5 Things You Can Do to Increase Your Confidence About a Product or Service Offer

In my last blog, I talked about why you don’t need to prove yourself to everyone before you offer. Now, let me share with you 5 things you can do to increase your confidence about a product or service offer. 

You don't have to do all five. You don't have to do any of them if you don't want to. But it gives you at least some knowledge about the things you can do if you want to elevate your confidence before you make that offer and potentially make a better offer. 

#1: Conducting research

A lot of times before I offer a new product or service, I do market research. I often start with a SWOT analysis. I'm going to look for my strengths, my weaknesses, my opportunities, and the threats to me and in my business, but you can also do this with a product or service. 

• What are the strengths of this product or service?
• What are the weaknesses? 
• What are the opportunities?
• What are the threats to that product or service, as well as competitors? 

This will also help you when you move into market research and start interviewing your target audience. It'll help you to understand their needs and wants much better. 

Sidenote, it might also move one of these people helping you with market research to eventually purchase from you. You might be able to move them into being one of your customers because you're going to give them exactly what they're wanting. 

Another thing under this umbrella of conducting market research or doing your research is that it'll help you identify potential competitors and gaps in the market that your product or your service can fill. That's how I started the Dynamic Women group because I was out networking, and I was so sick of surface-level, pressure-based, sales-driven networking, where it was just about selling to each other. If they couldn’t make a customer out of you then they’d have no use for you. There was not enough relationship building. I saw there was a huge gap that needed to be filled, so I offered the Dynamic Women Global Club. 

Also, by doing research, it's going to help you to be able to refine your product or your service. Why? To better meet the needs of your target market, not to refine it to make it perfect per se, but to just give them exactly what they're looking for. 

This is how research is one way you can increase your confidence and provide a better product or service. 

#2: Gathering feedback

You can go to potential customers, so not just market research, but potential customers and gather feedback from them. It can help you understand, “How do they perceive this product, this service that I'm going to offer?” 

You can identify at that point, any issues, any concerns they have about it, and make improvements before you launch. In my previous blog, I shared about how we don't have to offer free or beta products. Also, that we shouldn't fully develop a product or a service, like a course, until we kind of start to jump into it and offer it and make sure there's a need for it. 

Gathering feedback and developing it as you go will allow you to launch earlier. I had a course I fully developed before I launched it. Then when I did, no one bought it. That's because the name was wrong. The name made people feel intimidated. Instead, I thought it would give them permission to not have that trouble. But instead, it evoked a limiting belief in them. 

Just by a simple name change, I was able to have a better course that actually sold, but not until I rebranded it. The problem was I had already recorded the materials and so I had to re-record videos and remake handouts, which was really annoying. Gathering feedback would have really helped me to make this improvement. 

You can do this in many different ways like surveys, focus groups, and yes, you can do a beta version, but let's not call it beta. Let's just reach out to people and say, “Hey, I'm going to offer this course, program, or service to a small group of customers, I'm inviting you before I offer it to the general public.” I did this with the Dynamic You program the very first time and 25 women paid to be in the program, invest to be in the program. I got paid, and they got results. 

Is the program better now that I've run it a few dozen times? Of course, of course it is. Did they invest less money than people do now? They did. So I think that was a complete Win-Win! ​

#3: Test your product or service 

Now, when you're testing them, you want to make sure you're testing in real world conditions. If you're going to test a course, or test a product, make sure it's with who is actually going to be the end user. 

When I first started coaching, I offered 30 sample sessions in 30 days so that I could get better at coaching. What I said to people was, “I don't want you to say yes to having a session if you don't really want the coaching, and you just want to help me reach my goal.” You see, it’s nice, but that's not the real world for me. I want the people who are actually going to use it, not just family or friends or people who would never pay for it. 

Try to find the right people to test it in the right conditions because that way, you're going to really be able to identify any issues, any bugs, make any improvements before launching.  

It can also include conducting tests on “Is this usable?” You can run a pilot program to test for results if you want. Just offer it to a small group of customers before you make it public, get the feedback, make the changes, and then put it out there for real. 

#4: Develop a marketing plan

This is often something that people don't do, even though it makes sense you would do it, even if you're going to offer a course pretty quickly. When you have the right marketing plan, it's going to help you to reach your target market. It'll help you to get the right interest in your product or service. If you're just going to throw it out there and hope that people find it and buy it, it's probably not going to happen. 

Then that's going to kill your confidence. 

Some pieces that you're going to want to have in your marketing plan are:

• What are the key messages? 
• Develop some marketing materials: social posts, videos, landing pages, website, or maybe it's printed materials. 
• You also want to have a plan for reaching your potential customers through things like advertising, social media, through organic or through paid avenues, as well as all the other channels that are out there. 

When someone asks me, “Which way should I market this?” I'm like, “Write them all down, and then pick as many as you want.” You might want to only have one way you market. There are some people that only do Facebook ads. Some people will only offer from the stage. Some people will only do podcast interviews. My feeling is why not do as many of these different options as you can. Do all of them so you can bring the required or your ideal number of sales in.

It's much easier when you have multiple ways to market your product/service, and to bring the clients in. That will increase your confidence rather than just trying to put all your eggs in one basket. 

#5: Build a strong team

They can help you execute putting together the product or service, the marketing and the offer. They can also help to address any issues, any concerns that arise. I am so grateful that I have my two main virtual assistants, Kristine and Karissa, who help me to develop and market my products and services plus delivery to my clients. 

I can be more confident because I’m not that great at building landing pages, email sequences, all these things. I can do them all, but do I want to do them? No. I want to stay in my own lane, which are skills in my zone of genius like talking on summits, having my own podcast, speaking from stage running events, doing sales calls and serving my clients. These are the things that I want to do. Having a team who can do everything else is great (and a relief). 

Also it might mean that you hire experienced professionals. I have a business advisor. I have a speaker business coach. I have other professionals around me who provide different expertise in different areas, especially when I'm going to offer a product or service. Things they can help with might be product development, marketing, customer service, it might just be mindset. 

A bad mindset is a thief of action. Sometimes it's clarity on what to do. So clarity, confidence and getting into action around the thing you're doing. Other times you need someone there to do the coaching piece to kick your butt and keep you accountable to be moving things along. 

Wrapping Up

I just gave you five different things you can do to increase your confidence when you're offering a product or a service: conducting research, gathering the feedback, testing your product or service, developing a marketing plan, and building a strong team. 

Take the steps. It can't hurt. You can do all of them. They will increase your confidence, and make your product or service even better when you make your offer. It can help you be better positioned for success when you're making your launch. 

Which one are you going to do? All of them, some of them, one of them, or none of them? Let me know in the comments! 

I'm encouraging you. If you have a specific topic you’d like me to answer or talk through it with you, then email me at diane@dianerolston.com and let me know what it is.

Read my other blogs here:

1. How to be Unapologetically Yourself
2. C.A.T.E.S - 5 Things That Will Help You Move Ahead
​3. 3 Solutions to Stop Spreading Yourself Too Thin