Your business may be humming along great today. If so, congratulations! Enjoy it.
But don’t count on it to last.
Every business eventually hits a ceiling. Optimization fuels growth for a while, but at some point, you max out. That’s when you need something more—growth through transformation.
In the first article of this series, I introduced the three levers of transformational growth: Resonant Market Focus, Bold Offer, and Robust Revenue Engine. These aren’t tweaks to be made at the margins. They are strategic choices that allow a business to reinvent itself—to discover the next S-curve of growth before the current one flattens.
That first article described the first lever, having a Resonant Market Focus. Here I’d like to dive into the second, creating a Bold Offer. If the first lever helps you determine where to play, the second is all about how you win.
Most businesses aim to be better—better service, better price, better features. But “better” is fragile. It’s incremental. And it’s easy to copy.
A bold offer, on the other hand, is transformative.
A bold offer doesn’t just aim to be better. It changes the conversation, reshapes the buyer’s expectations, and makes your business unmistakably distinct. It’s the difference between being better and being the only option that makes sense.
What Makes an Offer Bold?
A bold offer isn’t just a different way to sell what you already have. It’s a strategic act of reframing—how you define value, how you position it, and how you invite your customer into a new possibility.
At its core, a bold offer must do two things exceptionally well: spark interest and create intrigue.
- It sparks interest by solving a high-stakes problem. No matter how clever or creative your offer is, if it doesn’t address something your buyer deeply cares about—right now—it won’t gain traction.
This isn’t about adding more features or piling on extras. It’s about aligning your offer with your buyer’s most urgent, economically significant pain or opportunity. Bold offers make the business case obvious. They speak to problems that:
- Cost real money
- Disrupt operations or strategic progress
- Threaten competitive standing or compliance
- Or, conversely, open up meaningful new growth paths
When your offer squarely addresses one of these, you shift the buyer’s mindset. You’re not a vendor—they see you as a partner in their success. That’s the first signal you’re on to something bold.
When buyers see an offer that speaks directly to their pain or ambition, they don’t just notice it—they lean in. That’s interest.
- It creates intrigue by being distinctive. Interest gets you to the table. But intrigue gets you the deal.
A bold offer stands out not just for what it promises, but for how it promises it. It may come with an unexpected guarantee, a striking outcome, a surprising delivery model—or a level of confidence your competitors wouldn’t dare to match.
A truly bold offer does more than catch the buyer’s attention. It makes them pause.
This is where intrigue is born. It plants a subtle but powerful question in the buyer’s mind: “How can they possibly offer that?”
That question is powerful, because when you do deliver it, you’ve gained something far more valuable than the deal–you’ve gained their trust.
You’re no longer just selling a product. You’re selling confidence in a result.
That confidence becomes contagious, fueling strong referrals and long-term loyalty.
The following diagram illustrates these two dimensions. When your offer is perceived to have high economic value to them, it creates interest. And the more distinctive it is, the more intrigue it will create. At the intersection of both lies your bold offer.
At their core, bold offers address the three often unspoken questions that buyers have:
- Why should I do anything? (INTEREST)
- Why should I do it now? (INTEREST)
- Why should I do it with you? (INTRIGUE)
If it does anything less, it’s a dead offer.
How to build a bold offer.
A bold offer is built, not brainstormed. It emerges from a disciplined process of understanding your customer’s economic reality and designing a solution that is both highly relevant and truly distinctive.
The most effective bold offers begin not with what you want to sell, but with what your buyer can’t afford to ignore.
If your offer doesn’t clearly solve a pain that’s costly, urgent, or strategically significant, it won’t generate meaningful interest—no matter how creative the marketing is around it. At best, it will be politely acknowledged and quickly forgotten. At worst, it will be seen as irrelevant.
The best bold offers speak to business-critical stakes, such as:
- Lost revenue or growth potential
- Inefficiencies that drag down profitability
- Compliance or operational risks
- Strategic inertia that stalls innovation or transformation
- Missed market opportunities others are seizing
They also create a clear contrast between the cost of staying put and the benefit of moving forward. That contrast creates urgency.
