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Messaging and Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections Pt2 (Offers)
Overcome objections in your messaging and positioning with our template with offers
Overcome objections using our messaging and positioning template for social impact leaders.
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This is part 7 in a series below.
This is a series about building and testing your messaging, positioning, and value proposition
#1 - Messaging & Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Core Unmet Needs
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Ideal Client Profile
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Differentiator
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Marketplace Category
#6 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections I (Proof & Use Case)
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections II (Offers)
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Testing
#9 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Learning from Data
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Overcoming Objections with Offers
Last time, we went through Social Proof and Use Case Statements. Now, I’ll introduce offers, which set up your customers to succeed.
At Joyful Ventures, our innovation advisors specialize in helping social impact leaders like you create people-first innovation that maximize your and your organization’s impact.
Offer
The final part of the messaging pyramid is the specific offer. This piece compels your prospects to act by addressing key obstacles — or hidden costs — they’re likely to face when adopting your specific solution.
Often, innovators may simply ignore or not even dig deeper to identify what those obstacles are, which will increase the time and effort and reduce the likelihood of achieving the value you claim.
I’ll share three key strategies and follow up with an example targeting community health nonprofits
1) Packages and Programs
Combine bonuses or features into a value-driven program that tackles the main obstacles to success.
By bundling a few valuable solutions together that address the top pain points or obstacles to your main value proposition, the perception of value and the likelihood of achieving it increases.
Identify the top challenges or blockers to using your solution. Then convert it into a deliverable that solves that challenge and add it to your offer.
Take this simple example: a common barrier to cooking healthy meals is that it takes too much time.
Reframe this challenge as a solution: "How busy parents cook healthy meals in under 5 minutes” and into a deliverable "Ready in 5 min Busy Parent Cooking Guide”
A very common challenge is figuring out how to succeed. Consider adding bonuses to your package that do things “for them”, shifting the burden of success from them to you.
These solutions can include
- services (such as white-glove onboarding or “done for you” consulting services)
- tools (like roadmaps or courses); and/or
- access to special expertise
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It’s very common practice to write how much these bonuses are worth (e.g., $500 value!). I sometimes dislike these because the values often seem arbitrary.
To address this issue, you can share meaningful reference points (e.g., data consulting is typically $250/hour and you get 2 hours).
(But I wouldn’t spend too much time on this at this stage unless you feel this resonates with the purchasing behavior of your target segment. This could be an optimization you test after you’ve validated your core message.)
Exercise
Try this exercise: identify the top obstacles your bright spots faced in order to succeed with your solution. Then think of simple yet effective ways to solve them, adding them into a program or offer.
A common way to identify them is to analyze the losses in your target segment and/or the biggest obstacles your wins faced during and after their customer onboarding process. As always, try to anchor your ideas in real data from your ideal client profile.
2) Scarcity and Urgency
Use strategic scarcity and urgency to prompt action.
These leverage the fear of missing out and the desire for instant gratification, motivating your prospects to buy now rather than later. The possibility that they won’t be able to access your solution anymore can motivate them to act more quickly.
For instance, you can limit your bonuses to the first few sign-ups or create a cohort- or seasonal deadline (e.g., "If you sign up today, I can get you in with our next group that kicks off on Monday, otherwise you’ll have to wait until our next kickoff date").
This can also be highly strategic from an operational perspective.
A common mistake I see innovators make is to take on too much too early when they haven’t validated enough (i.e., they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and offering their customers everything) or they haven’t streamlined or operationalized their value delivery model.
This causes them to miss customer expectations, underdeliver, and quickly develop a negative reputation in their tight-knit target ideal client segment.
Start with a few key customers in your target segment. This allows you to focus on quality, exceed expectations, and create strong references, helping you build a solid reputation in the industry.
Exercise
Brainstorm a few natural ways to apply scarcity and urgency to your offering, considering, for instance limiting to the first few sign-ups or a cohort- or seasonal-based promotion.
3) Guarantees
Address their doubts about achieving benefits by offering guarantees.
This crucial step eliminates the primary reason people hesitate to buy and increases your offer's appeal. By providing a clear and bold guarantee, you build trust and persuade potential clients that they have nothing to lose.
While a common guarantee is an unconditional one (“If you're not satisfied, get your money back”), I don’t recommend these because they often lack credibility and can cause unnecessary customer churn.
