It’s easy to think of your ‘advice offering’ (i.e. what clients pay you for) as one single thing.
After all, for every client you have:
- a process you follow
- information you need to capture
- a set of documents you provide
- and tools you use
But these are merely the ingredients, not the offering.
Your offering is the end product. It’s the transformation clients are willing to pay you for.
And in reality, you have multiple offerings within your business… you just may not package them in that way.
For example:
- If you work with a business owner considering an exit, your offering could involve giving them clarity around how much they need to sell for to live the lifestyle they want.
- For a professional moving towards retirement, your offering might show them when they can retire and help them move this date forwards by growing their portfolio and drawing on their assets in an efficient way.
- For a self-employed barrister, your offering could be making sure their VAT bills are planned for and paid in time, whilst contributing the right amount to fund their family’s future – all without having to spend a valuable moment thinking about their finances.
And although these offerings may contain similar ingredients from your perspective, the client transformation, the recipe for achieving it, the timescales, the typical results achieved by similar clients, the concerns that the client has, and a big bucket of other things are different in the client’s eyes.
Your business and your offerings are distinct.
You don’t have to focus your whole business on one particular type of client. But focusing on each of your offerings will multiply the perceived value of your advice to the people it’s most relevant for.