Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you’ve ever thought, “Maybe I just need another offer,” you’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs, especially in service-based businesses, get stuck in the cycle of adding more services and more packages to try to capture different types of clients or boost cash flow quickly.
Unfortunately, more offers is rarely the answer.
Related: 5 Ways to Tell If Your Company Should Start Offering a New Product
The allure of adding more
It makes sense in theory to add a new offering — if you add another offer, surely that widens your net, right? You figure you’ll meet more people where they are, increase chances of conversion and maybe bring in more recurring revenue.
But instead, if you’re adding offers too frequently and too quickly, your marketing becomes diluted and confusing to your audience. Your average consumer may end up spending more time trying to decide what to buy instead of having a clean, smooth sales funnel.
Then, once you’ve sold a few of each of your offers over time, it becomes really complicated to service those offerings. Your time gets split, billing gets confusing, and in my experience, service quality usually declines.
What starts as an effort to grow can quickly become a trap, draining your team’s energy and your business’s momentum.
Instead, your best marketing asset is a clear message and a confident sales process.
The power of fewer, better offers
Here’s what I’d do instead. Focus your effort on one core offer that solves a big, specific problem, and refine the hell out of it.
When you refine offers instead of replacing them or adding to them constantly, you have a chance to get the same benefit of tweaking your offer to meet the market — which you absolutely should — with less confusion to your audience.
Once you launch that offer, start A/B testing messaging with your audience. See what resonates, and then slowly move your messaging more towards that. Monitor how long clients stay with the offer. Ask them what they like about it and what they wish it included, and maybe create an add-on to address the needs that surface.
Don’t get me wrong — I still recommend you try lots of new things and iterate quickly, shedding things that aren’t working and doubling down on things that are. Just use those learnings to iterate on what you already have, instead of launching something new every other day.
This also doesn’t mean you can only sell one thing forever. But if your core offer isn’t selling, don’t assume you need a second one. You may just need to optimize the one you’ve got.
Related: Is Your Offer Not Selling? Try These 3 Fixes to Make It Irresistible.
What to ask yourself before launching a new offer
If you’re tempted to build out yet another service, take a pause and ask yourself a few things.
Fi