Getting clients. Making sales. It’s the cornerstone to making any business work.

Yet so many businesses are getting the key piece to doing this totally wrong. Or they’re doing it poorly but don’t recognize what’s causing them to struggle to bring in new clients.

What’s this key missing piece? A compelling offer (aka, your messaging) that grabs your dream clients by their eyeballs.

Whether you’re making your offer in person, over the phone or via your website, there are three big offer mistakes that cause dream clients to click away, say “no” or run screaming in the other direction (or all three). If you’re having problems booking clients or selling your products, the first thing you should look at is how you’re communicating your offer.

In this article you’ll learn what to focus on in your offers - whether you’re communication them on sales pages, emails or over the phone during sales conversations - so that your potential clients will be motivated to buy whatever it is you’re selling. Plus, you’ll discover how to connect with what your clients need from you and how to communicate with your clients so they’ll be more than willing to pay for your services, even at higher fees.

#1: You’re focusing on the “how” instead of the transformation

The first big mistake that you might be making with your offer is that you’re focusing too much on the “how” of how you help people change or get results. This is the part of your sales process that talks about the number of sessions they get with you, how long those sessions are, how many modules they get in your program, how many DVDs or CDs, or how long the things are. That’s the process of how you help your clients and not the transformation you provide.

For example, if I’m your client and you’re going on and on about the number of sessions I get when I sign up with you, I may be sitting there thinking, “Oh my gosh 12 sessions, I don’t have time for 12 sessions.” Or I read your sales page and it touts how your program has over 40 modules in it, I’m certainly thinking, “Whaattt? How am I going to get through all that?!” (That’s a true story about a program from a marketing guru I was considering investing in and didn’t for exactly that reason.)

As the person who is providing the service or product, you may thinking that packing more in and highlighting how much stuff your clients get is a great strategy, but the “stuff” isn’t really what your potential clients care most about. What they care most about is the transformation that’s going to happen from working with you , i.e., the results they’ll get, like how their business is going to improve, how much happier they’ll feel, and how much easier something will be. Instead of focusing on how many sessions that somebody gets, how long they work with you, focus on the transformation you’re going to give them.

If you’re a health coach for example, focus on how much healthier is the person going to feel, how much more energy they’re going to have, how much weight they can lose, how they’re going to feel great about being a great mom because they’re feeding their kids healthy and nutritious that they can make in less than 10 or 30 minutes for example. That’s what your best clients really care about, not the process or how many sessions or how long the sessions are.

Do your sales conversations or online sales pages focus on the details of how you deliver the results instead of the results themselves? If so, make sure you change that right after you’ve finished reading the rest of this post.

#2: You’re not solving a big problem that your dream clients feel they have

Another huge messaging mistake that entrepreneurs make is focusing on solving a problem that your ideal clients don’t think they have and/or solving a problem that they don’t feel is really important to solve. When creating any offer or messaging, you must first and foremost think from your dream client’s perspective. What do they think are their really big problems? Which ones do they want fixed NOW? Which problems are so urgent or painful that they’ll do just about anything to solve them? These are the real problems your ideal clients feel they have… and they may be different than the ones you as the expert know need to be solved. That’s where many people get tripped up with creating their offers and messaging.

I’ll give you an example of focusing on the real problem of your clients. When I was working with T. Harv Eker, his introductory live program was called The Millionaire Mind Intensive. The hook - the motivator - that got people to travel from all over the world to attend his events was the dream of being a millionaire and having no more money problems. When people read the sales page for the Millionaire Mind Intensive or heard about it, they’d think, “I want to be a millionaire.” And, the message appealed to a primal internal desire everyone has: the need for safety and security (in this case, financial security). If Harv had called the event The 3-Day Personal Development Extravaganza, no one would have showed up!

But, the interesting part is that The Millionaire Mind Intensive wasn’t about the latest investment strategies or business methods. It was all about mindset and personal development. It was about the inner changes you have to make in order to become a millionaire. As the expert Harv knew that if you have belief systems that keep you from feeling good about being wealthy, they’ll stop you from consistently making or accumulating a lot of it. The “promise” of learning how to become a millionaire got people in the door so people could get the transformation they actually needed to do that.

Ask yourself: “Do my offers focus on a big problem my dream clients feel they have?” If not - or you’re not sure - you need to fix that, pronto!

#3: Your offers are drowning in jargon

One other mistake that I’m going to share with you today that people make when creating their offers and messaging is loading them up with industry jargon. For example, if you’ve been in the personal development world for awhile, or you’re a coach, healer or transformation expert, you’ve been steeped in the language of empowerment, inner balance, feeling peaceful and being inspired. But those words are all industry jargon and they’re not the words your ideal clients are most often using to describe their problems and desired solutions.

You may not think what you’re saying is foreign to your clients, but it is. Jargon can be really hard to spot because we’re all so used to using terms common in our niche or market (and why it’s so helpful to get an outside set of eyes on your offer).

In the coaching industry, for example, your ideal clients don’t walk around saying, “I wish I was more empowered and inspired to build a profitable business and get my life more balanced with kids and work.” They don’t say that. What they do say are things like “I wish I can just connect with my dream clients” or “I wish I could just get booked,” or “I wish I could make more money in my business,” or “I wish I could have a business and do the work that I really want to do and feel like a great mom, too, and not feel like I’m sucking at both of them.”

So you have to think, “What words are your dream clients using when they’re talking about their problems in their heads or when they’re talking to their friends about their problems?” That is how you start getting clear on the language you should be using in your offers and throughout your brand messaging.

If you’re struggling to attract and book loads of your dream clients, grab your offers and go back through this post to find out where your messaging may be off.