Welcome to the sixth and final part of this series on how to take better control of your life and career through the art of making powerful offers.

With just a bit more work, you can bring forth an offer that makes sense to your listener. Even beyond making sense, you have the opportunity to craft an offer that is productive AND tempting to them.

So now let’s take this through the final steps  . . .

By way of a brief recap, the first two posts discussed some important distinctions, including 1) the elements of a powerful offer—especially the key element: that your offer opens up new possibilities, and 2) how to “tune in” to a potential listener of your offer by identifying their level of “power,” their organizational “hats,”and from which of the four classic observer orientations they view their world. In Part 3 you invented a”meaningful” offer and then practiced it through role playing with a partner so you could begin to experience yourself in the offer process—to observe subtle reactions in your body and/or your ability to speak your offer. Then in Part 4, we discussed trust and the four dimensions of trust so you could begin to ensure your reputation for trustworthiness and, thus, have your offers consistently accepted. 

In the previous post, Part 5 of the series, we shifted the focus to the intended listeners of your offer so you could began to zero in on a specific offer that will have a targeted, receptive listener. I described how, by “walking in their shoes,” you could identify your listener’s concerns and issues, as well as opportunities they may be considering—or not, other possibilities they may not be considering, and assessing their “readiness to act.”

Perhaps that felt counter-intuitive to the way you normally make offers. Rather that starting from the question “What do I have to offer that’s great and wonderful?” you started from the question “What is the world of concerns and possibilities that my listeners live in?” But once you’re clear about the latter, then you can take the final step to designing and making powerful offers that find a receptive, even excited listener. Rather then being met with “Why are you bothering me?” you can be met with “Where have you been?”

The Final Steps

If you did the exercise in the previous part, you’ve begun looking at the world through your listener’s eyes. We’re now going to take that a step further, and bring you back into the picture.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Looking at the world from your listener’s perspective, imagine what it would be like to have your problem resolved or to have the opportunities that you dream about fulfilled.

2. From that perspective, brainstorm a list of all of the offers that you could make that would be seen by your listener as resolving a problem or fulfilling an opportunity.

3. When you are done with your list, review what you wrote down and eliminate anything that is not truly a problem solver or an opportunity fullfiler for your listener. Perhaps your “old offer-making perspective” showed up (that is, just looking at what you have to offer rather than your listener’s perspective) and added your pet project to your list. Or perhaps on second thought, an item is not as focused to your listener’s perspective as you first thought.

4. Now, for each offer that remains, write down all of your qualifications for being the person to fulfill that offer. As you do this, make your experience description “rich” so that it has two parts: The first part is a statement of qualifications., for example, “able to lead a team of people.” The second part describes the experiences that ground your qualification, for example, “led five teams in the last three years resulting in an outcome that saved the company $X, completed the project on time, and 10% under budget.”

   If you’ve been looking for a job and polishing your resume (which, by the way, is a powerful offer) you’re already familiar with this. As noted in an article on monster.com: “The more you focus on money, time and amounts in relation to your accomplishments, the better you’ll present your successes and highlight your potential—and the more you’ll realize just how much you really have to offer prospective employers.” In other words, the more you focus on grounding your qualifications—giving factual “proof,” the more powerful your offer will be. The problem is, once people land that new job, they quickly forget the art and science of the offer that they practiced in creating their resume. Bottom line, it will serve you well not to forget what you did. Rather, practice it always.

5. Now that you’ve identified and grounded your offers, it’s time to “look the devil in the face.” Remember the previous post where I talked about trust? (If not, I recommend that you read it now before continuing by clicking here.) For each offer that is still on your list, evaluate yourself in each of the four dimensions of trust: competence, reliability, consistent conversations, and conformance to standards.

   If your Trust Score is all A’s for an offer, you’re good to go with that offer. If it’s not all A’s, you may want to take a step back with that offer and look at the actions you can take to improve your Trust Score before you make the offer. Yes, it will take time. But you are working with powerful offers. For your offer to be seen as powerful, you will need to show up as powerful in the domain of trust. Sorry, that’s just the way it is.

Once you have completed setting aside the offers for which your Trust Score is not quite up to snuff, you’re done. You’re ready to go and make your offers. (Although I do recommend reviewing the major points of this series to ensure that you have all of the critical components of a powerful offer. And, don’t forget, practice first by using the exercise I described in Part 3 to help ensure your success. But you should be an old pro at that by now.

So, what are you waiting for? Go for it!

 © 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching