Reverse-Engineer a Successful Coach’s Offer Stack and Funnel

Somewhere in your niche there’s a coach who is clearly winning. Full programs, a steady drip of content, an offer for every budget. It’s tempting to copy them piece by piece, but a list of their products tells you nothing about how the pieces work together. The money is in the connections.

This prompt runs a coach funnel analysis for you. You feed an AI everything you can observe about a successful competitor, and it reverse-engineers their offer stack and funnel into a clear map: what each offer is for, how a stranger becomes a buyer, and most importantly, the gaps you can own. By the end of this page you’ll also understand why the prompt is built the way it is, so your next teardown is sharper.

When to use this

• A competitor is clearly ahead of you and you want to understand their model, not just envy it.
• You’re about to build or rebuild your own offer ladder and want a proven structure to react against.
• You can see a coach’s free content, prices, and channels but can’t tell how they actually fit together.
• You want to find an underserved sub-segment instead of fighting head-to-head.
• You’re entering a new niche and need a fast map of how money moves in it.

The prompt

Copy this whole block into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini:

You are a direct-response strategist who has built and audited funnels for dozens of online coaches. You think in offer ladders, traffic-to-cash paths, and the psychology of why people buy. Your job is to reverse-engineer a competitor's offer stack and funnel from the evidence I give you, then show me where the real opportunity is for my business.

Before you analyze anything, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if the inputs below are vague or contradictory. Otherwise, proceed.

CONTEXT
- The coach/brand I'm studying: {{COMPETITOR}}
- What I've observed about them (offers, prices, content, channels): {{SOURCE_MATERIAL}}
- My own niche: {{YOUR_NICHE}}
- What I want out of this analysis: {{YOUR_GOAL}}
- The price band I can credibly play in: {{PRICE_RANGE}}

TASK
Produce a structured teardown in these five sections:
1. OFFER STACK MAP. List every offer from free to premium as a ladder. For each rung, infer the price, the promise, and the role it plays (lead magnet, tripwire, core offer, ascension, retention).
2. THE FUNNEL PATH. Map the likely journey from cold stranger to paying client: traffic source -> first touch -> nurture -> conversion event -> upsell. Note where money is actually made.
3. THE PSYCHOLOGY. Name the 2-3 buyer beliefs or desires each major offer is built to satisfy. Explain why the sequence works.
4. THE GAPS. Identify 3 specific weaknesses, missing rungs, or underserved sub-segments a smaller competitor could exploit.
5. MY 90-DAY PLAY. Recommend the single offer ladder I should build first, given my niche and price band. Be concrete: names, prices, and the first lead magnet.

CONSTRAINTS
- Label every inferred number or claim as an inference, not a fact. Do not invent specific revenue figures or private data.
- Keep me out of legal trouble: model the strategy, never suggest copying their exact copy, branding, or materials.
- Use plain language. No buzzwords. No filler.
- End with one sharp question that pressure-tests my plan.

How to customize it

Replace the five {{VARIABLES}} before you send it. The richer your {{SOURCE_MATERIAL}}, the better the teardown.

See it in action (full example)

Here is the exact prompt, filled in for a productivity coach studying a larger competitor. This is the whole input, nothing hidden:

You are a direct-response strategist who has built and audited funnels for dozens of online coaches. You think in offer ladders, traffic-to-cash paths, and the psychology of why people buy. Your job is to reverse-engineer a competitor's offer stack and funnel from the evidence I give you, then show me where the real opportunity is for my business.

Before you analyze anything, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if the inputs below are vague or contradictory. Otherwise, proceed.

CONTEXT
- The coach/brand I'm studying: a six-figure productivity coach for solopreneurs, big on Instagram, sells a "Focus OS" system
- What I've observed about them (offers, prices, content, channels): free "What's your focus type?" quiz, $27 Notion template pack, $497 8-week group program called Focus OS, $5k 6-month 1:1 mastermind, daily Instagram reels, weekly Friday newsletter, a private community for program buyers
- My own niche: productivity coaching for ADHD founders
- What I want out of this analysis: build my own lead magnet to paid-offer ladder for the next 90 days
- The price band I can credibly play in: $50 entry offer up to a $3k group program

TASK
Produce a structured teardown in these five sections... [rest of the prompt unchanged]

And here is the complete output the model returns:

A couple of your inputs are clear enough to proceed, so I’ll flag my assumptions inline rather than stall you with questions. Everything below marked (inferred) is my best read of the evidence, not confirmed fact.

1. Offer Stack Map

Rung	Offer	Price (inferred)	Role
0	“What’s your focus type?” quiz	Free	Lead magnet + segmentation. Captures email and sorts people into buyer types.
1	Notion template pack	$27	Tripwire. Turns a subscriber into a buyer fast and cheaply, which is the hardest psychological step.
2	Focus OS group program	$497	Core offer. This is almost certainly where most revenue and fulfillment energy lives.
3	1:1 mastermind	$5,000	Ascension. A small number of buyers fund a large share of profit.
4	Private community	Bundled with the program	Retention. Keeps buyers engaged, fuels testimonials, lowers refund rates.

The ladder is textbook: free, cheap, mid, premium, plus a retention layer. No gaps between rungs, which is what makes it feel inevitable to a buyer.

