The Visionary Files

The Thing No One Tells You About Closing High Ticket Clients FAST

• Adriane Galea • Episode 93

Share episode

Signing high-ticket clients FAST - every service-based biz owner's dream, right?

And, it is possible. There are, in fact, effective ways to speed up the buying process – even when closing high-ticket clients.  But what no one is talking about is how engaging in these kinds of short-cuts only tee you up for another set of challenges down the line.

What will always be true is this: the only thing that speeds up the buying process is better marketing. This episode gets into the workarounds that circumvent this truth, and why they are hardly worth it in the long run.


Quick overview of what we cover:

  • What high ticket prospective buyers expect from your sales process that low-ticket buyers don’t 
  • Why fine-tuning your messaging, audience familiarity, and the way you communicate is the slowest of the fastest ways to convert prospective buyers -  but always the way in which they’ll feel safest investing with you
  • Why aiming for higher sales call volume almost always leads to less sales
  • How to do less sales calls with more qualified buyers using friction points in your sales process (which almost always leads to more sales) 
  • Why closing the sales either comes from better marketing prior to the call…or a shady distortion of NLP techniques during it
  • The three things every prospective buyer should know about you before getting on the phone
  • Why higher quality clients who don’t burn you out, only come from higher quality leads in the first place
  • Why fast closes will increase your attrition rate (the people who fall off/stop paying you)
  • How high attrition rates lead to biz instability, inconsistent revenue, lower retention and referral rates, and…need we say more?
  • One more time for the ones in the back: the only thing that speeds up the buying process is better marketing 😇


RESOURCES: 




LET’S CONNECT: 



- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Loved this episode? If you leave a review or share it with your friends on social, my team will send you a copy of one of our favorite business resources! Take a screenshot and email it over to us at support@soulpreneur.co or DM it to @soulpreneur_co

This episode was first published at soulpreneur.co/093

Speaker 1:

And if you don't have those things and you're having to convince someone or you're having to do all of that marketing on that call, then it's probably going to take a lot of sales psychology and NLP to change the way that someone thinks. That is literally the goal changing the way that someone thinks so that, in my opinion, like that's manipulation and I'm not. I'm not here for that. Welcome to the Scaling Lounge, a podcast for established service-based business owners who believe in working smarter, resting often, playing always and dreaming bigger. I'm your host, adrienne Gallia, and I want to help you create time, financial and lifestyle freedom by scaling with systems, strategy and the support of a team, so that your business is able to grow, with or without you. Let's get to it. Hey, I want to chat about some things that I've heard recently. That not necessarily things that I've heard recently, but some conversations that I've had recently where folks are surprised about signing high ticket clients Because there's a lot of stuff that people just aren't telling you about what it takes to actually do this, and this is not meant to be like newbie information. This is like a larger conversation that I wish that business owners in general were having, because it is impacting there are. There are several people that I work with who are making really great money in their business and feel like they're doing something wrong, because there's a lot of stuff that exists out there on the internet that makes them feel like they're not signing as many clients as they should, their conversion rates are too low, that because they're not signing clients really quickly, they must be doing something wrong, etc. Etc. And that is completely not the case. And if you are on the newer end of your journey too, then like, let this just be illuminating for you for where you're at. So what do I mean, first and foremost, when I say high ticket? What does that mean? I don't have a definition for you. That's the unhelpful part. Depends on your industry. So I in general say if it constitutes having an application or a conversation, it's probably high ticket.

