Build and present a bonus stack

1. Why splitting the same contents raises what they are worth

Two anchors form in a buyer's mind whenever an offer is made: the price anchor, and the what you get anchor. Both get set at the moment you present, and they set against each other.

Hold the shape of a late-night television offer. One knife for $19, and 38 more thrown in free, reads as a far better deal than the whole pile offered together for $19, although the money is the same. The first version sets the price against one item, then piles the rest on top of an anchor that has already formed.

So take what you assembled on SOP 5 and re-cut it. Do not present the whole stack as one undifferentiated service. Present a core thing, and then additional things beside it. It looks identical on paper and it is perceived completely differently: five items rather than one. People count items easily and judge intangible worth badly, and the count is what they use.

Flag: how many items to show. SOP 230, section 7.1, points the other way: each component takes up room in the buyer's head while they decide, so if two things can sell the offer, do not show five. What each costs: splitting the contents, as here, gives the buyer more items to weigh; showing fewer, as SOP 230 has it, gives up the higher count that buyers judge worth by. This page does not settle which reading is right.

2. The two rules that decide where value lands

The bonuses should be worth more than the core offer. This runs against instinct and it is the point. Every bonus you add widens the gap between what they pay and what they believe they get. And because a bonus is supposed to be worth less than the main thing, a bonus that plainly is not forces the buyer to re-read the core as more valuable than they first thought. You are using the expectation, not breaking it.

Present them after the price is said. The price anchor has to exist before you stretch it. If you are still asking for the sale and meeting hesitation, add another item rather than take money off — keep conceding value, item by item. You need not give everything; give what you, or whoever is selling for you, are authorized to give.

That is the whole argument against discounting to close: a discount lowers the price anchor, and a bonus raises the other anchor instead.

Selling to one person at a time, ask for the sale before any bonus comes up. A yes still gets the bonuses: tell the buyer about them once they have signed, which surprises them and backs up the decision they just made. A no gets one bonus, the one matched to the obstacle they named, and then the ask again.

3. What every bonus has to do

Bonuses are not decoration and they are not assembled at random. Each one answers a specific concern or obstacle already on your grid of perceived problems, and its job is to prove that the buyer's belief about why they will fail is wrong.

Run this list for each one:

• Always offer them. Not sometimes, not only when the sale is stuck.
• Give it a name with the benefit in the title. The name should say both what it is and what it fixes — how to shop for the week in half the time rather than shopping module.
• Say five things about it, in this order: which of their problems it answers; what the item is; how you came by it and what it took to make; the result it gives them; and how specifically it will improve their life or their experience — by making it faster, or easier, or less effort and sacrifice.
• Give proof. A statistic, a past client, or your own experience. Enough to show the thing is worth having.
• Paint the picture. Describe their life assuming they have already used it and are living with the benefit.
• Put a price on it, and justify the price. An unvalued bonus is not valued. This is the step a lot of people skip, and skipping it wastes the item.
• Prefer tools and checklists to more training. A tool takes less time and less effort to use, so it is worth more — the same four variables, applied to the bonus itself. A bonus of a hundred hours of recordings sounds like work. Contract templates that cost $50,000 to produce, handed over so the buyer never spends it, land immediately.
• Solve the next problem too. Some bonuses should answer difficulties that only appear after they have succeeded with the core offer. That has a second effect: solving the next problem implies the first one is going to get solved, and their belief that this will work rises.

3.1 Keep a store of bonuses, and know what to lift out of the core

Bonus material piles up over the years if you keep it. Record every workshop, webinar, event and interview you run, and keep what you capture ready to hand. Information products suit this well: buyers value them highly, they cost little, and they take no running effort beyond one more login. Tickets to an event, live or virtual, work too, as does a month on a higher level of service with a fixed cost, which also lets the buyer try that level and can move them up to it. Draw on the store when a buyer names a specific obstacle, and hand over the piece that answers it.

