Why Selling LESS Makes Clients Pay MORE

Can I tell you a secret? The more services you sell, the harder it is to get clients. And most agency owners are making the exact opposite move that they should be making in order to get more clients. They're adding more services, more offers, more packages, thinking that the more they can sell, the more chances they've got of someone saying yes. But the dark psychology of buying behavior says that the complete opposite is true. I want to walk you through the exact psychological principle that makes people buy from the person selling one thing instead of the person selling everything. I'll show you the research that proves it. I'll give you the four-part framework I call the oneb block method. And by the end, you'll know exactly which one offer to pick, who to sell it to, what problem it solves, and the one channel you should use to sell it. Every block on this table is a different service that you could offer. Social media, ads, websites, SEO, you name it. And right now, most agency owners are trying to sell all of them. But the ones who actually get clients are doing this. Let me explain. I built three different seven-f figureure agencies, worked with over 1500 small businesses, run thousands of campaigns, and today I do it all as a oneperson agency with zero employees. And in all that time, if there's one pattern I've seen that separates agency owners who get clients from agency owners who don't, it's this. Back in the year 2000, two psychologists at Colombia and Stanford ran an experiment that quietly became one of the most important studies in marketing history. Their names are Sheenaar and Mark Leper, and they wanted to test what happens when you give shoppers more options. So, they set up a tasting booth at a fancy grocery store and put out different jars of jam. On some days, they put out 24 different flavors. Lots of variety. There was strawberry and raspberry and apricot and marmalade, you name it. Everything that a jam shopper could ever want. On other days, though, they put out just six flavors. Now, common sense would say that the table with 24 flavors should sell more jam. I mean, there's more choices. There's more chances that someone finds the one they want. That means more sales, right? Wrong. The six flavor table sold 10 times more jam than the 24 flavor table. Yeah, that's not a typo. 30% of the shoppers at the six flavor table bought some jam, whereas only 3% at the 24 flavor table did. Same store, same customers, same jam. The only difference was how many options that they were shown. So why did this happen? Well, when you give the human brain too many options, it doesn't get excited, it gets overwhelmed. And an overwhelmed brain doesn't make decisions. It just walks away. It gives up. It stalls. It leaves the table. The researchers called this choice overload. Agency owners usually call it something else. They call it, "Why can't I get more clients?" Look at this. I mean, imagine that you're a local business owner and an agency reaches out to you and says, "I do social media management and paid ads and SEO and web design and email marketing. Do funnel building, content creation, AI automation, reputation management, and copyrightiting." At about service number six, that prospect is mentally gone. Their brain is glazed over somewhere between funnel building and AI automation, and it never came back. But wait, it gets worse. Because people don't think, "Wow, this person can do everything." They think, "This person doesn't really do any one thing well." And then they say something that every struggling agency owner has heard before. That sounds great. Let me think about it. And then they do absolutely nothing about it forever. Now, imagine a different agency reaches out to that same business owner. And says, "I help local businesses get more five-star Google reviews on autopilot. That's my specialty. I'll get you more reviews so you stop losing customers to the business down the street with better ratings." Say something like that and you're going to get a completely different reaction. Rather than being overwhelmed by a sea of words that they don't even understand, now they get it. This means they're more likely to lean in and ask questions and actually hire you. They don't choose the agency with the most options. they choose the one that's easiest to understand. So, when you simplify your offer, they're not just a little more likely to choose you, they're up to 10 times more likely to choose you. So, here's how you actually do this. I call it the one block method, and there's four steps. One offer, one person, one problem, one channel. Every step removes a decision that the prospect has to make. Every step makes it easier to choose you. Less thinking for them, less complexity for you, and a much easier business to sell. So, let me break each one down for you now. Starting with step one, one person. Watch this. The second you pick one type of person, a whole bunch of services just don't apply anymore. This is who you sell to. And this is where most people make things way more complicated than they need to be. They say things like, "I help small businesses." Or, "I work with entrepreneurs." Or my personal least favorite of all time, "I help anyone who wants to grow." But small businesses isn't a person. It's a category that includes a software startup in San Francisco, a chiropractor in Ohio, a bakery in San Diego, and a private chef in Nashville. These are completely different people with completely different problems and completely different budgets. When you say you help small businesses, what you're actually saying to every single one of these people is, "I don't really understand you specifically." So instead, you