Speaker 1:

If it's something that's not just click to cart, it's probably high ticket. It's possible that you are selling high ticket where you are, where you are having a click to cart, but if you're doing that, you probably have a really good reputation with clients. So if you are seeing other business owners who are doing this like, for example, I know that there's one person that she's been around for quite some time. She's got, I don't know, upwards of 100,000 followers on Instagram, 60, 70,000, 1000 followers on Instagram. Been around for a long time and has built a lot of authority as a business coach. And if you want to get in on her, it's not her entry level offer like you should already be making money, but it's her lowest. It's her lowest level, like it's. If you are on the newer side, it's where you would start with her and it's, I think, 10 or $12,000, which I would agree in any market like that's high ticket. But she does click to cart. Like she doesn't do sales calls for this you don't apply, it's just if you want in, you can buy it. She's able to do this because she's been in this space for a really long time and it's very public knowledge that she makes multi seven figures a year and it's very public knowledge that she has made. She has taken a dozen or two business owners from. You know over the over the seven figure mark Like she's. She has helped make quote unquote I don't think anyone makes, but has helped a dozen, a couple dozen people obtain like million dollars per year in their business and so that's that's street cred. That's a lot of street cred.

Speaker 1:

So, first and foremost, if you are trying to sell higher ticket and you are hearing anyone out in the in the world say that you get to do whatever you want in your business, you can have whatever sales process you want and selling high ticket is maybe not as not it's not happening as quickly or as as easily as you would like it to be, and it's because you are not having conversation. You're like I don't want to have sales calls, I don't want to. I don't want to do X, y or Z Like. That's far. I agree with that to a point that you don't have to do those things, but you have to find a workaround for them. If you're not, if you don't want to do sales calls, what else are you going to do? Are you going to? Are you going to do a sales process in the DMs, like, are you going to have a sales conversation there? Are you going to try to accomplish this with your marketing? What are you going to do in lieu of a sales call?

Speaker 1:

Because unless you've established that type of like, I call it street cred that that that person that I was just talking about has like, you're not going to make those sales. People aren't just going to magically be like, oh my gosh, this $10,000 thing. Like you're right, I think I really need this and I'm just going to buy it right now. Like it's very rare that that's going to happen. So the thing, like the thesis statement of this episode is the only thing that speeds up the buying process is better marketing, and that's it.

Speaker 1:

If you wanna speed the buying process up from the point at which someone discovers you to the point at which you make a sale, the only way to speed that process up is through better marketing. That constitutes messaging. That constitutes understanding who you're speaking to. That constitutes understanding, excuse me, understanding your values and being able to articulate them in a way that makes someone feel safe to buy with you. And that is not the same thing as being able to articulate the value of your offer, which is also needed. Value and values are different things. If you can articulate all of those things, your messaging is solid and you are consistently putting out that messaging and you are consistently marketing. That is the only way possible. You're gonna speed up that buying process, unless there are some asterisks around that, which I'm gonna get into, but for me.

Speaker 1:

None of those feel good. There's no judgment around this. If you do any of these things. There's no judgment for the people who I know are absolutely doing these things. It's just for me I don't feel good and I know from the clients that I work with they're not into it either. So there are other ways, I guess, to speed up the buying process.

Speaker 1:

But if you wanna do it in a way that feels sleazy, I said there was no judgment, but I think it just uses some shady, some more manipulative type tactics and it's sort of all wrapped up in a nice little NLP bow of it's sales psychology. It's human behavior, right, but it's done with the intention of manipulating human behavior. If you want to make sales faster, it's either you need better marketing and you need to consistently produce better marketing, or you are going to have to learn how to manipulate human behavior in some way. And that really it sounds because the word manipulative is inherently like the connotation of that word is maybe not great. I say that without judgment, like there are lots of people who do this and I think they're well-intended. It's not for me, because I don't want to manipulate someone's behavior.

Speaker 1:

So what they're not telling you about this whole thing is that when you're doing sales calls for volume, your percentage is going to go way. Your close percentage is gonna go way down. What do I mean when I say this? So if you are like I would book a call book, a call book, a call book, a call and you're trying to get everyone humanly possible on that call, you want to hit a metric of I want to be on 10 sales calls a week, 20 sales calls a week, however many sales calls a week that it's gonna take for me to be able to have this much revenue and sign this many new clients and whatever, whatever, whatever. The more you're going for volume and you are, you are removing friction from the process of them getting on that call, where you're maybe not asking them a ton of questions. It's just hey, what's your name, what's your email address, pick a time. That is, there's very little friction there. It's very easy for someone to book a call with you If you are going for volume. That's the approach to take. Maybe you're disclosing the investment, maybe you're not. Maybe you're purposely withholding the investment, maybe you're not. Maybe you're asking some small amount of clarifying questions. Whatever that looks like for you In my I'm not going for volume, I am going for friction.