Instead, I suggest guarantees that link their success to yours, aligning incentives.
There are two types:
- Conditional: offer the guarantee only if specific onboarding steps are completed. This addresses the common issue of slow onboarding, which can lead to organizations not seeing value and canceling their subscription.
- Implicit: get paid only if they achieve their goals or use your product. This is similar to how plaintiff attorneys get paid only if they win a case.
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In the "Shark Tank" episode featuring Notehall, an education tech platform for students, the founders utilized a unique guarantee to entice the sharks during their pitch.
They promised to forfeit their equity in the company if they did not meet specific revenue targets, offering to give up their shares if Notehall failed to generate $1 million in income within 24 months.
This bold decision greatly lowered the perceived risk for investors, leading to an intense bidding war among the sharks for a relatively untested idea — a rare event on the show.
4) Prioritize
As mentioned earlier, if you see many potential offerings, evaluate and prioritize them using the same criteria from previous sections, such as how critical the problem you’re solving or complexity. For instance, avoid offering bonuses that are too costly to deliver.
Much like I shared above, if you’re finding that there are lots of things you think you can offer, score and prioritize by considering the same criteria as mentioned in previous sections.
5) Bringing it all together
Value Proposition
Core Unmet Need
DonorFamily: Donor engagement system for community health fundraisers who want to personalize campaigns. Grow thriving donor communities and minimize churn — without tedious data segmentation and reporting gymnastics.
Unique differentiator
Our AI crafts personalized campaigns for you, quietly learning from your data, while delivering reports your leadership will love. By tapping into their passions, your campaigns quickly get donors to become part of your mission's family — doubling retention in just six months.
Social Proof
See how Kaiser Permanente reduced donor churn by 123% in one quarter [Link to case study]. “Strongly recommend — our donors are giving even more than before.” — Chief Development Officer of Kaiser
Use Case Statement
Use Case (running example)
Personalized Campaigns for Community Health FundraisersToday, you want to personalize campaigns to donors based on their interests — with the hopes of attracting a thriving community around your mission and reducing donor churn.But to do that, you're bogged down with:
- time-consuming mail merges
- generating countless campaign reports to get your team onboard the next campaign push
Your packed to-do list is splitting at its seams, delaying donor engagement by weeks or even months.With our AI-assisted “Smart Engage” feature:
- Say goodbye to mail merges. Our AI quietly crunches your data to whip up personalized follow-ups and interest-based campaigns, dropping them right into your email marketing system.
- Then, sit back and scan automatically-created reports, showing you the insights behind these new campaigns.
- Once your team signs-off, hit send. Our AI keeps learning from your changes and each response, fine-tuning future messages and campaigns.
With more breathing room in your schedule, you can finally tackle next quarter's strategy without scrambling, while your personalized campaigns quickly bring more donors into your mission's family — doubling retention in just six months.
Offer
You’ve been selected as a top community health leader for our Big Day of Giving Cohort, designed to halve donor engagement within one quarter. There are 7 spots left.
- White-Glove Onboarding: Let our AI assistant and in-house data experts ensure you capture data effortlessly and auto-generate three initial donor event reports and campaigns
- AI Training Course: Equip even your nontechnical staff with a hands-on course to use AI and AI assistants safely and effectively in 3 hours
- Future of Community Health Forum: Learn what works – and doesn’t – with other industry leaders in a safe community
Guarantee: if you complete our onboarding within 30 days and don’t halve donor churn within your first two quarters, we’ll provide a refund or complimentary ongoing support.
Next: Test for Customer Commitment
While crafting a clear message is essential, the real magic happens when it truly connects with your target audience.
Our next section will equip you with powerful methods to put your messaging and positioning to the test, generating important learnings for improvement
See the next article in the series below
This is a series about building and testing your messaging, positioning, and value proposition
#1 - Messaging & Positioning Template for Social Impact Leaders
#2 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Core Unmet Needs
#3 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Ideal Client Profile
#4 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Differentiator
#5 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Marketplace Category
#6 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections I (Proof & Use Case)
#7 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Overcoming Objections II (Offers)
#8 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Testing
#9 - Messaging & Positioning Template: Learning from Data
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• Looking for guidance? Get your free innovation audit
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• Looking for guidance? Get your free innovation audit
• Want updates? Subscribe below 👇
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