By Benjamin Kwong — Feb 13, 2023

Book Summary: $100M Offers

How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

📖 The Book in 3 Sentences

Pick a normal or growing market where there is a niche audience, ensure your offering is not a commodity and place yourself in your own category to charge as much as possible
Create your value offer, stack it, delivery it and make it profitable
Learn how to position your offer with techniques that shift the demand curve in your favor by using scarcity, urgency, bonuses, guarntees and marketing to resonate with clients

🖼 Impressions

$100M Offers is a guide to navigating how you select a market for your offering and price oneself into a market category on their own. The book helped me understand how to create a value offer by understanding factors around customer needs and position my offering as a "grand slam" with value offers they cannot refuse. I also learn how to enhance my offer and market it to prospective clients.

👥 Who should read it?

100M offers is great for anyone who is looking to start or currently running a business. If you're looking to reshape your business offerings, this is a great book to understand a set of steps on how to approach it. This book may not apply to all businesses however there maybe sections or portions where it may be applicable to you.

💡 How the book changed me

This book has made me really think carefully about where I position myself in the market - I should think more exclusive than commodity
I should be thinking more in a divergent manner to come up with multiple ideas to scenarios
Be thoughtful about finding starving markets to serve over offer strength and persuasion skills
When creating a value offer, take the time to really think through a problem and propose as many value add propositions in a divergent manner

✍️ My Top Quotes

You could have the worst hot dogs, terrible prices, and be in a terrible location, but if you're the only hot dog stand in town and the local college football game breaks out, you're going to sell out. That's the value of a starving crowd.

In order to understand how to make a compelling offer, you must understand value. The reason people buy anything is to get a deal. They believe they are getting (VALUE) is worth more than what they give in exchange for it (PRICE). The moment the value they receive dips below what they are paying, they stop buying from you. This price to value discrepancy is what you need to avoid at all costs.

Whenever you are building a business, you have a continuum between ease of fulfilment and ease of sales. If you lower what you have to do, it increases how hard your product or service is to sell. If you do as much as possible, it makes your product or service easy to sell but hard to fulfil because there's more demand on your time investment. The trick, and ultimate goal, is to find the sweet spot where you sell something very well that's easy to fulfil.

I have always lived by the mantra, "Create flow. Monetize flow. Then add friction". This means I generate demand first. Then, with my offer, I get them to say yes. Once I have people saying yes, then, only then, will I add friction in my marketing, or to decide to offer less for the sam eprice.

📒 Summary + Notes

Start Here

Section I - How We Got Here

Chapter 1 - How We Got Here

Alex tells the story about how his first venture put him at the edge. He only had $1000 in his bank account and his business partner took all proceeds from the sale of his gym venture. After betting big on his grand slam offer, Alex was able to turn things around very fast.

Chapter 2 - Grand Slam Offers

This chapter goes over Alex's achievements and his value proposition. He gives a short summary of what you'll get out of his book and that he wants to build your trust by giving you a valuable set of tools you can look up and use.

Section II - Pricing

Chapter 3 - Pricing: The Commodity Problem

What does it take to grow? More Customers, Increase their average purchase value, get them to buy more times.

So either sell to more customers every month OR have them be worth more by increasing the profit per purchase or number of times they buy.

Gross profit = Revenue minus direct cost of serving additional customer.

Lifetime value = gross profit accrued over lifetime of customer. Number of average purchases made over the customer's lifetime.

Commoditized = Price Driven Purchases (race to the bottom)

Differentiated = Value Driven Purchases (sell in a category of one with no comparison)
A commodity (as defined by Alex) is a product available from many places. Purchases are therefore based on "price" instead of "value".

A grand slam offer solves this issue - provides an unmatchable proposition, premium price with an unbeatable guarantee. By selling in a category of one it makes it very difficult to compare prices which means you recalibrate the prospects value meter.