Speaker 1:

I want to put a lot of friction points in my process personally and this leads for me to have a much higher close rate Because, like on my calendarly form, which is what I currently use and have used for the last three years, I've I maxed out my questions. I use all 10 questions available to me and they are relatively specific, relatively. You can go find my call form if you want to look at the questions that I have on there. But when you are putting friction pieces in the way like that, if someone's number one willing to put the effort in to actually fill out all those questions, there's a little bit more buy-in and I personally disclose the investment and I don't think I have ever had a coach or mentor yeah, I'm actually now that I'm thinking this. I've never. I've always been told that I need to get rid of that. Don't include the investment.

Speaker 1:

The person I'm working with right now. This is like the one thing that I do not agree with him on in any way, shape or form and I won't do it. I won't do it. He's like you have to get rid of that, the investment on your call form, because the reasoning is people are going to make a buying decision previous to getting on, prior to getting on the call with you, before they even have all the information. And my response to that is I believe they should have all the information before they get on the call. Like I'm not trying to, that's not, it's just not how I do things. And you might say why are you working with someone if you don't agree with that? Like that's a really big sticking point? Because he's super helpful in all the other way and I have my own mind and can do things my own way, and he's super helpful in every other aspect. So that's what that is. But you can make that choice to do that or not do that.

Speaker 1:

But understand that when you are putting those pieces in place, it is naturally going to affect your call conversion rate and your closing conversion rate. If you have a questionnaire with 10 questions, if you are making someone fill out an application before you get on a call with them, you are naturally going to book less calls. That means you are putting friction in front of them inside of the process. If you remove that friction, it's going to, it's going to increase the number of calls that you get on, but it's going to decrease the number of calls you close and that is. I don't have a study to cite on that, but I'm telling you, I guarantee that that's the way that it works. So you have to. It's a trade-off. If you are newer in your business, if you have a new product that you're releasing, I would encourage you to get rid of some of that friction.

Speaker 1:

If you've been doing this for a while and you know how to do the sales calls and you know how to how to help people typically buy, typically what they're looking for based on this particular offer, include add friction. If you get to the point where you're like I need to increase the quality of the lead that I'm getting or I want to increase the quality of the client that I'm serving, in the long run, I need to know more information about them before I'm willing to actually take them on as a client, because I've maybe found some problematic working relationships in the past because I didn't have enough information before saying yes, that's the point at which you want to include friction and that's the point at which you can say I'm okay with getting on less calls and like I'm willing to tell the person no on the call if it's not a good fit, because I know a whole lot of people who say, oh, I won't accept anyone and I will definitely tell someone no if I don't think that I can help them. But what that actually translates to is they say yes to everyone because there's almost zero situation in which they would turn someone away because they fit the really general criteria, which is fine, like you've got. It's a learning process. So more friction, less sales calls, higher close rate, more volume, less friction, higher number of calls. Probably lower close rate. If you want to close those high ticket sales with a shorter lead time, that's not marketing based. So when I say, if you want to close that time at which it takes someone to go from hey, I just found you, hey, I'm interested in this offer, okay, I'm going to pay you for this it's all about your marketing and doing it every day, every day, every day, getting in front of them, adding value to them, showing that you understand what they're going through, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

If you want to shorten that time, it usually requires pressure. I don't say that in a bad way, but it usually requires pressure. And if you're like, oh, pressure wouldn't feel good, then don't do it. So, but it usually requires pressure. If you're like, oh, I would feel good about putting some pressure on someone to make that decision, like, I would feel good about that. Like, treat people the way that you want to be treated and treat your people the way that that's going to make the most sense for them, this usually requires understanding how to overcome a lot of objections. This is known as, like we handle objections. I don't do that. I don't handle people's objections. If I handle objections, I do it through my content.

