des moines, iowa and beyond

workflow & systems strategist

Refining Your Offerings: Why, When & How?

Business, For Creatives, Systems & Workflows

We all know the importance of having a strong offering. It is the key piece to being in business, right? Without it, you have nothing to sell. So let me ask you – do you regularly review your offering(s) to make sure it’s the best it can be? 

This goes hand in hand with doing your workflow audits, but I’d argue is equally, if not more important!

You put so much time into crafting the perfect offer for your clients. From what you call it to the description, to the client experience and finally pricing. You write the copy for your website and collateral to support and serve your clients well when they purchase from you. It’s A LOT. Friend, I know, because I’ve done it over ten times in the last 12 years. But there is one area of all of that work that I find many creatives overlook. Revisiting and refining your offerings

It’s so important to reassess what we provide our clients with so that we are always delivering the top notch, best it can be version. With each client you serve, sale you make, or product you ship – you’re learning. You gain experience, new ideas and knowledge. 

How to know what to refine

You’ll start to see gaps in what you want to add, what’s not necessary and can be streamlined, and so much more! If you see that much, do you ever think that your clients’ perspectives may provide valuable insight as well? 

We hear all the time to “give the people what they want” and do your market research. Well, here’s the key piece to that, friend, that gets overlooked so often…Client Feedback!!

You may be sending out feedback requests, but are you asking the right questions to help you improve your offering and business? Or are you mostly asking for a testimonial? Those are both key pieces of information that you should be asking for.

Make sure you’re asking about specific parts of your process to make sure they are working the way you intend. Ask them if anything is confusing, if they feel there’s anything missing or that they’d like more of. Their feedback and insight is invaluable!

When to request client feedback

You can also send those feedback questionnaires at different times in your process. You likely have some questions in your inquiry form that you use. You can also send a “how’s it going” questionnaire midway through a project if it’s a longer timeline. Of course, the end of project feedback and testimonial request is the most common. Whenever it is that you request that feedback, make sure you have that automated and a standard part of your workflows. 

What do I do with all of this?

So you have all this feedback, your ideas and it’s time to do something with it. I mentioned that this is similar to an audit of your workflows. So let’s approach it similarly. 

You’ll have your running list, feedback and time set aside to really dig in. This may be during your annual planning, slow season or another time you’ve carved out on the calendar. I recommend having at least half, if not a full, day to do your initial review. 

Now it’s time to comb through everything and write out the new ideal offering. Do this independent of what you currently have documented. If you start with a fresh description and list of what’s included, you’ll get the best version. You won’t feel confined or distracted by what you’re doing now. 

Once you have that new service description written down, identify where you need to adjust your current offering. Plan a time to make the updates to your copy, website, collateral, workflows and systems. This applies for reviewing products, too. Don’t overlook those evergreen and digital products! I’d do this at least once a year, but you know your business and offerings best. 

Is this something you do in your business? How do you make sure that you are always putting your best, strongest offerings out there? 

Xoxo,

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