There’s a school of thought in the high ticket sales world that says the main reason a client pays a healthy fee is because their life/business/health/relationship is a total hot mess and your program is going to completely turn it around.
And, while I’ll never say that’s never a reason, the reality my clients and I have found is quite different:
The vast majority of the time, the reason why a client wants our program and pays the fee is not because they totally suck in all the areas we help with, but because they are already doing quite well and want to reach another level.
The last 4-5 people who signed up for my 1-month private intensive were a fantastic example of this.
In that program we work primarily on content writing to attract leads, and all of these people were already good (even excellent) writers.
That’s actually the case for most of my clients, but the last few were particularly phenomenal, so it got me thinking about this more.
Yet, the reason they signed up was to have help mastering my particular way of writing content and positioning offers.
In many cases this does result in a big change to their business’s bottom line (like going from never making more than $50K/month to having their first $100K month), which does fit with the thinking that high-ticket offers provide an amazing result.
But in this case it’s more like going from strength to strength, rather than going from “hot mess” to “total rockstar.”
It all depends what the client’s “Point A” is (where the outcome is Point B ).
Does that make sense?
I think of when I learned about asymptotes in calculus class.
An asymptote is a line to which a curve approaches at infinity.
Meaning that the curve gets closer and closer to the straight line, but never touches.
(Google “asymptote” for some illustrative images 😉 )
It’s counter-intuitive, but if we think about the straight line as representing perfection, the closer someone already is to the line the more they are actually interested in paying for high-dollar help to approach even closer to the line.
I think of NBA coaches, who are the highest paid even though their players come to them already the most skilled of any players out there.
(Of course, that’s not perfectly analogous to high-ticket life/business coaching, but there are some similarities that are worth pondering.)
I say all this because if you’ve gone through any of the standard high-ticket marketing/sales trainings, you know that most of the language they tell you to use is geared towards the “hot mess” people who are at square zero with regard to the problem you are solving.
Like, the webinars that start out with 15 minutes of talking about how bad their life/business is.
And the sales calls that consist 30-50% of asking them to describe their pain points.
Don’t get me wrong – to a high achiever, it IS painful to not be at their next level yet.
But not in the hot-mess kinda way.
So when you use the “isn’t your life a hot mess” type wording for everything, you’re actually repelling the people who are (1) most likely to pay your fee easily and (2) will most speedily get results from having your help.
Back when I first started my business nearly 8 years ago, I used to think that only the “square zero” type people were on Facebook because they were all that ever signed up for my discovery calls or engaged with my content.
Now, for the past 3 years, I’ve been shocked and delighted as the already-successful folks pour into my program every single week. And things show no signs of slowing down any time soon.
What made the difference, I think, was in my understanding of who my ideal client actually was, plus how I communicated that understanding in the way I wrote my content and conducted sales.
The “Strong Method” (my positioning/marketing/sales method that I teach) is designed precisely for attracting the already-successful type clients.
The way we write content consists of about 1%-5% “problem description” and 60-90% “method description.” (and usually 5-10% CTA)
This is the exact opposite of most high-ticket content trainings, which have those ratios flipped. 60-90% describing the problem, and 1-5% describing the solution.
(or even zero, the “solution” is just “get on a call with me”)
I’ve found that a lot of coaches and experts have room to improve in how they explain their solution precisely because they haven’t had much practice at it… because everyone is telling them that isn’t important and clients don’t want to know the details of it anyway.
The already-successful type clients do tend to want to know, though. 😉 Because this isn’t their first rodeo – they’ve invested in your type of help before, and they are looking for specialized solutions now to reach their next level. So they need to know what your thing is all about.
So this is one of the top skills to work on if you’re looking to attract more of those types of clients.
(and also to dramatically increase your profitability and free time by cutting down on time spent on sales – even eliminating sales calls if you want to – because these kinds of people say “yes” more easily)
Nitpicking how people describe their solution in their FB posts is one of the main things I do in my 30-day 1-on-1 intensive.
We also look at how you’re describing your offer (using my 500-word framework) to see how you can better call out the clients you want and the type of outcome they’re seeking as well as where they’re starting from.
And see what you can tweak/add to your marketing, sales and lead generation process according to the organic system I’ve developed, to make it all go more smoothly and have you attracting the right clients for the healthiest fees possible and the least effort possible also.
If you’re interested, the next step is to send me a private message on Facebook and we’ll chat to see if it’s a good match for you and your business. 🙂
A short summary of the program, including the pricing, can be found here.