The Offer Stack
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Brunson's presentation structure for making a price feel small, built on one observation: in the moment of decision, the human mind remembers the last thing it was told. Most presenters list components in descending value, so the final thing an audience hears is the weakest bonus — and that is what they weigh the price against. The stack inverts this. You introduce each component, assign it a value, then return to a cumulative slide showing everything so far. By the last component, the audience is looking at the total, not the item. The price is revealed against that total, and the delta does the persuading.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Break the offer into named components
List every distinct thing the buyer receives: the core program, each bundled course, the community, the events, the tools. Brunson's point is that buyers cannot value what they have not seen enumerated.
Pro tip Ali could already reel his off naturally in conversation — camera confidence course, creativepreneur course. Write down the version you would say to a friend.
- 2
Introduce component one and justify its value
Explain what it is, why it is awesome, and state the standalone value. This is teaching, not listing.
- 3
Show the running stack after each component
Return to a slide (or whiteboard, or physical props) that displays everything introduced so far with the cumulative value. Then introduce the next component, and stack again.
Pro tip The repetition is the mechanism. Each return trains the audience to hold the total in mind rather than the item.
Watch out Skipping the cumulative return turns the stack back into a descending list, which is the failure mode it exists to fix.
- 4
Land on the full stack and its total value
At the end, show every element together with the total. This total is what the audience associates the price with — not the last bonus mentioned.
- 5
Reveal the price against the total
Drop the actual price only after the total is on screen, so the differential reads as obvious value rather than as a claim.
Watch out Announcing a headline value early and then padding with weak bonuses creates internal conflict — the audience discounts the whole claim.
- 6
Deliver it in your own format
The psychology is fixed; the presentation is not. Brunson uses slides because he needs them to stay on track when selling. Dean Graziosi does the whole thing with a single slide. Others write on a whiteboard and reveal items by peeling tape, or hold up physical products.
Pro tip If your audience knows you from YouTube, do it at your desk in your normal video format so it feels like you, not like a pitchman.
Watch out Copying a persona you are uncomfortable with is what makes the pitch feel awkward, and the audience feels the awkwardness.
In the wild
Brunson spent four or five years attending two or three events a month to watch people sell from stage. The common pattern: present the $10,000 core thing, then a $1,000 bonus, then a $50 bonus — the weakest item last. Then claim the package is worth $5,000 but costs $1,000. Because the mind holds the most recent item, the audience mentally compares the $1,000 price to the $50 bonus, decides it does not add up, and stalls. The stack reverses the order of impression so the final thought is the full total.
→ Reframes the price comparison from the weakest component to the accumulated whole.
Ali confessed that he could enthusiastically list what is in his course to a friend looking over his shoulder — this bundle, that bundle — but froze when the same content sat on webinar slides someone else had built. Brunson's prescription was to keep the stack psychology and drop the format: do it at your desk, shot like a normal YouTube video, in the voice his audience already knows. Print out the modules, hold each one up, say what it is worth, and set it on the pile.
→ Ali realised he could run the structure in his own style rather than imitating Brunson's stage persona.
Common mistakes
Ending on the weakest bonus
Descending-value lists leave the cheapest item as the freshest impression, and the audience prices your offer against it. Stack cumulatively so the last impression is the total.
Copying someone else's selling persona
Brunson says the people most uncomfortable selling are the ones trying to be him. Take the psychology and structure, then build a delivery style that matches how your audience already experiences you.
Assuming the stack requires slides
Brunson uses slides because he does not freestyle when selling and needs the sequence. Graziosi does it with one slide; others use whiteboards or physical props. The medium is free, the order is not.
From the transcript
“but the problem is the human mind you probably know this better than I do but the human mind only remembers the last thing that…”
“so the first thing you're going get is this and here's the value associated with it right so that's how much it's worth then you're…”
“then you have all of the things they going to get in the offer and this is where introduce like whatever the its value is”
From the episode
A Sales & Marketing Coaching Session with Russell Brunson
Russell Brunson