New Opportunity vs. Improvement Offer
Stop selling a better mousetrap — sell a new opportunity that isn't their fault.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
Borrowed from mentor Dan Kennedy, this framework sorts offers into three evolutionary phases — repair, improvement, and new opportunity. Improvement offers carry an 'er' (better, faster, cheaper) and are hard to sell because a prospect who failed before reads them as 'a better way to fail.' A new opportunity instead declares the old system broken, absolves the buyer of blame, and presents something categorically different. Brunson credits positioning ClickFunnels as a new opportunity — not a better website builder or CRM — for its fast rise.
Origin
Dan Kennedy taught Brunson the repair-to-improvement-to-new-opportunity evolution of offers 15–20 years ago, contradicting the 'build a better mousetrap' advice Brunson had been taught in college.
Core principles
- 01Improvement offers (better, faster, stronger, cheaper — anything with an 'er') are harder to sell because they imply another way to fail.
- 02A new opportunity reframes the past failure as the broken system's fault, not the buyer's.
- 03Position what you sell as a different thing, not a better version of what they already tried.
- 04New opportunities remove the buyer's shame and skyrocket conversions.
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose your offer's phase
Determine whether you're pitching a repair, an improvement, or a genuinely new opportunity.
- 2
Hunt for the 'er'
Scan your messaging for comparative words like better, faster, stronger, or cheaper — each one marks an improvement offer.
Pro tip Every time you catch yourself saying 'better,' you're positioning it wrong.
- 3
Reframe the past as a broken system
Tell the prospect their previous failure wasn't their fault — the system they used was broken.
- 4
Present a categorically new thing
Name and package your mechanism as a distinct new opportunity, not a variation of what they already tried.
In the wild
Brunson cites Jobs not pitching 'a better CD that holds 100 songs' but declaring CDs a broken system and pulling out the iPod — 'a thousand songs in your pocket' — as a new opportunity.
→ The reframe from improvement to new opportunity is credited with the product taking off.
Amid existing website builders, email tools, and CRMs, Brunson refused to pitch 'a better CRM,' which would mean fighting on features. He positioned ClickFunnels as a completely different platform that builds a new thing called funnels.
→ He credits the new-opportunity positioning for ClickFunnels taking off as fast as it did a decade ago.
Common mistakes
Selling a better version of a failed thing
Offering 'a better keto diet' to someone who failed at keto reads as 'a better way to fail' and repels them.
Competing on features
Improvement positioning drags you into a feature war instead of owning a new category.
Is it for you?
Best for
Info-product creators and software founders entering a crowded category.
Not ideal for
Pure commodity plays where customers explicitly want the same thing, only cheaper.
From the transcript
“anytime you hear the word er in a thing that's an improvement offer”
“it's not a better way to do that it's a different way to do that”
From the episode
Russell Brunson: How to Build a Million-Dollar Sales Funnel
Russell Brunson