He made two fantastic offers!
The conversation I was in the other day was fantastic. The goal of our conversation was just to meet and introduce ourselves to each other. But in the course of 30 minutes I was impressed enough that I asked for his pitch. I was interested in buying. And when he was done, he offered two prices – one where he was accepting a deposit and breaking up the total over several months, and the other with a single up-front payment (which included a 15% discount).
I can't help myself.
Creating multiple offers in WooCommerce
When I hear multiple offers (which I wrote about in a slightly different way yesterday), I start wondering how to implement it. He didn't offer me a coupon code. The discount was simply applied if I chose the up front payment.
Could I do that in WooCommerce? Sure. But how? As two variations? Yes. But the complexity is that one variation is a single up-front payment, and the other is a subscription. It's not impossible but it's clunky.
And that's when I remembered a recent discovery.
WooCommerce hosting at Nexcess
I work with Jessica Frick at Nexcess on our Managed WooCommerce hosting product. It's the most feature-rich, most scalable WooCommerce hosting in the market.
What we've created at Nexcess isn't just a hosting product. It's a complete solution for merchants that bundles a lot of features into a fantastic offering. But enough about that.
The other day Jessica (our Director of Product Management) asked me if I'd ever heard of Plugin Republic. I think she likes to find things that I've not seen – and in this case, she had done it. I'd never heard of the company or its products.
So I dug in, and that's what I remembered when thinking about how to create this particular solution. Consultants, coaches, and digital agencies should all want to close deals by offering a discount to pay upfront, or by accepting deposits.
The WooCommerce Extension: Deposits & Part Payments by Plugin Republic
This single WooCommerce extension for accepting deposits and partial payments is pretty perfect. The entire setup is in a single screen, as you can see below.
If you're like most freelancers I know, you know that accepting deposits is the de facto way you bill people now. Start with a 20%, 25%, 33% or even 50% deposit. It makes sure your customer is serious and has put some money on the line.
You can use this plugin to do that. You decide if you want to accept deposits for all or just a few products. And then you decide on fixed or percentage based deposits, and lastly the amount.
That's all pretty normal.
What I really like is the second half of this plugin – which is how the consultant I was talking to hooked me. He was offering a 15% discount if I paid up front. Now, in the example I used above it was 10% (because I'm not as generous), but you get the point.
Agencies can really leverage this
If you're a micro-agency doing a lot of WordPress and WooCommerce work, this just feels like a no-brainer to me. Let's imagine you build sites for $10,000. Now, you likely request a $2500 or $3000 deposit. This works.
But imagine if you adjusted the price so that customer could pay $8,000 instead of $10,000 if they paid everything up front. That 20% discount can feel steep until you realize you've also eliminated all the hassle of the process to get that last check.
And you don't even have to be in heavy sales mode. You could send them directly to the product page, where they're expecting to see the deposit, but then discover that there's a second option to pay up front with a discount.
So check out this WooCommerce extension. It may save you hassle and help you close more deals.