “what’s included?”
The question is “when can we start”?
If you have lots of clients asking you that ^, you’re in very good shape!
Take time to think on it
Now if you don’t have that custom offer in place, you may need to take some time to figure it out.
To do this, I actually suggest taking some time away from your solopreneur small business in order to give yourself some time to really think it through.
For example, I was out of town over the weekend for a friend’s bachelor party and had 2 key takeaways…
First, is that Canada kinda sucks in the winter.
We went to Miami and it was pretty great to get out of the snow and get some vitamin D if only for a few days.
On a semi-side note, I find I have way more energy when I’m getting some sun every day – the winters can get quite grey here and it seems to take a toll on me.
Anyway, the second takeaway is that I was able to turn on my “out of office” email from Friday to Sunday night, and it was kind of awesome.
As someone who’s been laser-focused on growing my own business for about a year and a half now, it can become quite obsessive and hard to take a step back and analyze things when you’re so involved. It’s all you can think about and the thought of not answering client emails for a few days used to give me the shakes.
In reality, not only is it okay to use that handy out of office email every once in a while, but I found it beneficial.
Why?
Because I got to actually enjoy my time away (I knew that even if something urgent came up, they would see the email explaining I was away and that they could call me if absolutely necessary). I got a break from running the business and could think about things from a more objective perspective.
When you go months on end focused on your own business, it can be hard to step away or get that outsider’s view.
But even taking 2-3 days away from it can be enough to reset your mindset, give you a new business idea, and add to your motivation to get back to the grind. It will help you think of how to craft your perfect offer mentioned above to put you in an awesome position to make more sales.
This isn’t groundbreaking, but I think that taking time away to craft the perfect offer (or come up with other creative solopreneur ideas) can be extremely beneficial every few months.
I go into a little more detail here:
