I was slightly leaning against the thick glass showcase. I pressed my index finger against the spot just above the glitter of the well-protected Chanel jewels beneath. It took a good minute for my warm fingerprint to disappear.
For days leading up to this milestone moment, I had been nervous that my 40th birthday may be spent ordering dinner from a laminated menu in a chain restaurant.
I secretly hoped that my husband would read my mind and surprise me with the gift I had been coveting all year. The one I had pasted to my dream board and the one that was as significant a symbol of my hard work over the years as the number of subscribers grew on my email list.
In walked my husband who met me at the Chanel store in the Galleria mall. He said, "pick out whatever you want, Terra."
“Yes, that one.”, I spoke as politely as possible. The Chanel assistant gently pulled from the case a string of the most glamorous pearls I had seen with a glittering Chanel signature logo affixed to the side of the necklace so as to perfectly capture the light when I toss my hair over my right shoulder.
I watched every juicy moment of the famous Chanel signature presentation over the crystal edge of my champagne glass. The assistant placed the necklace inside of a four-part felt dust cover, secured it to the pre-installed claps so it would stay perfectly placed during shipment, folded each leaf of the felt cover over the necklace, placed the familiar Chanel Camellia box lid on top and neatly tied the box with a black satin bow. Does that feel a bit over the top to you-- taking so much care to present a gift to someone you don’t even know?
That’s exactly how I feel about signature offers. Coco Chanel founded an empire on one signature offer--The LBD aka The Little Black Dress.
It’s what has made Chanel one of the most recognizable luxury brands for more than 100 years and the most influential fashion brand on social media with more than 57 million followers today.
Your signature offer is the LBD of your business.
It can be in the form of an online product, program, course or 1:1 service. Some examples are high-end masterminds, workshops, conferences, a product bundle, and retreats. Your signature offer is the anchor of your business from which all your other upsells and down sells are attached.
First, let’s get clear on the goal of this blog post. If you have never heard of a signature offer before now or never considered it as a staple in your business, this epic blog post will help you see for yourself the importance of having one signature offer to increase your income and overall influence.
If you have had a signature offer and you have NOT had success with using it to grow your impact and influence, then I will help you discover some the most common reasons a signature offer isn’t successful.
Let’s begin, shall we?
Who needs a signature offer?
I could easily say “Everyone”, end of story. You’re convinced, right? Wrong. Not everyone will have a signature offer because not everyone in business is looking to expand their personal brand.
Signature offers are reserved for entrepreneurs who want to be known in their industries as influencers, taste-maker and thought leaders. For a signature offer to work, you have to have to imagine yourself as "the specialist."
And for your signature offer to make high-level profits, you have to believe you are the expert in your offer. (Not your industry).
Did you catch that? You don’t need to be the expert in your entire industry to become the expert in your signature offer. Guess what, the fact that it’s yours and you created it makes you the obvious expert.
So no Imposter syndrome here, ok?
There are two types of signature offers:
The Bread and Butter Offer.
The Core Offer.
For some entrepreneurs, their LBD or Signature offer is the only thing hanging in their closet and that one offer has made them a fortune. I like to call these single stand-alone-offers The Bread and Butter Offer.
Marie Forleo’s B-School is an excellent example of The Bread and Butter Offer. Marie has created a huge online program that has attracted thousands of newbie entrepreneurs to her tribe.
Even with only one launch per year, she has been able to create an offer that allows her to stand out as one of the most successful female online business owners today. She’s masterful at clearly targeting her ideal audience and packaging up her offer in a fun aspirational brand with all the online trimmings. In other words, her LBD comes with Chanel earrings and a matching necklace.
The Core Offer is a slightly more complicated business model where your signature offer is like tieing a big knot in a rope we used to climb in gym class. You can either hang onto the knot to climb down the ladder or support your weight on the knot to climb up. In this model, there are upsells to and down sells from your signature offer.
I consider Ryan Deiss the King of marketing online. His customer value journey model is the embodiment of the core offer concept.
“Our Core Offer at Digital Marketer is Digital Marketer Lab. It’s a membership site that offers digital marketing training for $38.60. But it’s tough to sell Digital Marketer Lab to cold prospects. So, we “splinter.” --Ryan Deiss
Digital Marketer “splinters” their signature offer into bite-sized pieces and offers them as down sells to cold prospects. Conversely, they go into deep pieces of training with upsell offers to their hot audience.
Why should your business begin with a signature offer?
When entrepreneurs decide to forego the signature offer, they often say things like,
“ I don’t want to be pushy.”“ What I do is complicated.”“ I’m good at so many things, I can’t just choose one.”“ I make a little money here and there, but I can’t seem to break into the 6-figure levels of business.”
A signature offer can make doing business and finding a business so much easier. Here are 3 reasons why.
#1. SELLING GETS SO MUCH SIMPLER.
When you have done thorough research of your ideal market and perfect customer, you can nearly eradicate the need for selling.
Instead of thumbing through the google docs of your mind searching for the right product to explain to an interested prospect, you can take a deep sigh of relief because with a signature offer you have pre-selected the perfect message and product to present to your potential buyer.
Now you can simply layout your method, strategy or process for getting a particular result for a single problem and clearly articulate what you do and who your offer is for without confusing your prospect or yourself with numerous pieces of a puzzle that don’t create a problem-solution picture.
One easy way to have this conversation is to have your signature offer and its results clearly printed on your business card, the header of all of your social media sites and the header of your website. This will immediately attract the buyers you want and repel the ones you don’t.
#2. YOU’LL MAKE MORE MONEY WITH YOUR SIGNATURE SERVICE.
Tired of trading time for dollars or feel like your income is capped? Having a signature service helps you make more money as you’re able to assign a premium, flat rate for the work you do.
As an expert, you’ve got a proven way of doing things that gets results and that means you can charge accordingly. If the service only takes you 3 hours from start to finish, you don’t have to bill your client for 3 hours, but for the total value of that package. So where you may make $150, you may be able to charge $500 for the same work as it’s a signature offer.
Plus, as you’re delivering this service time and time again, you can create systems to help make the delivery more efficient, and that makes the service itself more profitable.
Not convinced?
Creating my signature live event for female entrepreneurs in 2018 was a game-changer. I was able to sell out both my upsell (The Concorde Mastermind™) and my down-sell (Now Boarding Clients™) at a high-value price and more than double the price of just my Business Map ™ package alone.
#3. YOU BECOME KNOWN FOR SOMETHING. There are plenty of challenges in our business. Let’s face it, #thestruggleisreal. One of the most difficult challenges to navigate is the path toward undivided attention. I don’t have to remind you, we have the attention spans of goldfish and every single bright shiny object that comes along on these internet streets is a distraction from our offers. Take my friend Kelly, her business was all over the place in 2017. She was making $10k per copywriting project--when she could get it. But those lucky days were few and far between. When she finally began to follow the Business Map Method™ that clearly defined her signature offer, the cash began to roll in on a more consistent basis. Now, she can pitch her signature offer to podcast hosts, social media influencer, affiliates and media outlets who get her and what she brings to the table. She went from a spotty $40k year to a projected $60k year with less work, more time for her family and (a lot) more fun in her business.
When you are known for something, people will either Google your name or your signature offer and nothing in between. This allows you to literally wipe away your competition.
Design your Signature Offer in 6 Simple Steps.
Being able to communicate your offer and demonstrate that you have a “signature method” gives your perfect customers the confidence to invest in themselves by saying YES to you! I call these frameworks and create them for my private clients in my Concorde Mastermind™ and Business Map Method™. That's how much I believe in taking your own IP (intellectual property) and getting it out of your head and into a method that you can trademark.
The great news? You already have a “signature method” (a unique way of doing things like only you can!) . . . you just need to identify it, package it up with some personality and leverage that into your “Signature Offering”.
Sound good? Awesome!
Here are the 6-Steps to Design Your Signature Offer:
#1 Get Specific. Every signature offer boils down to one word or one angle. So if we’re talking about allergies, that’s too broad. There are countless types and combinations of allergies, but if you striped it down to a single allergy for a single type of person, now you have the underpinnings of a top-shelf signature offer. For example, you might own a business selling health food products to people suffering from nut allergies. Your signature offer might look something like this: "The Perfect Peanut-Free Cooking Retreat."
#2 Core Strengths. Many of my clients have a common affliction. We call it the curse of knowledge. They are talented and brilliant visionaries, but they can’t be the strongest in everything. I make them choose. The cure for the curse of knowledge and the key to finding your core strengths is to prioritize what you want most out of your business. Decide on your main core strength and run with it.
#3 Communicate the Results. Your LBD should hang neatly in your closet without taking up too much space. It has darted pleats and carefully hand-stitched beading on the collar. Your LBD comes with pockets for sliding in a cold hand when darting from your car to your private jet. But that’s not why you buy the LBD. You buy the LBD because it makes you look skinny, young and rich even when you just had 5 minutes to get ready!
Your signature offer is the same way. Your ideal customer will like your signature offer for all the details, features and benefits, but they will BUY again and again for the RESULTS. Make certain that you have clearly articulated the results of your signature offer in the language that your perfect customers want to hear it.
#4 Create a Step-By-Step Process.
If what you do can be googled and any other name besides your own pops up, you do not have a signature offer. You can easily resolve this with an organized system or step-by-step process that you can trademark or copyright as your own. Instantly, you will become known as a creator, inventor, developer, trailblazer or authority in your niche just for organizing what others see as chaotic. (And..it doesn't matter what you sell, a product, service or a combination of both...you can create a signature offer.)
#5 Accelerate the Process.
Let’s talk leveraging your signature offer. You can’t be omnipresent. But we can sure make it feel as though you are. With the help of a VA (virtual assistant) or invested DIY time, you can begin to accelerate the process by which people discover you, purchase your offer and become your customer. First, clean up your online profiles to reflect your new signature offer. Second, create an intake process that can be executed automatically and finally, onboard all of your customers in a routine yet exquisite manner, so each customer feels special and you keep your sanity.
#6 Launch Before Its Perfect.
Perfectionism breeds procrastination and money were never made in research and development. The money is made on the showroom floor. Done is better than perfect. Don’t be afraid to launch your signature offer with a few rough hems. Once you initiate your first launch, you’ll discover other weak points and have more clarity on version 2.0. In fact, here is where you’ll find a great opportunity to raise prices. Once your signature offer has gone through several beta iterations, you can present it to your perfect customers with more clarity and confidence. That means more cash for you.
The ultimate question: Can you build a business on your signature offer alone?
The answer is YES.
I’ve been in business for 10 years with no affiliates, no joint ventures, no fancy public relations agent or spending millions in ads. In fact, I’d rate my social media stats as average for someone who has been on it as long as I have. There’s nothing magical about how we gain success in this business.
All I’ve ever done is focus on my signature offer and continually make it better with every iteration. Then I leverage that with optimized processes and I practice what I preach. Each year, I serve my clients with quality, and integrity and each year I watch as my income grows more sizeable and my family grows fonder of our longer and more frequent vacations. My signature offer has helped me triple my revenue this year. TRIPLE. I don't say this to brag but to explain to you that if I can do it, so can you.
Wanna work with me to craft your perfect customer profile and define, sell and automate your signature offer? Let's talk simply apply for a complimentary fast-track session at TerraBohlmann.com/consult.
If we work together in the future, you will have massive clarity in your business and a tangible offer to sell. I invite you to apply for a conversation with me we can co-create your LBD just like Coco.
Terra Bohlmann is a business strategist and breakthrough coach who helps fast-track women business owners with priceless Business Maps™. As the creator of "The Business Map Method™, she has crafted over 160 custom business models for clients who have gone on to build six and seven-figure businesses. Through her speaking, training, coaching, and live events production, she's impacted thousands of women business owners across the world. Terra has been featured in publications and podcasts including Forbes and The Huffington Post. She's also the host of The Fast-Track Woman Podcast with Terra Bohlmann.
She is obsessed with collecting Chanel brooches and traveling but loves to come home to Houston, Texas where she lives with her husband, three boys, two spoiled Australian Shepherds, and an entitled rescue cat. Terra's forthcoming book, The Fast-Track Woman: Create Your First-Class Business with Clarity and Confidence, is due out in 2022.