When you deliver the core yourself, the test for what to lift out of it and present as a bonus is whether it is a piece you would not want any buyer to miss. Take the most distinct pieces, the ones that could nearly stand alone, and set them apart where they can be seen. Short pieces of high quality suit this especially: few buyers would pay much for one on its own, yet as a bonus it reads as highly valuable.

4. Putting scarcity and urgency on the bonuses themselves

This takes the technique further. Three forms, and the difference between them matters:

Form	What you say	Limited by
Scarcity, by access	Only people who join get bonuses one, two and three, which are never sold and are not available anywhere else	Who can get it
Scarcity, by units	Three tickets are left to a $5,000 event; joining gets you one of them, set against a $1,000 program	The number left
Urgency, by time	Buy today and a bonus that normally costs $1,000 is added free, because action gets rewarded	The clock

The first two put no clock on the buyer. The third does. Both work; know which one you are using, and read SOP 9 before you build a campaign on either, because mixing them up is the common error.

5. Other people's products, in four levels

You do not have to make everything you give away. Businesses will hand over their product free for an introduction to a new customer, and better than that, many will pay you for the introduction.

The four levels, in order of how much they are worth to you:

1. Other people's products, given away.
2. Other people's products, with discounts or free periods and units you negotiated in advance.
3. The same, plus a commission paid to you.
4. Other people's products at rates you negotiated, with exclusive features or licenses nobody else can get, plus a commission.

Aim for all four on every partner, and at least two or three; all four is not the usual result.

Where the leverage comes from. You are not negotiating on behalf of one customer. You hold the buying power of every client you have now and every client you will ever have. I sign up twenty clients a month and I can send them to you — what is that worth? is a different conversation from asking for a free sample. The partner is comparing your price to what they currently pay an advertising platform for the same customer, and you are cheaper.

A worked case. A $1,000 back-pain program, sold with free massage sessions at three different parlors, discounts on orthotics and bands, a partnership with a low-inflammation meal-prep company, and supplements through a pre-negotiated code. The savings alone outweigh the price of the program. Twenty therapists giving one free massage each, at $60 a massage, is $1,200 of real value in a single line item — and those parlors pay for the referrals as well. The clinic can earn another $1,000 from partners on top of the $1,000 program fee, doubling it, and that second $1,000 is close to pure profit because the partners carry the cost of delivery.

A worked bundle, showing how rarely you get all four levels:

What was included	Discount	Exclusive to you	Commission
Landing page software, pre-loaded with templates	Not negotiated	Yes — the templates are not available elsewhere	Yes
Fulfillment software, pre-loaded so a new client is set up automatically	Not negotiated	Yes	Yes
Texting software	Yes	No custom features	Yes
Messaging product for direct messages, saving the client perhaps $1,000 or more a month	Not established on this page	Yes — features only their clients get	Yes
Financing terms, with pre-approved amounts and packages agreed with the bank	Terms agreed in advance rather than a discount	Rates and approvals set for these clients	Yes, and it costs the client nothing

Note what the pre-loading buys. Handing over the materials is a first-level bonus. Handing over a system already set up, so that a new customer is served the moment they arrive, cuts the buyer's time, effort and sacrifice — and it is something a competitor cannot copy by buying the same software.

The flexibility argument. Bundling other people's products rather than building your own keeps you free. If something better appears, you move; and you can tell the current partner you will move, which is leverage you would not have if you had built the thing yourself.

Your buyers are already purchasing other products as a consequence of buying from you — clothing, gloves, supplements, apps, meal services — and they often ask you what to get. You already know which supplier is poor and which is worth having. Referring that money away for nothing is the default, and it is a choice.

6. How many bonuses

Between one and ten, presented as the sizzle around the core.

7. What this page does not cover

Risk reversal and the wording of guarantees are not covered on this page; they are on SOP 7 and SOP 8. The difference between a limit on units and a limit on time is on SOP 9. Naming, including how to name a bonus so the time interval works for you, is on SOP 10.