Speaker 1:

If it's a question of I don't really want to get in a 12 month container with you because, like, sustainable growth lab is 12 months long, I don't want to get into a 12 month commitment with you, I'm very clear upfront that, like it would be irresponsible for me to have a lesser time in working with someone for that specific program because operations were. I say this all the time operations work is magical, but it's not a magic wand and a lot of that program. It is about growth, but it's about growing in a way that you're not going to burn yourself out in the long run. It creates a lot of operational capacity. It's actually about building infrastructure to be able to scale, and you cannot create infrastructure overnight. So it would be literally irresponsible of me to say you can come into this program for six months and then say, well, on the backend I'm going to figure out how to resign them, which I feel confident that I could do, but that's not the point. You've got to be willing to put a year in upfront with that. That's an objection. I don't handle that objection.

Speaker 1:

On the call, I mean, if someone has a question about it, I'm happy to say exactly what I just said here. But this is I'm creating content right now, that's giving you information about why I'm doing the things that I'm doing, without this being a direct call to action. This is marketing. My podcast is marketing. If you were ever interested in going through sustainable growth lab, you would know because I just said it right now in a completely unrelated conversation why I refuse to let someone in for less than 12 months.

Speaker 1:

Now I have safeguards in my contract that if they're not, if this is not for you in the first 30 days, you can get your money back. Like I'm not trying to hold somebody to account if they don't want to be there. I have another safeguard in my contract that after 90 days, if you feel that this is not what you wanted to do, that you well, this is really not what I was going for. This is not what I was expecting. If you feel like I've misled you in some way in making the sale, you can just leave. You're not getting your money back unless you've prepaid for additional. If you paid in full, like yes, but I have a 90 day safeguard, that is, you can get out of it.

Speaker 1:

This is just one example of how you can sprinkle in information around something that someone might have an objection around. If I were building out an email sequence, I would address this. If I were building out social media content, I would address this. Anywhere where I could have a chance to handle quote unquote, handle someone's objection prior to them ever getting on a call with me. I would take that opportunity so that I'm not having to when I get on the call with someone. My, honestly, my goal on a call is for someone gets on the call with me. They maybe have a question or two and then it's really like well, how do I just sign up for this? Like I already have more or less all the information and that's because I put a lot of intentional information in front of people before we ever get to that point. And that's just what I do. And maybe on a different episode, if you guys wanna hear this, I can talk more about how you can build that process out and you can actually build that type of marketing material out for yourself. But that's really what it is.

Speaker 1:

If you are not giving people an understanding of why you're doing the things you're doing, why your offer is structured, the way that it is what they're going to get out of that offer and what they need to understand about it, they're gonna come in number one. Your sales calls are probably gonna wind up being more like them not really understanding what you do and them not really understanding how your offer can help them. Like, if people are coming to your calls and you're having to explain a lot of what you do, that means you have not done enough marketing to that person and you wind up marketing on the sales call. That's a big light bulb moment for a lot of people that if people come to your calls I'm gonna say this again if people come to your calls and they have a lot of questions about what exactly you do and how exactly your offer can help and they aren't exactly sure of what the problem that they have is, or any combination of those things. Those are really clear indicators that you have not marketed enough to them. And that might be because they just found you and immediately resonated with you, or it could be that you're not marketing your stuff well enough and I'm not saying that with judgment either but that means that you are, on that call, going to have to market to them on the call rather than having done it in advance.

Speaker 1:

Instead of simply having a conversation to determine best fit, you are now having to market yourself to them on this call. To get them to number one understand what their problem is, which is I do not ever wanna have to have that conversation with someone Like that's. Number one make sure that they're coming to the call already with an understanding of what their problem is. If they don't, that's gonna take a lot of effort. You're going to be convincing them that they need whatever it is that you're selling. Number two I want them to have an understanding of how I help people. If they don't know this, that means I'm going to have to spend too much time convincing them that what I do is the thing that they need.

