#124 Online Offerings + Masterclasses - why you need to have your Ts & Cs tailored
Welcome to another episode of the Rise Up in Business podcast. Today, I’m talking about the three biggest pain points I see business owners face when it comes to their online offerings and masterclasses.
In last week’s episode, I talked about utilising your customised legal documents to help convert prospects to clients. In this episode, I’ll be diving a little deeper into why tailored Ts & Cs are crucial in creating a favourable experience for both you and your online participants.
Misaligned expectations can often be created when we don’t clearly lay out what we’re offering, or state what’s included and what isn’t. This results in confusion when it comes to the three biggest issues my clients most often come across:
Refund requests
Participants wanting more time to access content
Failed recurring payments
When you don’t have clarity around your terms and conditions for issuing refunds, you may find yourself feeling obligated to give them, even if the request isn’t reasonable. By knowing what your process is and being upfront about it, you will be able to choose to give a refund, rather than be forced to.
The same goes for having solid processes in place for payment defaults, and I discuss the details you may be overlooking when approaching this issue. Who on your team contacts the client? Is there an email template to send out? Was the client even aware of the terms on failed payment in the first place?
We all know that life happens and things can go askew. However, allowing people unlimited access to your content if they fall behind may be unsuitable to how you’ve structured your program, leaving them dissatisfied. I encourage you to think about the time you’re willing to licence your intellectual property to participants for.
By setting clear boundaries and communicating them through tailored Ts & Cs, you’ll not only reduce the potential for conflict, but enhance your clients’ experience with you. Take the time to get clear on what you stand for, and you’ll set yourself up for a successful and sustainable relationship with those you serve.
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[00:00:00] Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Rise Up in Business podcast. I just wanna take a moment to say thank you to those of you who reach out and provide me with your most beautiful feedback and comments on the podcast. Honestly, this podcast is one of my favourite things in my business.
I love delivering this podcast to you each week, and it means so much that you take the time to listen, but then that you take the time to reach out and provide me with your beautiful comments and feedback. So thank you. If you love the podcast, if you haven't already rated the podcast on Apple Podcasts or [00:01:00] left a review, I would be ever so grateful if you would take a moment and do that. It means the world that you listen, it means the world that you love it, and I am doing everything I can to get this podcast into the ears of more business owners. So thank you.
In last week's episode, I spoke about how you can use your legal documents to help convert prospects to clients. But today I wanna dive in and focus a little more on online offerings and masterminds and why it is that tailored documents, tailored terms and conditions for those online offerings and masterminds are so important. So let's dive into that.
When I'm talking online offerings, it extends to all of the things that you offer online. Programs, courses, memberships, subscriptions. And then depending on how it is that you offer your Mastermind for signup, some masterminds are available to be subscribed to or signed up to on [00:02:00] websites. Others have an application process, and clients will issue tailored agreements to the participants in that mastermind. Either way, what I'm talking about today applies to whichever way you do it.
The three biggest pain points that I see with business owners who have online offerings is refund requests, participants wanting more time to access content and failed recurring payments if you have a payment plan option. The reason refund requests in my experience comes up as often as it does, It's because there's misaligned expectations on the part of the participant signing up to the offering.
They're not quite sure what it is that they're getting. They think they're getting something, but once they're in or once they've paid, their experience is misaligned or it's a little different to what they thought. So they reach out and they ask for a refund. Sometimes this happens immediately. Other times it doesn't happen for a couple of months or even longer because the expectations haven't been [00:03:00] met.
And I know that you know what I'm gonna say here, but we can set ourselves up for success as business owners with our online offerings and with our mastermind offerings by making sure that the agreements or the terms and conditions that we have in place set out in crystal clear terms for participants what it is that they are getting, what are the inclusions? And if you work with me, one of the things we'll also include is specific exclusions. And we do that for the sake of clarity because we want to use these documents to set ourselves up for success and to set our participants up for success so that their expectations are exceeded in their experience with us, whether it's a course or a program or a mastermind.
We wanted to make sure we are delivering on what we're promising, but we're wanting to make sure that people are clear on what they're getting because then we can meet those expectations. So the refund requests is significant because even though you might be listening to this thinking, oh gosh, [00:04:00] Tracey, if someone asked for a refund, I'd just give it.
It's not worth the effort. Sure. And I respect that, and that's your view as a business owner. But for many small businesses, refund requests are a problem because it has a direct impact on cashflow. Therefore, one can lead to two, can lead to more. And it's fine if you want to say at some point, you know what, I'm just gonna issue that refund.
And of course, and I encourage you to make business decisions in your business, not just legal decisions and not just what does the law say? What does my agreement say? You make decisions on a case by case basis, as you should, but my point is you deserve to have a solid framework in place where your boundaries are clear, so that if you want to give that refund, you can, but that you don't have to, and you are not forced or compelled to because you actually haven't met your legal obligations under the consumer law, because you haven't set out clearly what your refund policy is or because it is unclear, from your terms and conditions, what [00:05:00] your offerings include.
So my point is it should be a choice, not an obligation if you wanted to give a refund. But refund requests is the number one pain point that I talk to clients about. New clients, of course, because once we've done this together, that problem tends to fall away. But new clients, pain point, refund requests with online offerings, sometimes masterminds.
The second issue is when participants want more time to access the content because they haven't engaged. What do your terms and conditions say about extension of time? What do your terms and conditions say about the term of the offering and the licence that you are giving them in terms of your intellectual property?
You're giving them a licence to access your content for a particular period. What is that period? Is it clear? And what do your terms and conditions say about the inability to attend group coaching calls, one-on-one sessions, mastermind sessions, or to attend webinars? What do your terms and conditions say [00:06:00] about this?
Now, if they don't address this, and if it's unclear what your boundaries are around extensions of the term, then you can find yourself in a really awkward and often unpleasant situation when a participant's reaching out to you and saying, Hey, I know it's been six months, or I know it's been twelve months, but I haven't been able to engage because I've had all of these things happen in my life, can I please have access for longer? And for whatever reason, that just might not be possible due to the nature of your offering and how you are structuring your offerings, particularly if it's a course or program where you're drip feeding or where you're turning up live, or even if it's a mastermind.
So making sure your terms and conditions or your agreements for your offerings are tailored in line with how you'd like to deal with extensions of time requests and what your boundaries are and whether you can extend the term, can be really helpful in maintaining positive client [00:07:00] relationships or positive participant relationships because we don't wanna end things on a downer.
We don't wanna end things on a sour note, or we don't wanna leave participants dissatisfied. We want to be able to ensure that we're setting ourselves up for success. Said it again, I say it so many times in this episode, but setting ourselves up for success with our documents and our online offerings and our masterminds so that there is no confusion and it's crystal clear and we can easily point to our documents to say, Hey, this is what I can do, or this is what I can't do and this is why.
And it was in the terms from the outset. And you'll find that if it is in the terms from the outset, it's much, much easier for participants to digest if they're not getting a yes answer, because it was there and it was available for them to read, and it was really crystal clear. So that's the second one.
And the third point that I wanna talk about is failed recurring payments. If you have payment plans as an option for your offerings. And this comes up a lot because failed payments are going to happen, let's be honest. Let's just [00:08:00] call it. And it doesn't mean that anybody's doing anything wrong, and it doesn't mean that people are deliberately trying not to pay you.
The majority of the time, in my experience, a really good process internally in your business, which is designed to identify really quickly if a payment has defaulted and you've got a system in place where you or your team, ideally not you, but someone in your team can quickly reach out to the participant to say, Hey, I think your payment details need to be updated.
We've had a default payment or dishonoured payment. Most of the time, the client will write back and say, my gosh, I'm sorry. Either didn't have funds in my account or my card expired and I have to update the details. But if you don't nip that in the bud and jump on that really quickly when it happens, these things can linger and it can be really uncomfortable to reach out to somebody three or four months later to say, oh gosh, sorry, your payments for the last three or four months have defaulted. Can you now update your payment details, because that's a significant [00:09:00] sum that they now need to come up with at once, where it's not a significant sum if they're doing it in bite-sized chunks each month.
So having your processes and systems in place to make sure you're dealing with that in your business really quickly can be the difference between a smooth transition and update or not, and having this outlined in your terms and conditions that if this happens, this is what we'll do. This is our process. And then we set out what happens if somebody continues to default. So if you want to be in a position where you can revoke somebody's access, for example, to your content, if they have a continuing failed payment, or if payments continue to be dishonoured, you need to outline that in your terms.
Otherwise, it's not reasonable for you to do so. Don't just cut somebody off because then you're faced with a different legal argument, which is that they're being asked to pay for something that they're not getting and that, my friend, can become very complicated. It can be avoided. The point is, if you have payment [00:10:00] plans, you need to give proper consideration to how it is you wanna deal with issues and hiccups with those payment plans. And if you outline that in your terms and conditions in a way that's aligned for your business and in a way that you know your business will operate, so you can implement it, then you're setting yourself up for success because participants know from the outset what's gonna happen.
And then if it does happen, ideally, you'll have your emails all set up in the back end of your business somewhere, and your team know which email to send and when, and they refer back to the terms and conditions. So there's a complete synergy between what you are saying, what you're doing, and how you're doing it, and what it is you're asking the participant to do.
If you need to get to termination, then that's something else that needs to be set out in your terms and conditions so that lawfully you can terminate and that you've set out in your terms and conditions what happens with the unpaid amount. So those are some of the things that need to be really carefully crafted in your terms and conditions [00:11:00] for your online offerings and your programs and your masterminds to make sure you and your team are clear on how it is that your business is gonna deal with hiccups if they arise.
But then make sure that you and your team act consistent with what you've set out in your documentation. If you don't know what you're supposed to be doing when these things arise, then your documents aren't serving you and you haven't likely given them the time and attention they deserve to set them up properly for your business.
So those are the three pain points that I talk to clients about most often when we are talking about your legals for your online offerings and your masterminds. So that's refund requests, participants wanting more time or extensions to the term and failed recurring payments when you are utilising payment plans.
Those things don't need to become hiccups. They don't need to become problems, and [00:12:00] the way you avoid that is by making sure that your legal documents, your terms and conditions, or your agreements are set up properly and tailored for your business at the very beginning. If you are listening to this and you are not quite sure what your documents say about some of these things, or if this sparked your interest and you'd like to talk about this a little more, feel free to reach out.
That's what I'm here for. I would love to have the conversation with you, and let's have a look at what you've got. Let's identify any gaps. Let's identify any pitfalls, and we put a plan in place going forward to set you up for success to make sure that your legal documents for your online offerings and your masterminds setting both you and the participants up for a beautiful, successful, long-term sustainable relationship moving forward. Thank you so much for joining me. As always, I appreciate your time so much.
I'll catch you next week. [00:13:00]
LINKS:
Previous episode mentioned: How to use your legals to convert prospects to clients
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