2. The Funnel Path

• Traffic source: daily Instagram reels (free, top-of-funnel attention).
• First touch: the quiz. It’s the bridge from social to owned email. Smart, because a quiz feels like value, not a form.
• Nurture: the Friday newsletter plus quiz-result-specific emails (inferred). This is where trust compounds.
• Conversion event: the $27 template pack as the first “yes,” then a launch or evergreen sequence into the $497 program.
• Upsell: program graduates get invited into the $5k mastermind.

Where the money is actually made: the $497 program is the volume engine, but the $5k mastermind likely drives a big slice of profit from a handful of clients (inferred). The $27 pack barely makes money on its own; its job is to create buyers.

3. The Psychology

• Quiz: satisfies the desire for self-understanding (“tell me about me”) and lowers commitment to near zero.
• $27 pack: satisfies the belief “I just need the right system.” It’s an identity purchase, not a price decision.
• $497 program: satisfies the desire for accountability and belonging, the things a template alone can’t give.
• $5k mastermind: satisfies status and the belief “I’m ready to be treated as a serious operator.”

The sequence works because each rung resolves the limitation of the one below it. A template can’t keep you accountable, so the program makes sense. A group can’t give you personal attention, so the mastermind makes sense.

4. The Gaps

1. The offer is generic to “solopreneurs.” Nothing speaks to ADHD founders specifically, who have different failure modes (object permanence, task initiation, shame spirals). That’s an underserved sub-segment you can own outright.
2. Nothing between $27 and $497. That’s a wide canyon. A $97-$149 self-paced mini-course or a low-cost group sprint could capture people who want more than a template but aren’t ready for a 8-week commitment.
3. No “done-with-you” weekly rhythm at a mid price. The retention layer is bundled into the premium program only. A standalone $50-$75/month accountability membership is a missing recurring-revenue rung.

5. Your 90-Day Play

Build one tight ladder aimed squarely at ADHD founders:

• Lead magnet (free): a quiz or short guide, “The 3 ADHD founder traps that quietly kill your week.” Mirror their quiz mechanic, but the angle is yours.
• Entry offer ($59): “The 20-Minute Reset” – a short toolkit of ADHD-friendly planning rituals. Sits inside the canyon they left open.
• Core offer ($1,200, 6-week group): “Founder Focus Sprint” – small cohort, body-doubling sessions, ADHD-specific accountability. Well inside your $3k ceiling and clearly differentiated.

Start with the lead magnet and the $59 offer in the first 30 days. Validate demand before you build the group program.

Pressure-test question: You can credibly go up to $3k, but your proposed core offer is $1,200 – are you under-pricing because the larger margin scares you, or because $1,200 is genuinely the right price for an ADHD founder who’s burned out on programs that didn’t accommodate them?

That’s a strategy session, not a guess. Every number is flagged as an inference, the gaps are specific, and the 90-day play is something you could start building tomorrow.

Why this works

Four LLM principles are doing the heavy lifting here. Learn them and every analysis prompt you write gets better:

1. Role priming. “You are a direct-response strategist who has built and audited funnels for dozens of online coaches” tells the model which lens to think through. Without it, you get a polite summary of the offers you listed. With it, the model reasons in ladders, conversion events, and buyer psychology, because that’s how the role it’s playing actually thinks.
2. Specificity in, specificity out. The teardown is only as good as your {{SOURCE_MATERIAL}}. “They sell some courses” produces mush. The detailed list – quiz, $27 pack, $497 program, $5k mastermind, channels – gives the model real evidence to reason from. Collect the inputs like a detective before you paste.
3. Constraints as quality control. Two constraints carry most of the weight. “Label every inferred number as an inference” stops the model from hallucinating confident revenue figures, which is the single biggest risk in competitor analysis. And “never suggest copying their exact copy or branding” keeps the output on the right side of strategy versus theft. Telling the model what NOT to do is as powerful as telling it what to do.
4. A clarifying-questions gate. The “ask up to 3 clarifying questions first” line lets the model fill gaps by asking instead of guessing. When your inputs are thin, it’ll ask; when they’re rich, it proceeds. That one line is the difference between a tailored teardown and a generic one. The closing pressure-test question does the same job in reverse, forcing you to defend your plan instead of just nodding at it.

Do this now

1. Pick one competitor who is clearly ahead of you and spend 20 minutes collecting evidence: their free offer, every price you can find, and the channels they post on.
2. Copy the prompt above into ChatGPT or Claude and fill in all five variables, especially {{SOURCE_MATERIAL}}.
3. Send it. If it asks clarifying questions, answer them honestly.
4. Take the “90-Day Play” section and build the lead magnet it recommends first. Validate before you build the big offer.

Pro tips

• Run it on two competitors. Where their gaps overlap is the clearest opening in your market. Where they differ tells you the market is still being defined.
• Paste real evidence, not memory. Drop in actual sales-page text, email subject lines, or ad headlines you’ve seen. The model reasons far better from raw material than from your paraphrase.
• Re-run it on yourself. Feed it your own offers as the competitor. The gaps it finds in you are the leaks costing you money right now.
• Keep the inference labels. When you share the output with a partner or contractor, those (inferred) tags stop everyone from treating a guess as gospel.

Related

• Run a Rapid Competitor Teardown of Three Rival Coaches
• The Market Gap Finder: A Skill to Spot Underserved Coaching Demand
• The Coaching Offer Architect: A Skill to Design Irresistible Offers
• Create Low-Ticket Lead Magnets That Feed Your Coaching Revenue