The value proposition of the offer in a shifting marketplace…

I have been puzzled by my failed sales funnel and my first ad campaign.

I know I am good at selling in person but why when I translate it to the web it falls short.

I have been thinking of what I would being doing in door to door.

I had this product called solar that would essentially replace the need to buy power from the power company and regardless of where I was actively selling, whether Oregon, Washington, Texas, Nevada that fundamental product didn’t change, however the presentation was vastly different.

Think of a market like Texas after the 2020 ice storm caused massive power outages across the state, that value proposition of whole home backup and independence from the electrical grid will look different than the value proposition of saving money on the home’s power bill.

When I had made the switch from selling in Las Vegas where at the time summer power bills could get up to $600 to a market like southern Washington that enjoys some of the lowest power bills in the nation and hadn’t seen a proposed rate hike in over a decade, there was a massive critical reevaluation of my understanding of the product of solar in the local marketplace. 

In Las Vegas, where I had cut my teeth in door to door, I was only taught one way to sell.

Selling solar as a commodity that was significantly cheaper than the power company.

I only had an ownership option which meant that if the homeowner didn’t have the cash to buy it they’d have to take out a loan for it, so we were talking about a very high ticket sale.

I’d do my pitch at the door, gather some information to build a proposal and make another visit to present the proposal and close the sale.

The heart of the presentation that ran through everything, from the pitch at the door to close at the kitchen table, was would you rather pay this large number for electricity in the house or would you want to pay this small number, because you are going to have to pay for electricity so there’s no third option. 

Shifting into a different market was a real shock to my system.

Every single time I have ever presented solar in the home in Oregon or Washington, the monthly solar payment was higher than the power bill they were currently paying.

So essentially everything I learned about how to sell this product in direct sales was no longer usable.

I had to come up with a new way of presenting or I’d fail at selling the product. 

How does this tie back into a sales funnel that isn’t converting?

If you have a product that is the same in all marketplaces, like a solar system, you can change the perceived value of that product by shifting the offer.

The offer changes if I am promising that you’ll save this much on your power bill vs I’ll get you independence from the grid, the power companies, and the state and federal government.

In one marketplace an offer based around savings might speak directly to the pain point of that buyer, the thing they need a solution to now, which in another market an offer based around freedom might be more resonant. 

As a market starts to become more saturated by that particular offer you might need to add more into the initial offer.

For instance, in Las Vegas it was almost routine that with the purchase of a solar system from our company we’ll throw in free critter guards, free extended warranty on the inverter, and we’ll cover three months of payments.

As that market started maturing these freebies began to increase, where you’d get a rebate plus tax help and so on.

Think about the “if you buy within the next hour, you’ll also get this free set of kitchen knives” from an infomercial.

What that is doing is taking this perceived offer, that at one point in time was super valuable—a no brainer offer—and because of market penetration that offer has become fatigued, and adding value to the offer through freebie add ons. 

Another way to think of this would be to talk about going solar ten or fifteen years ago.

You still have the same government incentives, and in often cases far better state and utility incentives if you went solar in the past.

You have this killer value offer because it is the only alternative to buying power from the utility.

But as more and more customers adopt this technology and more and more companies now enter the marketplace the value proposition of the offer starts to shift.

First, if it is a savings offer, all of these companies will start positioning themselves as the cheaper alternative, then as prices level out and you can basically find equal commodity prices from the different companies you have this building up of this offer with add ons to increase the perceived value. 

When thinking through the offer of whatever you happen to be selling, the first thing that always needs to be made clear is what is the actual value proposition of the thing they are buying.

I’ve always like Zig Ziglar’s definition of this as a scale with your product on one side and the cash the customer will pay for it on the other.

As we start adding onto the side of our product the value that the customer will get the scale starts to move.

The customer will not purchase our product until the perceived value of our product displaces what the customer will pay.

Before we start pouring value into our product by bundling it with other things or adding other freebies and services, we want to make sure that our value proposition is something that speaks directly to our target audience. 

When I moved markets selling solar and had to adapt, I had to figure out a different value proposition, a different positioning of my offer, in comparison to the customers perceived problems.

It was fundamentally the same set of problems, overtime you’ll pay more for buying power through the utility than you would by purchasing solar, but the positioning of that offer, the value proposition had to shift to speak to what the customer was experiencing now.

So when reviewing a sales funnel that might not be performing or converting, look first at the value proposition in the diagnosis then move outward to the actual offer, the bundling of the product with add ons. 

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If this is sparking something in you—a desire to lead with precision, speak with impact, or shape the unseen currents—step into Leadership, Influence, Poetry. It’s where strategy meets soul, and persuasion becomes an art form. For those who move worlds with words and presence. Read Leadership, Influence, Poetry: A Journey in Rising from Defeat 

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