You don't need another offer. You need one that works.

A new idea has a very convenient quality.

It has not disappointed you yet.

It has no difficult customers, no delivery problems and no awkward question about why people are not buying. You can imagine all of it working beautifully.

The existing offer has to deal with reality. No wonder the new one is attractive.

I like building things. I have been involved in more than one business, so I am hardly going to pretend that every new opportunity should be ignored.

But I do think we need to distinguish an opportunity from a way of avoiding the work already in front of us.

Find out what is actually failing

Suppose a business sells a useful service but receives very few enquiries.

Adding a workshop, a membership and three cheaper packages may feel like progress. The menu is bigger. There are new things to announce.

Yet perhaps very few of the right people ever saw the original offer. Perhaps those who did see it could not tell what they would receive. Perhaps the business never followed up on the enquiries it already had.

The new products will inherit some of those same problems.

Before creating more, I would want to understand the current path from someone noticing the business to becoming a satisfied customer. Where does it stop? What do people ask? What do they misunderstand? What happens after they buy?

You cannot answer all of that by staring at the list of services.

GIVE ONE CLEAR OFFER A FAIR CHANCE BEFORE YOU BUILD FIVE MORE.

Be specific about the test

A fair chance does not mean holding on forever.

It means deciding who the offer is for, explaining the result clearly, putting it in front of suitable people and learning from their response.

It also means delivering it properly when someone says yes.

I would write down what needs to become clearer during the test. Can the right person understand it without a long explanation? Is the price compatible with the work required? Can you consistently deliver what you promised?

Set a point to review what happened. Otherwise both optimism and discouragement can keep moving the finish line.

If the evidence says the offer needs to change, change it. If it says there is little demand, take that seriously. Focus should make learning easier, not turn persistence into a belief system.

Keep a place for the other ideas

You can write an idea down without immediately making it everyone's responsibility.

That sounds obvious until each promising thought becomes a new meeting, a new domain, a new presentation and another half-finished launch.

Attention has a cost. So does asking a team to repeatedly change direction before they can see anything through.

I would rather have a smaller number of things working properly than an impressive list that relies on somebody eventually finding time.

Expansion can make sense once you understand what customers need next and have the capacity to serve them. At that point, the new offer has a reason to exist beyond your frustration with the old one.

Which idea deserves your attention now.. and which one can wait until you have answered the questions you already have?