This is why the starting point of every bold offer must be rooted in the economic truth of your customer’s world.
Here’s an approach you can take:
- Get inside your customer’s skin. Choose one customer segment to focus on, identify the key roles in the buying process, then map out their world using these four lenses. Remember, bold offers don’t start with your product—they start with your customer. So, forget what you sell for a moment.
- Their Responsibilities & Objectives. What is this person hired to accomplish? What do their boss, board, or stakeholders expect from them?
- Actions They’re Taking. How are they currently trying to fulfill their responsibilities? What gets prioritized on their calendar? What gets deprioritized?
- Their Frustrations. Where are things breaking down? What makes their work harder than it should be? These are often your richest source of insight.
- How You Can Help. Where do your current offerings—or potential new ones—intersect with those frustrations and objectives? What pain can you relieve, or what opportunity can you unlock?
Once you’ve documented this for each key role, identify the specific value you can deliver and score it based on perceived economic impact (e.g., 1 = low, 3 = high). Your bold offer should be built around the highest-scoring value proposition.
- Choose a distinction that matters. Solving a high-value problem generates interest, but interest alone won’t create momentum. To create intrigue and move into the top-right of the matrix above, you need to be distinct.
There are many ways to be different. But not all differences matter. To be truly distinctive, you must choose an area where:
- You excel more than others
- Your customers notice that excellence
- And that excellence matters to them
Drawing from the frameworks of Michael Treacy and Daniel Priestley, consider these primary dimensions of distinction:
- Innovation/Product Leadership – You build or deliver a clearly superior product.
- Operational Efficiency / Convenience – You offer unmatched speed, simplicity, or cost-effectiveness.
- Price – You reliably offer the most cost-effective solution.
- Customer Intimacy / Relationships – You deeply understand and serve the specific needs of your customers, often customizing solutions just for them.
Ask yourself:
- Are we clearly leading in one of these dimensions?
- Would our ideal customers agree?
- And most importantly—does that dimension matter to them when they buy?
To be truly distinctive, each of those questions must be true. The excellence you deliver in any one of those dimensions should not only be evident, but important to your customers.
- Define a bold lead offer that embodies both dimensions. Once you’ve identified the possible high-economic value offers that you can make, and the way in which you want to create distinction, it’s time to define a bold offer to be your lead offering—the spearhead of your go-to-market strategy. Your lead offering should:
- Solve a known, persistent, high-cost problem
- Advance your brand promise and reinforce your chosen area of distinction
- Open a pathway to additional products or services
Remember, your best bold offer might be the one you come up with after taking a close look at your customer’s most pressing needs. So, be sure to consider elements that transcend your product. A bold offer isn’t limited to what you deliver—it’s also about how you deliver it. Often, it’s the non-product elements that tip the scales.
This might include:
- Guarantees that show confidence in outcomes
- Unique pricing structures (subscription, performance-based, fixed-fee)
- Speed promises (“Live in 10 days or your first month is free”)
- Onboarding support or customization others don’t offer
- Risk-reversal terms that reduce the mental friction of switching
These non-product elements communicate one thing loudly: We’ve thought deeply about what matters to you, and we’re making it easy to say yes.
They also separate you from the crowd. Many competitors will promise to do a good job. Few are willing to back that promise with structures that demonstrate conviction.
Creating a bold lead offer isn’t just about grabbing attention. It’s about creating focus. Your lead offering should create clarity—internally and externally—about the role your company plays in your customer’s success.
What happens when you get this right.
A bold offer isn’t just a sharper pitch—it’s a catalyst. It centers your business around a promise that’s both compelling and unique.
You’ll start to feel it across your business. Prospects respond more quickly. Conversations shift from pricing to partnership. Sales cycles shrink. And your team gains clarity and energy around a shared value proposition.
But clarity alone isn’t enough.
Even the most compelling offer will fall flat if your team can’t deliver on it consistently. That’s why the third lever of transformational growth—your Robust Revenue Engine—is so essential. It’s the system that makes your bold offer real in the marketplace, over and over again.
We’ll explore that next in the next article. (Sign up here to receive it by email when it is published).
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