How do you sell high-ticket stuff?
One tip
Some of you read my content for fun.
Hopefully, most of you are implementing it.
For today’s piece, I’m gonna assume that you’ve got at least one product on offer.
Say, you’re selling an eBook. Or a video course.
The next step would be to start thinking about a product suite.
This will reduce your risk because instead of forcing a customer to say yes (buy) or no (bounce), now, there are options that can cause them to buy in situations where they might not have.
Product suite
Here’s an example of a suite
eBook
Video course
Video course + assistance / Service
Consulting
Done for you
Having different products allows people to determine which option makes the most sense for them.
Different people will use different criteria but an obvious example is budget.
Framing and pricing architecture
Having a high-end consulting option, if nothing else, helps frame the other options in a more favorable light.
This alone should be a good enough reason for you to include it.
This kind of pricing architecture, you’re already familiar with.
More on pricing architecture in this series.
Think back to the decoy option when you’re buying popcorn in the theater.
Here, the middle option tries to change the choice architecture from:
“Do I want a small or a large, it’s $4 more”
to:
“If I don’t get a large, I’m practically stealing from myself!”
In a similar way, having a high-end option makes the middle more attractive.
That $2,000 course seems more affordable when there’s a consulting option for $10,000.
Gwyneth Paltrow gets a lot of hate for the products her company Goop sells; candles that smell like her vagina, vampire repellent, vagina eggs, and vagina steamers.
However, she’s manufacturing outrage. Which turns into eyeballs and visitors, which turns into sales on the actual normal products they sell. Back in 2018: “Goop has raised $82 Million to date and is valued at over $250.” (Couldn’t find something for 2023 unfortunately.)
But there’s another reason why you should consider including it.
Some people just want the best
Decision-making science makes a distinction between satisficers and maximizers (Parket et al., 2007).
Some people just pick the premium option because it either maps to how they identify: “I only buy the best” or because they’re interested in mitigating the downside.
This is actually a theory on why people are willing to pay a premium for brands. They’re not buying that Samsung tv over the Yippee-ki-yay one because they expect it’ll be much better but rather because they believe it’s less likely to suck.
Of course it’s never just one thing and these things are much more complex IRL.
So set a price such that if someone were to buy it, even though the probability is low, you’d be happy. If you’re slightly annoyed when people buy, your price is too low.
This is the same technique you should use for work you don’t wanna do. It’s almost always a pricing problem. This is also true for “bad clients”. If you priced that product 10X what you’re charging, would you still consider them bad? In many instances, the answer is no.
Expect to make the sale just a handful of times a year.
Remember, these are sales you don’t need. So when you sell your $20K consulting just three times a year, that’s an extra $60K straight in your pocket.
Jobs to be done
We’ve talked about JTBD many times but it’s worth bringing to your attention once again because it’s a common mistake to have a suite that’s a random assortment of crap thrown together.
A wide variety of stuff, or a portfolio of small bets as Daniel Vassallo calls it, is fine but a product suite must revolve around one JTBD.
What distinguishes the options is the degree of handholding and budget a person has.
How close do they need you to take them from A to B?
That is what sets the price!
Btw, notice how different this is from what most solopreneurs (or even companies) do. They figure out the scope (how much work it is) then determine the price. We’re determining the value, pricing based on that, and setting the scope last. The scope is a function of the price!!!!!!! Not the other way around. For more, read Pricing based on value.
If the visitor is a self-starter, they got a small budget, or they first wanna see if you’re legit, then your eBook might make sense.
If they got a burning problem that needs to get solved yesterday or they’ve been fucking around for so long that they know they need someone to hold them accountable, then your premium consulting might be for them.
Done-for-you
I saved this one for last.
For most people, this is the bottom of the product suite. I believe this should be your MOST premium offer.
For me, it’s also how I earn the majority of my money together with consulting.
You see, everything that takes up your time should be significantly more costly because of opportunity cost.
“If I’m working with you, I’m not working on these other projects.”
It’s a very high-end but appealing value proposition for two reasons:
i. Along every step of the product suite, we’re reducing risk. With this last option, you’re handling almost everything, thereby decreasing risk significantly, which is the second reason it should be more expensive.
ii. Most people just don’t wanna do the work. Everyone that joins YRC always tells me how serious they are, but few actually do the work required. If there was a way to pay someone to go to the gym for you, a ton of people would buy it.
I’m thinking of making a video course on high-end selling. Because I practice what I preach I wanna see if there’s demand first.
Who’s it for: The only requirement really is just for you to be in the game. If you’re at 0, selling nothing, it’s not gonna work.
However, this might surprise you, you also don’t need a huge audience. You just need to be selling something and have some street cred.
E.g. almost no one knows who I am, but when I do my fishing (cold outreach), they can look me up and see my essays, connections to academia & industry experts, podcast, spoke at Meta, blablabla. This gives people confidence that you’re not just gonna take their money and run because you’ve invested in building a reputation. (Remember the Samsung tv example from earlier.)
What will you learn:
How to pitch consulting & done for you to both warm and cold leads so you’ll be able to get customers
How to build your product suite and make a good price architecture
How to perform a diagnosis (we didn’t cover this today, but you’ll need to jump on a call to close high ticket stuff typically)
How to craft a great proposal fast
& how to design a good choice architecture in your proposal which increases the likelihood they will purchase
Will end up covering more but these are the main bullet points.
Thinking of pricing it at €2K, with an early bird price of 1K. If you’re interested email me (or DM here) & I’ll whip up a payment page.
Same as usual, I’m gonna see if the demand makes sense, if it does, I’ll make the course and if it doesn’t, I’ll refund you.
Btw, this is also a good opportunity to watch what I do instead of what I say. I’ve told you before to keep it ghetto, presale, test demand, etc.
This post + email that’s about to go out is a good example of how you can test your own stuff!
You’re thinking of a product that teaches 6-figure D2C brands how to optimize their landing page’s conversion rate?
Write a post with some good advice and end it with your low-pressure pitch.
“Hey I’m thinking about launching X. It’ll cost Y. It’s great because of Z. If you’re interested buy a presale. If I achieve [goal], I’ll go ahead and otherwise, I’ll refund.”
Alright, my back hurts and my eyes are killing me.
RJY signing off
Talk to you tomorrow.
References
Parker, A. M., Bruine de Bruin, W., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Do maximizers make better decisions than satisficers? PsycEXTRA Dataset. https://doi.org/10.1037/e722852011-072
Free version: http://sjdm.cybermango.org/journal/jdm7830.pdf