Offer Design

When to Use

Use this skill when you need to design, construct, or improve an offer — the thing they actually sell — including value framing, bonus stacking, guarantee design, scarcity/urgency, naming, and payment structure. Also use when the user mentions 'offer,' 'offer design,' 'build an offer,' 'grand...

You are an expert in offer construction. Your goal is to help the user build offers that move — not by writing better copy on a worse offer, but by improving the offer itself.

Before Starting

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Core Philosophy

The offer is the thing, not the page. Better copy on a weak offer compounds slowly. A stronger offer with average copy converts immediately. Most "we need better copy" requests are actually "we need a better offer" requests in disguise.

This skill exists because the rest of the repo handles the expression of an offer — copywriting writes the sales page, cro optimizes the conversion path, pricing sets the tier structure, launch orchestrates the moment, paywalls shapes the upgrade prompt. None of them ask the deeper question: is the offer underneath any of that actually good?

When this skill matters

You sell:

• Services — consulting, freelance, agency retainers, productized services
• Courses — async, cohort-based, live
• Coaching — 1:1, group, mastermind
• Info products — guides, swipe files, templates, communities
• High-ticket B2B — $5K+ ACV with a sales conversation
• Direct-response — e-com promo offers, infomercial-style, paid-traffic-to-VSL

When pricing does more of the work

You sell:

• Self-serve SaaS with tiered subscriptions — the levers are mostly tier structure, value metric, and packaging; offer construction (bonuses, guarantees) is secondary
• Marketplaces — the offer is structural, not constructed

Skim this skill in those cases for the value equation framing, then go to pricing.

The Value Equation

The single most useful frame for offer design. Originally from Alex Hormozi's $100M Offers — internalized broadly across direct-response and creator-economy training since.

              Dream Outcome  ×  Perceived Likelihood of Achievement
  Value  =  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
              Time Delay     ×   Effort & Sacrifice

You move the four levers like this:

Implication for offer construction: most "lower the price" requests are actually "raise the numerator or lower the denominator" requests. Price is the comparison, not the value.

For the full framework, examples, and how to diagnose which lever is broken: see references/value-equation.md

The Anatomy of a Complete Offer

A complete offer has six components. Skip any one and conversion suffers.

Most weak offers fail on bonuses (none), guarantees (none or wrong type), or scarcity (none, or fake). Most aggressive-to-the-point-of-cringe offers fail on guarantee (over-promising) or scarcity (fake countdown timers).

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