If you don't have a grand slam offer and operate in a commodized environemnt it will be a race to the bottom with discounts and low prices. The grand slam offer by being in your own category gets you out of this conundrum.

Chapter 4 - Pricing: Finding the Right Market – A Starving Crowd

Where would be the best location for a hot dog stand? Wherever there is a starving crowd. You could have the worst hot dogs, terrible prices and be in a terrible location but still sell out.

If there is a huge demand for a solution, you can be mediocre, have a terrible offer, don't need the ability to persuade people but still make money.

Pick your markets carefully - One of Alex's friends was selling a solution to a newspaper which was seeing a 25% decline yearly. The issue wasn't his offer it was the marketing he was selling to. Same entrepreneur pivoted to manufacturing masks during COVID-19 which were lower cost than Chinese made ones and was able to win. Pick the right market!

When picking markets there are four indicators to consider:

Pain - A prospect must have a painful problem for us to solve and charge money for our solution
Purchasing Power - make sure your target markets have money to spend or access to money to purchase your products/services to make it worth your while
Easy to Target - to find easy to target markets, associations that people belong to, mailing lists, social media groups, channels they watch, conferences they attend etc find out where all your potential customers are gathering and market accordingly torwards them
Growing - pick a market that is growing, this is like an extra tailwind

Order of Importance, three levels of success:

Starving Market > Offer Strength > Persuasion Skills

Pick a niche! Niche down to a specific audience - you can serve chiropractors or doctors but not both. Do not change, learn the niche well and commit to it.

You can charge a lot more for the exact same product

Product	Price
Time Management	$19
Time Management For Sales Professionals	$99
Time Management For Outbound B2B Sales	$499
Time Management For Outbound B2B Power Tools & Gardening Sales Reps	$1997

Chapter 5 - Pricing: Change What It's Worth

Price to value discrepancy:

In order to understand how to make a compelling offer, you must understand value. The reason people buy anything is to get a deal. They believe they are getting (VALUE) is worth more than what they give in exchange for it (PRICE). The moment the value they receive dips below what they are paying, they stop buying from you. This price to value discrepancy is what you need to avoid at all costs.

Never try to compete on price. As per Dan Kennedy "There is no strategic benefit to being the second cheapest in the marketplace, but there is for being the most expensive."

We raise the price of our offer only once we sufficiently raise our value.

Decreasing prices results in:

Perceived value of your service
Emotional investment since it does not cost them much
Decreased Client results because they are not invested
Attracts the worst clients because they are never satisfied
Destroys your margin to invest back into your business, people and systems

Raising prices results in:

Increased perceived value
Increased emotional investment
Increased Client results because they value your results and are invested
Attract the best clients who are the easiest to satisfy and cost less to fulfil
Multiply your margin because you can invest back into your business, people and systems

In summary: raise prices, try to be a premium pricing offer.

Section III - Create Your Value

Chapter 6 - Value Offer: The Value Equation

The value equation has four primary drivers:

The dream outcome (Goal:Increase)
Perceived likelihood of Achievement (Goal:Increase)
Perceived time delay between start and achievement (Goal:Decrease)
Perceived effort and sacrifice (Goal:Decrease)

Four questions a customer might ask

What will i make? (Dream Outcome)
How will I know it's going to happen? (Perceived Likelihood of Achievement)
How long will it take? (Time Delay)
What is expected of me? (Effort & Sacrifice)

Value = (Dream Outcome x Perceived likelihood of Achievement) / (Perceived time delay between start and achievement x Perceived effort and sacrifice)

The denominator is the hard work - if you can reduce this the market will reward you. The closer you get 0 the more you will get to infinity and the goal is to increase value significantly.

Perception is Reality - the customer must truly perceive positive outcomes. If they perceive it this makes the grand slam offer valuable.

Logical vs Psychological - for example, logical: make elevator faster, psychological: add mirrors to the elevator so people are distracted looking at themselves.