pick one type of business, and I mean one. Plumbers or dentists or roofers or landscapers or whoever, but just one. Now, here's the question I get every single time I tell people this. But Adam, won't I be missing out on all the other clients I could get by picking just one? And the answer to that is no, you won't. Because this is going to sound harsh, but you weren't going to get them anyway. The truth is, when you try to be the agency for everyone, you end up becoming the agency for no one. But when you become the agency for plumbers, let's say specifically, every plumber who hears about you immediately thinks, "Oh, this person gets my business." And here's the bonus. Every plumber knows other plumbers. They go to plumber events. They have plumber friends. They're in plumber Facebook groups. So, one plumber client turns into five plumber clients, turns into 20 plumber clients because you became the plumber person or the roofer person or the landscaping person or the med spa person or whatever niche you choose. Okay, so that's part one, one person. Just pick one type of business and only that type. Now, let's talk about step two, one problem. Once you've picked your one type of person, the next step is to pick the one specific problem that you solve for them. And again, this needs to be one problem, not a list of problems, not a bundle of problems, just one problem. And watch what happens when you pick one problem. Even more of these services fall away. Now, here's where most agency owners trip themselves up. They think the way to be valuable is to solve every problem their client has. They want to be the marketing person, the operations person, the website person, the AI person, the everything person. But here's what actually happens. The client thinks, "This person is spread thin. they probably don't go deep on any one thing. So, they go hire a specialist for the problems that they actually care about. This is because not all problems are created equal. And when you offer to fix a bunch of things that they don't really care about, they tune out and they move on. So, instead, you pick the one specific, painful, expensive problem your one type of person actually has. The one that keeps them up at night, the one that they'd pay a lot of money to just make go away. For local service businesses like landscapers and dentists and appliance repair and pest control and all of the other niches that I've mentioned earlier in this video, that painful problem is usually one of three things. Not getting enough new customers, missing phone calls and losing the business, or having terrible online reviews compared to their competitors. You pick one of those. Not all three, just one. And the magic is that when you pick one problem and become the person known for solving it, every conversation gets easier, the pitch gets easier, the proof gets easier, the pricing gets easier, the referrals get easier. Basically, everything gets easier because you're not trying to sell 10 different things at once. You're selling one obvious thing. So, that's step two, one problem. Pick the most painful problem your one type of person has and own it. Now, on to step three, one offer. This is where the whole table clears. When you've got your one person, your one problem, and you pick your one offer, this is what's left. This is where the one block method really comes together. Cuz once you've got your one type of person and the one problem they have, the offer is pretty simple. All you're going to do here is just offer them the one specific service that solves that one specific problem. For example, let's say you picked landscapers as your one person, and you picked low review counts hurting their business as their one problem. Well, then your one offer is a Google review automation system that you set up and manage for your landscaper client so they don't have to do anything except sit back and watch new five-star ratings start rolling in on autopilot. That's it. That's the whole offer. You don't also offer them websites. You don't also offer them Facebook ads. You don't even mention those things exist. At least not yet. More on that in just a second. Because the second you do, you're back to the chaos pile of options that we started with that completely overwhelms the brain. Now, here's where most agency owners get stuck. They look at offering just that one offer, say Google review automation for $197 a month, and they think, "That's not enough money. I need to offer more services to make a real income." But here's the thing about more services. They don't actually make you more money in the beginning. They do, however, make your offer harder to understand and harder to deliver, easier to forget. You are way better off at getting really good at selling and then delivering one offer to 10 clients before you ever even think about adding a second offer. Once you've got 10 clients paying you 197 a month for reviews, then you can start thinking about adding a second offer to each of them. Maybe an AI receptionist for missed calls, maybe a revenue website to convert more leads, maybe a follow-up automation system, but that's a future problem. Today, your job is to pick one offer and sell it. Now, here's the good news. You don't have to build any of this from scratch. Everything I just described, the review automation and the full system behind it, all of that is already built for you inside of my agency OS, which runs on High Level, the software I use to run my entire agency. If you grab the link in the descriptions below this video, you'll get an extended 30-day free trial of High Level, plus my full agency OS. That's the exact templates and snapshots and automations I use for reputation management with my own