Any offer that requires a commitment from the prospect over a long period of time, a big upfront investment, or a large retainer fee will be difficult to sell.

Long-Term Commitments

Lots of traditional marketing agencies and B2B businesses try to get clients on a year-long commitment.

As you can imagine this is a very difficult sell unless you’re speaking to a referral or someone who trusts you based on a ton of case studies.

In today’s fast-paced age of digital business, prospects will be very hesitant to sign on with you for an extended period of time.

Because of this, we recommend staying away from offers that attempt to lock in clients for a long period of time, at least until you’re extremely proven in your craft and have a pile of case studies in their niche to leverage.

That being said, leading with a no-brainer intro offer and upselling to a long term, high ticket program is 100% possible and should be the path forward if you sell something that requires a long term commitment (SEO, Content Marketing, etc.).

Big Investments of Time or Money

Just like how prospects will be hesitant to commit to your services for a long period of time, they’ll most likely be hesitant to commit a big sum of time or money upfront.

Let’s face it, anyone interested in a product or service is interested because of the ROI it’ll bring their business.

If you charge a large onboarding fee or upfront payment, the pressure will be on you immediately to start delivering results for them to keep the relationship on the right note.

On the other hand, no client wants to do the heavy lifting in the working relationship.

If they know that a few hours of work lies ahead of them if they choose to sign on with you, it’ll make the close that much harder.

Again, leading with a light, low commitment offer and upgrading them to a bigger time or money commitment should be your goal. Build trust, then take the next step.

A Large Retainer Fee

This one is probably the most obvious of all. Sure, you can sign on clients if you have a large retainer, but it’s going to be an uphill battle.

There are power players out there who aren’t afraid to shell out large chunks of cash and sign on, but not every prospect you get on the phone with will be in this situation. This is especially important if you’re just getting started.

In our opinion, retainers are also a constraint on both ends of the deal. If you underperform, clients will be breathing down your neck looking for a return on their investment. And, if you overperform you’re being underpaid for the value you’re providing.

Let’s go over how to make these more difficult offers possible and other types of offers that can be a win-win for both clients and experts…

Having a no-brainer offer that makes it easy for prospects to sign on the dotted line will increase your close rate, build your confidence on the phone and allow you to scale rapidly as you collect case studies and get experience under your belt.

This all comes down to risk.

Risk is what keeps clients from signing up for your bigger offers on the first calls. Alleviate risk, provide value, and you will see your business grow faster than ever.

There are plenty of ways to craft a no-brainer offer, and we’re going to dive into 4 offer models that have worked very well in practice.

Pay Per Performance

This offer has been all the rage lately, and rightfully so.

Pay-per-performance is an offer that benefits both the client and the agency, because the agency’s upside isn’t capped while there’s minimal risk to the client.

For example, a Google Ads agency would only get paid on a portion of the profits they bring to their client with paid ads. If they can’t deliver results, there is no risk to the client as they don’t owe the agency anything.

For a lead generation agency, the agency only gets paid for the calls they book for the client. The relationship is risk-free for the client, granted the calls booked are with qualified leads.

Pitching a pay-per-performance structure to a prospect will be a much easier close than a hefty monthly retainer, and if you can deliver amazing results you’ll be paid accordingly.

It’s also makes your business more scalable, because you can scale results for one client and increase revenue rather than having to go out and find new clients!

Monthly Commitments

Another great offer model, especially if you’re a new agency, is a month to month commitment.

Rather than trying to close clients on a yearly commitment, a month to month commitment will be much more attractive and low-barrier to prospects.

Once you deliver them results, they’ll be more than happy to stay on with you long-term and a great relationship will be formed. If it isn’t a good fit, you’ll be able to cut them loose after a month and move onto clients you can get great results for.

After you become more established, you can include a “90 day commitment” clause into your contract. This way, the client is locked in for the first 90 days to give yourself enough time to deliver results before the agreement moves to the month to month commitment.

Of course there are situations where you need 90 days to show any results at all. This is normal. We’ll talk about how to handle that later in this article…

No Upfront Payments

If you’re really new to the game and you just want to get those first handful of clients signed on, offering your services with no upfront payment will be a great option.

You’ll be able to gain your clients’ trust by bringing them results with your work, which will make you your own greatest case study!

Clients will be more than happy to pay you at that point.

A contract with no upfront payments can include a clause that gets you paid after a certain amount of time or work performed, or you can go in with no payment agreement and prove your worth the good old fashioned way.

The only problem with this offer is without a monetary commitment, clients can have high expectations and no commitment to the process. Let’s go over how we can remove risk and charge high ticket upfront prices with an intro offer.

No Brainer Intro Offer

Not every product or service can be sold on a “no results no pay” basis.

Services like Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Content Marketing are long-term commitments that see compounding returns, but need resources allocated for a long period to see those returns.

In this case, you still need a no-brainer offer.

But it’s not the scalable, long term, % of revenue type offer. It’s fast, effective, and trust building…

Let’s go through the components of a fail-proof no-brainer intro offer:

Fixed Price

For a great intro offer to work, you need to have a fixed, refundable price that they can commit to.

They can essentially “dip their feet in” and see what it’s like working with you and see if they trust you to handle their needs.

I don’t ever recommend doing anything for free (even if you’re starting out). Generally, free ends up feeling low quality and you rarely get the testimonial or full engagement you’re looking for because the client isn’t committed.

So with a fixed, refundable price you can get a low pressure commitment before showing them your expertise and upselling them to a full retainer or upfront fee.

Example: For $1,000 I’ll build you a new homepage that will convert more ad traffic to paying customers without an increase in ad spend – if you don’t like it, I’ll refund your money.

How do you say “no” to that?

Fixed Time

Speed is so important. If you can’t show some level of results fast, then it will be tough to get a client signed on with you.

“But what about the SEO example? It’s impossible right?”

Well… let’s zoom in on the SEO example.

SEO is all about Google Search results. Google Ads also targets search results.

Example: For $1,000 I’ll do keyword research and run $500 in ad spend for 7 days, and find profitable keywords that you can rank organically for.

Fixed Result

If you can make your prospect $1 in a fixed amount of time, or at least show the promise of making $1 from your efforts in that fixed time – they will spend unlimited money with you.

This is the power of a no-brainer intro offer.

Example: For $500, I’ll get you a qualified meeting with an ideal client in 14 days using cold email, or I’ll refund your money. If you like the results, we’ll figure out how we can work together long-term.

This example doesn’t exactly promise ROI, but it shows the promise of ROI by getting them on a qualified meeting that can lead to $$.

This is one of the most powerful tools you can use to boost sales and will lead to large, long-term contracts that otherwise would have been near impossible to close.

‍

‍

It’s important to make it easy on yourself during the sales process by pitching prospects on a “no-brainer” offer.

These types of offers will help you sign clients easier because of how low-risk they are to the client, especially if you’re a new agency looking to get your first few case studies.

Once you do sign a client on a no brainer offer, you also have less pressure to perform at a high level right off the bat because the client isn’t investing a significant amount of time or money into your services upfront.

With any of these offer models, you should be doing the heavy lifting for your clients, being transparent and communicative, and working hard to drive results for them.

The rest will take care of itself.

Do you use no brainer offers in your business? Let us know in the comments!