MBA2462 Q&A Wednesday: Do I need to offer more products? How many is too many?

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show. No fluff, just the good stuff with our powerful business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday, where we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Patrick, and Patrick asks, Hey Omar, I am an online teacher and creator. I teach people how to code and create their own apps. My question is, do I need to offer more products? How many is too many? I have several books, several courses.

0:46I have a coaching program. I do live boot camps. Some do better than others, but I'm wondering if I should add more products. Would love your help on getting this right. Thanks so much, Patrick. You're the right place. I'm here to help. Thanks for asking the question because this is a good one. Your product lineup and what you offer your customers actually makes a huge difference on the number of sales you are able to generate. I want to start by saying a golden rule in marketing and in sales, and that is a confused mind never buys. People are confused about the plethora of products you have. Then it's kind of hard for them to know which product is right for them, which product do they fit in, which product will serve them.

1:29Especially if you are in the coaching space, creator space, where you're teaching people, people are coming in at different levels, not really sure if you can help them. You got to make sure that's clear as day and that's a hell yeah, so that you can guide them by the hand and get them started. I'm going to show you how I'm going to break down how to tier your products, how to make sure that it's clear what product is for what job and for what level, and then also how to guide people through that path over and over so they can continue to get value and progress along their journey. Let's get into it.

2:03Let's get down to business. What Patrick is describing is something I can definitely resonate with. when I started out in my entrepreneurial career, my journey, especially when I was selling digital products a little over 20 years ago. I was just launching products, putting things up there, hoping that people will buy. I didn't really have a strategy. And when people would say that to me, you need a strategy when it comes to your products and your customer experience, I really didn't understand what they meant. And really what this means is you can't just throw products in people's faces and say, buy this.

2:34It has to have meaning. It's gotta have a purpose. And it's got to work for you, meaning the actual strategy works for you to help you get more sales. This is very, very true in the physical product space. One example is Apple. Many people start with one Apple product, an entry-level product. This could be an Apple Watch. This could be the AirPods. Even be a low-cost or budget iPad. Once they've experienced what Apple has to offer and they fall in love with the product, they get the value out of it, the next time they need something else, Their computer is getting old. Their computer is not kind of doing its thing anymore.

3:11It's slow. It's sluggish. Once they have consumed that entry-level product and they really love the iPad, when they're ready to move on, meaning something else is going on, it's time to upgrade their phone. They have a phone that's old, doesn't take great pictures. They're going to start considering Apple because they love the iPad they just bought. There's a good chance they're going to love the iPhone and give it a try. So they pick up the iPhone. They consume the iPhone. They enjoy it. They're taking great pictures. They're sharing it with their family. guess what? Their computer's starting to slow down.

3:39It's time for a new computer. They're going to most likely check out the computers that Apple offers and so on and so forth till they're buying Apple's most expensive products, the Apple Vision Pro and beyond. This is not by accident. It's by design. In the product management world, this is called a value ladder. You want to have a value ladder in your business. And I want you to vision a stair step, right? A staircase moving upwards. The first step or even the ground level before you take the first step is usually a product that's for free. For example, my value ladder starts with this podcast, right?

4:17It's absolutely free. Anybody can listen to it. They can get value from it. If they love what they hear here, if they get benefit from it, they might move up my value ladder, which means they might join my newsletter. They might join my mailing list. They might grab one of our free opt-ins or free resources or free memberships. So once they're ready, they're going to move up the ladder. Again, it's still free. they're not paying any money, but there's a little bit more commitment. They got to give their name and email address. The next rung in the ladder, the next step in the ladder is going to be maybe a low cost offer like the$100 MBA program, or maybe if you're an author, a book and so on and so forth until your flagship product.

4:52So this means you want to take a look at all your products in your business or potential products. Maybe you don't have products right now that fill every rung of the ladder, but have a value ladder sketched out as a strategy. So you know that, hey, they start out here, it's free, then they have an opt-in, and then they have an entry-level offer. It could be a low-cost course,$27. It could be a book. It could be a paid live workshop, whatever it might be. But this is where they start parting ways with their money and getting more value. Another rung of the lot, it could be another low-cost offer, but a little bit more, maybe$200.

5:24Maybe then a medium-cost offer, like a$500 program. And then as they go up, maybe a community that costs$2 ,000 to join for the year. Maybe then there is group coaching that's$10 ,000 a year. And then maybe the next level is an elite mastermind, whatever it might be. But the point here is, is that work out your level, even if you don't have product for them now. It's okay. You have time to work on it. But I would at least have five levels to your value ladder, a couple free, three that are paid at different levels. Again, right now you might just have something free and something paid. You only have two steps to the ladder and there's some gaps in between.

6:03That's okay. Put some placeholders right now and you can start working on those products later. Now, you might be like Patrick where they might have too many products on the value ladder. They might have to start omitting products because things are getting confusing. And this is where I ask you to do some analysis. You got to take a look at your data and say, what are the products that are actually moving the needle? You got to look like the 80-20 rule. You got to say, which 20 % or two out of 10 products do I have that are moving 80 % of my revenue that's actually making the most sales? You want to keep the things at work and maybe you're going to have to, what's called in tech, kill your darlings, right?

6:38Get rid of the features or get rid of the products in your case that are not really moving the needle or just confusing people or making it difficult. Now, it doesn't mean you have to just throw them away or waste these products. You might want to bundle them in as bonuses into other products, make them part of other courses or programs. But the point here is that sometimes people offer different types of courses or programs And to them, it seems like, no, these are different programs. But for the buyer who's beginner, they don't really understand the difference. So they get confused and they don't buy.

7:09So you might have to do some culling. One of the things I want to just remind everybody when it comes to pricing, packaging, offers, this is all an experiment. You got to continue to experiment. If you make a change right now, if you remove some products or some programs, it doesn't mean they're gone forever. You can introduce them again later. You might want to do a little launch down the line that offers these programs. But right now, let's just try to see if this helps with making it easier for your customers to make a choice. Now, there are two schools of thought about how to offer these products to your customers.

7:41One school of thought is you just show everybody everything you offer at one time or, you know, on your website, in your products page or your pricing page or whatever it might be. Hey, here's everything I offer. Here's the menu. And some people say, no, that's overwhelming. Don't do that. There are probably going to be higher priced products that really are not for people that are just learning about you at the moment, right? They're just new to the game, new to your website. These are products maybe you can sell to people that are already on your list or have already bought from you. So maybe you should show only the first few rungs of your value ladder on your website as things that you offer.

8:19Again, not confuse them to make it not overwhelming. This could be a couple of free offers and an entry level paid offer. This doesn't mean you're not going to sell your other offers on the ladder. It just means you're only going to sell it once they have bought something first. Yes, there is a very small likelihood that somebody can afford and is ready to buy your$10 ,000 product or your$30 ,000 product. That's very unlikely. And the harm it's going to do by showing it is going to outweigh the positives or the good that you might experience. A lot of people just email the contact form or the about me and say, hey, love what you do.

8:54can you tell me, do you have any higher level products or products that allows me to invest more? If you take my opinion, I'm a big believer that you should simplify your offerings and simplify things for your customers. I can't repeat this enough. When people come to your website and they're trying to consume something, they're trying to buy something, they're not an expert. They don't know your business like you do. You need to take it easy on them. You can't just give them your whole life story on the first date, right? You want to just give them the highlights. You want to give them what's important right now is just so you can move to the next day in our business.

9:27What we want to do is just offer them, hey, first of all, I want to get your name and email address so we can continue this relationship. I can communicate with you so I can continue to give you value and give you any potential offers. So this is the essential. Want to give them something for free where they don't need to opt in like a podcast or a YouTube channel or something like that or a blog post. And then I can also give them something a higher value, which allows them to join my email list, their name and email address, and now they're in my community, I can now start to give them even more value and give them some offers.

9:56And then the next rung, which is, hey, this is what I offer. This is what I charge. It could be a book, it could be a course, and it could be just the entry level part of your business. There's a reason why you see in SaaS businesses a few tiers, like here's the free plan, here's the starter plan, the pro plan, and then the enterprise plan is like contact us. There's no reason for me to put my price and overwhelm people right here because this is not for everybody. And those who are ready for that, they know who they are and they're willing to say, okay, click contact us, show me what your pricing is for this, customize it for me.

10:30Don't reinvent the wheel. Take something that works from the SaaS world. You can do the contact us or you can just let them know via email in your newsletter or in your offers once they're part of your ecosystem. I'm a big believer that most buyers, most of your customers, I'm talking about 90 % of your customers are going to buy in a linear fashion. What I mean by that is that they're going to start with your free thing. They're going to buy your entry-level product. Then once they buy their entry-level product, they'll be ready for the next levels of products. Rarely do I see people buy high-level products, high-priced products before they start with a low-priced product.

11:05Don't work that way. They build trust through the buying experience. And I gave the example at the top of the episode with Apple. This is not something new. This is just how people buy. This is buying psychology. And once you gain that trust, once they have paid you money and you've delivered amazing value, that's it. They love you and they'll continue to buy from you as long as you continue to fulfill your promises with that value. Patrick, I hope that helps. I hope that helps everybody who's listening who's confused about, do I have too many products? Should I call them? Should I add more? Use the value ladder.

11:37Start with five rungs on the ladder. And then once you have five rungs, you can, of course, offer various price points, plans. tiers to each rung. So maybe for your flagship product, that's$10 ,000 a month. You might have a monthly plan, platinum plan that's a little bit more,$15 ,000 that includes something else. So this is how you can start expanding your offerings, but within those rungs of the ladder. Hey, if you love this podcast, if you love listening to these lessons and you're getting a lot, one of the best way for you to support us is to just hit follow on the podcast app you're using right now.

12:11By doing that, you send a signal to the algorithm that this show is great, allows us to reach new audiences, allows us to reinvest in this podcast and continue to give you great business lessons. Thank you in advance for doing that. It means a ton to me and the whole team. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The thing about having too many products is that you have too many things to manage. Support, updating the product, proving it, selling it, launching it. There's just a lot of upkeep. So before you add another product, think about the maintenance you're going to have to do. Maybe you need to remove a product before you add one or remove two before you add one so that you can serve your customers and give your best self, give your best products out there so that they're refined, polished, and professional for your customers.

12:56Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

13:07Thank you.