The dream outcome - to be perceived as beautiful, respected, powerful, loved, to increase status.

Perceived likelihood of Achievement (Goal:Increase) - people pay for and value certainty.

Perceived time delay between start and achievement (Goal:Decrease) - time delay between a client buying and receiving the promised benefit. The faster you can help deliver the results the more value you add. Fast always beats free.

Perceived effort and sacrifice (Goal:Decrease) - decreasing effort and sacrifice or at least perceived effort and sacrifice can massively boost the appeal of your offer.

Rememer people are willing to pay for $200 supplements to lose weight rather than the $29 per month gym membership.

Free Goodwill

Alex asks the reader to help him out and leave a review about his book.

Chapter 7 - Value Offer: The Thought Process

Exercise!

Convergent vs Divergent thinking.

Convergent example: 3 sales people to make 100 calls per month. 4 calls are required to make a sale. Have to get to 110 sales, how many people do you hire?

100 calls / 25 calls per sale = 4.4 employees

Divergent example: In 120 seconds, write down how many uses a brick can have

To start: what is the brick made of, how big is the brick, what shape is the brick (solid or has holes?)

For example: building things, paper weight, door stop, home for a fish in a fish bowl, plant holder (holes), trophy (painted), rustic decoration, break a window, flotation device (plastic), store of value (gold)

Step #1 Identify Dream Outcome

For example:

Lose 20lbs in 6 weeks
Big Dream Outcome: lose 20 lbs
With a increased time delay: -6 weeks

Step #2 Identify Problems

What's the next thing people need help with - use a high level of detail to flesh this out. List out all the friction points. For example:

First I have to plan buying healthy food, next I have to do grocery shopping, next I have to cooking healthy food, next I need help eating healthy food.

Now go through each activity and list out the actions and pain points of the activity. For example:

Cooking healthy food takes time, it can be confusing, it can be expensive etc.

Each problem listed aligns with four value drivers as well. For example:

Dream Outcome -> this will not be financially worth it
Likelihood of Achievement - it won't work for me specifically, I want to be able to stick with it. External factors will get in my way.
Effort and Sacrifice - this will be too hard and confusing. I won't like it, I suck at it.
Time - This will take too much time to do. I am too busy to do this. It will take too long to work. It won't be convenient for me.

Start with 16 problems then go 32, 64 as far as you can go.

Step #3 Solutions List

Turn the problem into a solution and name these solutions

For example:

How to buy healthy food quickly
How to get healthy food when traveling
How to buy healthy food for you and your family
... and continue with whatever your mind can think of

This is my favourite chapter by far!

Step #4 Create Solutions Delivery Vehicles ("The How")

Make sure to be sucessful you focus on selling product/service that is easy to fufil.

Think of all the possibilities of what you could do to solve all these problems.

Problem: Buying Healthy Food Is Hard, Confusing, and I won't like it.

In-person grocery shopping, where I take clients to the store and teach them how to shop
Personalized grocery list, where I teach them how to make the list
full-service shopping, 100% done where we go and buy the food
In person orientation, where I teach them what to get

You could also think of these in a group setting. For example go shopping as a group.

Assets include: recorded grocery tour, live grocery virtual tour, pre-determined shopping lists, grocery buddies, pair up with someone and go shopping to gether and pre-made instacart grocery carts.

How do you accelerate delivery during problem solving - product cheat codes

What level of personal attention? 1-1, small group, 1 to many
What level of effort? DIY (Do it yourself) DWY (Do it with you) DFY (Do it for yourself)
Support - in person, virtual, email, phone
Asset - video recording, audio recording, written
Responsiveness - Service Level agreement, 24/7? 5 min response?
10x or 1/10th test - what do i offer i my customers pay 10x vs 1/10th?

We should try to solve every perceived problem - for example Alex has the experience where a sales exec who goes out to eat everyday admitted she would struggle with the program. Rather than not accomodating her at the risk of losing a sale Alex custom wrote an eating out program to help her and not lose the sale.

