Why Your Offer Ideas Never Make It to a Sale
Let's talk about your offer. I mean the one sitting in your notes app, hiding in your downloads folder, or stuck in draft mode in your course platform while you wait for the right moment to put it out there. Or maybe it's still only in your head and you haven't touched the keyboard yet.
I've watched this happen for years. When I first started, a lot of it came from how big our courses were. Those signature 1K+ offers took real time to make. Around 2018, when I started teaching coaches how to scale with a high-ticket program, I taught them to start small: sell the course with a couple of modules ready, then build it while staying a couple of steps ahead of their students. That got people to actually do something instead of spending the next year of their life building a giant course before selling it.
If you've been in my world for a while, none of that is a surprise. But there's a group of coaches and course creators who are just starting, or sitting behind the scenes, who haven't built any momentum because nobody has pushed or guided them to make an offer. This post is for you.
Why a small offer opens the door
The offer I'm talking about here is a simple low-ticket offer. It opens another door, or the first door, to people working with you privately, whether that's your high-ticket program or your high-ticket coaching packages. By high ticket I mean four figures and up, and I don't care if your coaching is $1,000 or $25,000. Having multiple low-ticket offers is the best way for people to get to know you and your work and want to be in your world at a closer proximity.
Now think about that notes app full of ideas, or the rainy-day folder in Asana. The more you have in there, the more overwhelming it feels. It becomes a to-do list staring back at you, so you stop opening it, and adding to it feels like piling more onto a plate you can't handle. We need to clear off that plate and start building and selling these offers so they're out there opening more doors every month.
Why offers stall before they're finished
The idea is too big
This is the biggest one. When an offer tries to solve three, five, or ten problems, it's never going to feel like something you can finish. That's usually what bigger high-ticket programs are, and building those is fine when you have the capacity. Small offers are different. If the idea in your notes app solves eight different problems, that could be eight different offers. You could have offers created and selling for the next eight months, and I think you'd rather have that.
You get stuck on the format
People get stuck choosing a platform, then how to design it, then how to brand it. I always tell my husband that branding is the part that takes me the longest. I have a certain style for all my courses, and finding the right photo is agonizing, so that's where I give myself a little leeway. I still give myself a time limit.
Then there's the question of what to create. A masterclass? An ebook? Simple text inside a course? The overwhelm stacks up fast, especially with video or if you've never done it before, and your brain says no thank you.
There's no right way to create your course. What matters is that your student can get the result from your teaching, so you need to deliver it well. It doesn't matter if it comes by UPS, USPS, or FedEx, as long as they get it, do it, and make a change. Sometimes I think, "I could talk about this for an hour and they'll get it," so I go do that. Other times it's best as an ebook.
If this is your first one, ask yourself how you like to take in information. Long videos, bite-sized videos, or an ebook you print out and complete on the couch? The way we like to learn is usually how we like to create, so don't disregard your own learning style.
There's no deadline
I get it, you're your own boss and you'll finish it when you finish it. But you need some kind of deadline or reminder coming at you. When I have a course idea and get some momentum on it, I look at what's coming up in the next month, see where a release fits, and give myself that space. Sometimes I make something that same week and put it out.
Whether it's tomorrow, Friday, or next month, I wouldn't wait longer than that without touching it, because you'll lose the spark you had when you wanted to create it. To be honest, I'll sometimes see a course idea of mine in Asana and have no idea why I wanted to make it, or what I even typed because I typed it too fast. Build it while the idea is still fresh, because that's where the best courses come from.
Don't be afraid to push a deadline, either. Assigning one is what gets you started. Then pick at it every day until it's done.
Why finished offers don't get sold
Second-guessing the price
Second-guessing your price is a very different thing from actually putting one on it. My lowest-priced course is $5 and my highest is $1,000. I've sold hundreds of the $1,000 offer, and I've made 15,000 sales across my low-ticket offers. The lower-priced stuff sells.
For a low-ticket offer, I suggest picking something between $10 and $50. I even suggest offering a payment plan on anything over $40. I know that sounds weird, but you'll get more sales when you break it down for someone who's new to your world and may not fully see the value of your work yet. There's no shame in it. I always joke with my clients that most of my students are Americans, and Americans love payment plans.
Otherwise, go with the first number that comes to you. When we analyze our prices too much, we get buried in overwhelm and do nothing, and that's why the offer sits there unsold. Whether it's $5 or $35, it will make you more money than it does sitting on your computer. Put a price on it and move on.
There's no plan to release it
You can call it launching, but I like to say releasing. A launch can feel like added pressure, and it almost sounds like a one-time deal. When you release an offer, you introduce it to the world and keep talking about it for the life of your business, as long as it applies to your customers and students.
The easiest way to release an offer is to email your list. That first week the page is live, email two or three times. After that, keep selling it to your list every month. Your list will never be 100% buyers of that product, so you'll always be selling it. Add it to the list of things you sell to your people.
On social media, sell however you want: in the feed, on Reels, on TikTok, wherever you are. My preferred way is Instagram stories with a ManyChat automation, where people DM me a word or phrase and I send them the link. I run ads too, but stories work like a live billboard for the products I sell. Then I add them to my highlights, which keeps building up little commercials, or ad spots, for all of my offers. It's free advertising. If you want to see what I mean, go look at the highlights on my Instagram profile.
Thinking you need a bigger audience
You might be thinking that's easy for me to say with 20-some thousand followers and about the same on my email list. That doesn't matter, because you can make sales from 50 people. Whether you have 10 people or 20,000, you're selling to them.
It's a snowball. I talk to my clients about this all the time: the more we sell, the more we build the muscle to keep selling. That muscle gets built on your audience's side too. They start to expect you to sell and release new offers, and they start to expect themselves to buy, because they want to stay in with what you're doing and keep the momentum you've built. It's so much easier for a student to keep buying low-ticket offers and stay on course with you than to never get into any of your programs because they're five grand.
So you're opening doors, and you're also giving people a way to stay with you as you move forward. A good coach keeps learning new things so they can turn around and help others, and staying a few steps ahead of the people following you is part of that.
What actually gets an offer sold
The biggest thing is solving one problem. That course you've been building that solves eight problems is really eight courses. Each offer solves one problem and gives one result, and it needs to be powerful. Your buyer should feel like they finally have a way to do the thing, because you can help them with it.
Then pick your deadline. Presell it if you want to, and promise a delivery date if that helps. Do whatever keeps you accountable to getting it out there.
That includes deciding your price, whether you'll offer split pay, and how you'll release it to your list and on social media. Decide every one of those before you make your first move.
Build it and sell it with me
I see this too much, and I know there are so many golden ideas out there, so I made something to help you build and sell yours in five days. It's called build it. sell it., and we start Monday, October 26 and go through Friday.
I'm giving you an AI guide I created myself that works with the free Claude plan. Each day you'll get a new prompt to put into Claude, and it's like having me on the other side of your screen helping you build your offer so you can make sales that week. You'll have support from me and everyone else in the Facebook group.
You'll also have a chance to be featured in an email to my list, and I'd love to share your offer with them. To get featured, participate in the sprint every single day and have your offer built and ready to sell.
There's a little homework the weekend before we start. It helps me get to know you so the prompts are personal to what you want to happen.
Unless you're a one-on-one client, this is the only way I can build and sell something alongside you. I'd like to run it every month if participation is strong, so if you find it hard to create new offers and stay accountable to selling them, this is a way to walk along with me.
Get your offer out there so you can open new doorways for people to work with you, build your list, make sales, or make some Christmas shopping money. :)
Join build it. sell it. here or send me a DM on Instagram that says "build it" and I'll send you the link.