clients. So, instead of staring at a blank screen trying to figure this out, you just plug in your client's business and everything's ready to go. Pick your one offer, grab the trial through the link below, load the template, then go sell it. So, that's step three, one offer. Pick one specific service that solves your one problem for your one person and deliver it in the exact same way every single time. Okay. Now, step four, one channel. This is the last part of the method, and it's also where I see almost every beginner agency owner mess it up. Once you've picked your person, your problem, and your offer, you get excited, and then you try to do everything in order to find clients. cold email, cold DMs, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik Tok, paid ads, networking, podcasts, all at the same time. And that's where it falls apart because two weeks later, you're exhausted. No clients, and convinced that this just doesn't work. So, just like with the offer, you pick one channel, just one way to find your one type of person and pitch them your one offer. Now, broadly speaking, you've got two big buckets to choose from. The first is inbound marketing. This is where you create content, run ads, or show up in search, and people come to you. The good thing about inbound is that the leads come pretty much pre-warmed. The bad thing though is that inbound usually takes a while to build up momentum. The second is outbound marketing. This is where you reach out to people directly. Think cold DMs, cold emails, cold calls. Now, the good thing here is that you can start getting in front of people today, like right now in the next 5 minutes. The bad thing is that you have to do it consistently for it to work. Both inbound and outbound strategies work, but you can only pick one. If you're brand new and you want to get clients quickly, my recommendation is outbound. Specifically, sending a short Loom video to your one type of person via email or DM. Here's why this works so well. A Loom video is just a quick screen recording where you talk for say two or 3 minutes and you show the prospect their current Google review situation. You point out the gap and then you offer to fix it. It's personal, it's specific, and it stands out in a sea of generic cold messages. You record one short Loom video. You send it to a prospect and then you move on to the next one. Then you do that 20 times a day. Then you do it the next day and the day after that. That's the channel. Loom videos sent through email or DM every single day to one type of person. It's not sexy. It's not exciting, but it works. So that's step four. One channel. Pick just one outreach method. Master it and then run it consistently until it works. Okay, so let's pull this all together. The one block method. One person, one problem, one offer, one channel. get them all right and comes down to this. A clearer message, simpler sales, faster delivery, and more clients. You're not having to compete with everyone anymore. You're now the person who solves one specific problem for one specific type of business. And when that problem shows up, you're the one they think of. Now, before you go run with this, three warnings. Warning one, your brain is going to tell you, "This is a terrible idea." Seriously, when you pick one type of person, your brain is going to scream, "But what about all the other people that I could be helping?" When you pick your one offer, your brain is also going to scream, "But what about all the other money I could be making?" That feeling is normal. It's not a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's a sign that you're doing it right. Specific feels risky. Broad feels safe, but specific is what actually works. Warning two, the one block method is not a permanent decision. You're not picking your one offer for the rest of your life. You're picking it for now. Once you've got 10 or 20 clients paying you for that one thing, you can then start adding a second offer, then a third. But until you've mastered the one, don't even think about the others. Warning three, your one channel, meaning your one way of getting clients, takes longer to work than you think. Most people pick a channel, run it for 2 weeks, get no results, and quit. That's not the channel failing. That's the channel barely getting started. Whatever channel you pick, email, DMs, or the Loom strategy I just showed you, you want to commit to it for at least 90 days before you decide whether it's working. Most channels don't start producing real results until you've put in enough volume, which usually takes a few weeks of consistent outreach. If you look at the agency owners who actually build successful, profitable businesses, they're not doing anything complicated. It's not talent, it's not the market, it's not AI, the agency owner who picks one block and commits to it becomes easier to understand, easier to remember, easier to trust. Now, if you want my complete system, my scripts, my frameworks, my templates, the full playbook I use every single day to run my own agency without any employees, the entire thing is built inside High Lee. Click the link below, sign up for the free Highle trial, and you'll get instant access to my full agency OS. Every snapshot, every automation, every template I use with my clients, all ready to go. Then, once you've got all that, the next question becomes, how do you actually turn this into a real agency? Well, the full system from picking your one type of business to landing your first 10 clients to delivering everything without burning out. All of that is linked up in a free training video that I've got linked up right here. So, feel free to tap or click that now and I'll see you in there in just a second.