Too Hot To Handle

Yesterday I finished listening to the third tele-seminar presented by Andrea Lee as part of the Business Basecamp 2006 Tele-seminar Series. Andrea spoke on developing Multiple Streams of Income as a coach or independent professional.

The one thing I found intriguing during the call was her observation on how most service-oriented businesses and consultants operate. According to Andrea, these folks tend to market just their single service. be it one-on-one consulting or coaching. In a sense, the scope of service and the price the service is offered is like forcing our clients to drink from a fire hose or tossing a hot potato right out of the oven straight into their hands. It's just too much to handle all at once. Not everyone is going to subject themselves to that.

Instead, Andrea suggests a funnel process to lead your clients to your ultimate service - your consulting or coaching offering. Set up at least four levels of offerings, perhaps having each tied to the next building one upon the other. Andrea's analogy is like an ice cream parlor.

• Sample spoons to taste (free)
• You like the sample so you buy a cone with the ice cream of choice (low price)
• You like the ice cream very much you buy a pint (moderate price)
• You like the ice cream so much you want to share it with everyone so you buy it in an ice cream cake (higher price)

In my practice, I recognize that I've got some sample spoons but I have nothing in between to lead folks to my ice cream cake. I'm hoping to change that soon with the introduction of some ideas I've been kicking around. What about you? Do you have a range of products and services that leads up to your ice cream cake? What's your strategy and how has it worked for you?

There are more tele-seminars running through next week. The next one is today at 1:00 p.m. (MST) presented by Terry Telford and Richard Butler discussing the action plan behind putting your business online. I'm looking forward to it.

Click here to join in. They're still FREE to listen in on.