Step #5 Trim and Stack

Review all the solutions you've provided in your list. Remove high cost low value items and low cost low value items.

To determine high value ask yourself

will your customer financially value it?
Will it help your customer succeed?
Will it help your customer feel like they can do it with little effort and sacrifice?
Will it help them accomplish their goal and the the result they want with far less time involvement.

Example: Alex build a spreadsheet that took into account a person's workout goals and generated a personalized grocery shopping list of 100 meals that fit their calorie and macronutrient needs. Took 100 hours to build but each time he produces high quality plans in 15 min which is high value.

Creating assets builds value to your business and overall offering.

The Final High Value Deliverable

Step #1 - we figured out prospect's dream outcome
Step #2 - we listed all the obstacles they're likely to encounter on their way (our opportunities for value).
Step #3 - we listed all those obstacles as solutions
Step #4 - we figured out all the ways we could delivery these solutions
Step #5a - we trimmed those way down to only the things that were highest value and lowest cost to us
Step #5b - put all the bundles together into the ultimate high value deliverable

Section IV

Chapter 10 - Enhancing the Offer: Scarcity, Urgency, Bonuses, Guarantees and Naming

Alex recounts the story of going to a party and meeting the organizer. They increased the ticket prices from $15k to $25k and cut the number of tickets available. They had raised an extra million dollars in fundraising by increasing the prices and cutting the supply of tickets.

People want what they can't have. People want what other people want. People want things only a select few have access to.

The Delicate Dance of Desire

Whne we increase the demand, we can sell more units. When we decrease supply, we can sell those units for more money. The perfect profit combination is lots of demand and very little supply or perceived supply.

Summary Points

In this section we cover:

Using scarcity to decrease supply to raise prices (and indirectly increase demand through perceicved exclusiveness)
Use urgency to increase demand by decreasing the action threshold of a prospect
Use bonuses to increase demand (and increased perceived exclusivity).
Use guarantees to increase demand by reversing risk
Use names to restimulate demand and expand awareness of my offer to my target audience.

Chapter 11 - Enhancing the Offer: Scarcity

Creating Scarcity

Limited edition goods - creating fear of missing out, pulls psychological fear of loss to take action. Humans are more motivated to hoard a scarce resource than they are to act on something that could help them. Fear of loss is stronger than desire for gain.

The Three Types of Scarcity

Limited supply of seats/spots in general or over X period of time
Limited supply of bonuses
Never available again

Applying to Products

Applies to physical products - limited run or release

Don't forget to let everyone know you sold out

Applying to Services

#1 Total Business Cap - only accepting .... X clients

Create a waiting list when you hit capacity

#2 Growth Rate Cap - only accepting X clients per week (on-going)

Only take X amount of clients per week and be up front about it based on your capacity to deliver

#3 Cohort Cap - only accepting ... X clients per class cohort

Same as #2, open your and close your doors based on class/cohort a couple of times per year

Pro tip - when hosting an event, have less spots than the amount you expect to sell.

When you sell out online, create a notification email list to generate leads.

#4 Honest Scarcity (The Most Ethical Scarcity)

You could legitimately be busy and be at 80% capacity - this is social proof you are in demand and could be a good

Chapter 12 - Enhancing the Offer: Urgency

Four types of urgency:

Rolling Cohorts
Rolling Seasonal urgency
Promotional or Pricing urgency
Exploding Opportunity

Cohort Based Rolling Urgency

The less frequent your intakes are the greater the urgency will be for customers to sign up - especially twice a year.

Rolling Seasonal Urgency

Pricing offers by seasons, deadlines drive decisions.

For example: Valentines promo ends Feb 28, Spring Special ends in April!

Promotional or Pricing Urgency

Use promotional or pricing offer as the thing they could miss out on. Limited time offer. You can always interchange pricing promotion etc

Exploding Urgency

Opportunities that disappear with a countdown timer. Always add a deadline to your offers.

Chapter 13 - Enhancing the Offer: Bonuses

A single offer is less valuable than the same offer broken down into its component parts and stacked as bonuses.

Think of the old infomercials - you buy one knife and get 10 other adds ons for $38.95. Leverage the price to value discrepancy instead of cutting the price.

Presenting Bonuses 1 on 1 vs Group Selling

Key differences between group selling and going 1 on 1.

In 1 on 1 scenarios if you get the sale, then give the bonuses to create a wow experience.

If the customer does not buy on the first ask, use the bonuses to close the sale.

Key things to remember when offering up the bonuses:

Always offer them
Give them a special name that has a benefit in the title
Tell them
a. How it relates to their issue
b. What it is
c. How you discovered it, or what you had to do to create it
d. How it will improve their lives or make their experience (faster, easier, or less/effort sacrifice.)
Provide some proof (can be a stat, past client, or personal experience)
Paint a vivid mental image of what their life will be like assuming they have already used it or are experiencing the benefits
Always ascribe a price tag to them and justify it
Tools & checklists are better than additional trainings (as the effort and time are lower with the former, so the level value is higher. The value equations still reigns supreme).
They each should address a specific concern/obstacle in the prospects mind about why they can't or won't be successful (bonus should prove their belief incorrect).
This can also be what they would logically realize they need next. You want to solve their problem before they encounter it.
The value of the bonuses should eclipse the core offer
Add scarcity/urgency to this offer and it boosts it's appeal

You can also add offers from other businesses as well and create referrals.

Always create assets:

Checklists, tools, swipe files, scripts, templates and anything that takes a lot of effort to create on one's own
Make an effort to record webinars, event, interview and use them as additional bonuses
Negotiate group discounts and referral commission with adjacent businesses that solve needs your customer will have as a result of beginning this process with you.

Chapter 14 - Enhancing the Offer: Guarantees

Reversing risk is a good technique to enhance the offer with guarantees

Four types of guarantees:

Unconditional
Conditional
Anti-Guarantee
Implied Guarantee

Increase in sales offsets the refunds.

Unconditional guarantees gets a lot more people to buy , but you will still have people refund due to lack of accountability and entitlement.

Conditional guarantees - include terms and conditions

Anti-Guarantee - all sales are final

Implied Guarantee - performance based offer, triggers, ratchets, monetary bonuses

You can stack guarantees for example 30 day unconditional followed by a 90 day conditional

Pro tip: Name your guarantee something cool.

Alex gives examples of guarantees which I didn't bother taking notes - if i'm going to build guarantees i'm going to refer back to this chapter

Chapter 15 - Enhancing the Offer: Naming

Offers fatigue therefore it's important to constantly name and rename them.

Alex applies a bit of marketing to try to keep the offers "fresh" with MAGIC

Magnet - Make a Magnetic Reason - the reason why you're running the promotion
Avatar - Announce the Avatar - who you are looking for as your client, be as specific as possible, when local go as specific as possible
Goal - Give them a Goal - articulate prospect's dream outcome
Interval - Indicate a Time Interval - how long it will take to achieve the results
Container - Complete with a Container Word - words that bundle it up like "challenge, blueprint, program, detox, experience"

Tips: Make it ryhme, use alliteration (make all the words start with the same letter/sound).

What happens when offers fatigue

Change the creative
Change the body copy in your ads
Change the headline - the "wrapper" of your offer
Free 6 Week Lean Challenge to Free 6 Week Tone Challenge
Holiday Hangover to New Year You
Change the duration of your offer
Change the enhancer of your offer (your free/discount component)
Change the monetization structure, the series of offers you give prospects, and price points associated with them

Section V

Your First $100,000

Tells the story of how Alex made his first $100k, a summary of his book and his offer