Speaker 1:

And number three, I want them to come to the call with an understanding of why my offer is going to be a good fit for them, because and that's like that's a little further down, that that's a little bit more advanced, but I'm happy to explain to someone like specifically how it's going to work in their specific situation. If they don't fully understand that, because they've got their special snowflake and they don't understand, they need the additional context. I understand that, like there are some people who usually that's not the case. Usually it's like well, yes, this will work for you and here's why. But like everyone believes and everyone is entitled to believe that they have a unique situation in which this might not be a good fit for them, that's perfectly fine. So those are the three things that I really want to be able to accomplish before we get on that sales call, or at least the first two things.

Speaker 1:

And if you don't have those things and you're having to convince someone or you're having to do all of that marketing on that call, then it's probably going to take a lot of sales psychology and NLP to change the way that someone thinks. That is literally the goal changing the way that someone thinks, so that. But in my opinion, like that's manipulation and I'm not here for that. You can do whatever you want there is. It's very simple to do, but typically if you're having to use sales psychology and NLP to get someone to where you want them to be on a sales call, your close rates are probably going to be lower. The people that I know that I work with that have call rates that are more around industry average. So 20% 25%. They're typically using sales psychology and NLP in their marketing process and on their sales calls and typically they're marketing with big results. You wanna have the six-figure launch. You wanna have the seven-figure business. You wanna hit your first 10K month. They're using these really big sort of At this point. They're intangible promises because so many people are promising them. There are some people who are what they're doing is un-newer enough. Constantly I know people who sell messaging and what they're doing. People understand it like, oh, I need messaging, but they don't actually understand what messaging really is at its core because that concept is not fully enough developed to the level of market sophistication that exists right now within the industry. That someone who's maybe in messaging or insert whatever field here is for whatever it is that you do, if the level of market sophistication isn't matched to understanding why what you do is so important and you are not addressing that in marketing material in advance, you're just using whatever like you're using more NLP and sales psychology to and listen.

Speaker 1:

I use sales like. I have no problem with sales psychology, but I use it in a way that's like it's more helping someone to understand my process in advance. I do not use it on sales calls. I will be very clear on that. I do not use sales psychology or NLP on sales calls. I only talk about like, what brought you here? This is what I have to offer. Is this something that feels good for you? That's it. That's all I do. But I do use some sales psychology in the marketing process to help someone understand like. I use analogies and concepts of like chunking up and chunking down. If everyone did this with this, does that mean that everyone who does this gets this result? Those are logic problems. That's actually like it's programming language. I think it's really fascinating. But I don't use NLP and sales psychology on sales calls. And the people who do have lower conversion rates, which is fine, but it usually is because there's not as much marketing on the front end.

Speaker 1:

Now, people that I know, who do more of what I do, where we are not using sales psychology and NLP to conduct sales calls, it is more of a conversation of is this a good fit? And yes, we're holding people to account, of saying if you need to think about it, of course, but like, let's set the follow update right now. That's causing this blah, blah, blah. I'm happy to get into questions that people have and if they're hesitant to make the investment, I'm happy to allow them the space to process through that and I'm happy to also try and work through whatever's going on with them, like whatever they need in that moment, I'm happy to do it. But there's no pressure and because I don't know if it's because I have no, I have nothing to back this up. I don't know if it's because I come into it at a very no pressure approach, but I have a very high close rate, like very high, like 90%. I couldn't.

Speaker 1:

The last time I didn't close a sales call was because I told the person no, where I said this is not going to, this is not going to be right for you. Like what I, what I heard you say, this is not, this is not what you actually are looking for and beyond that, like it's, it's been, it's it's. It's rare that someone just says flat out like, no, I'm not interested in this anymore. Nope, doesn't really happen. And the people that I work with who treat sales conversations that way now I will say 90% close rate is like unicorn. I mean unicorn, unicorn, unicorn numbers. I also don't get on that many sales calls. I'm very choosy about who I get on sales calls with, so that's why that is the way that it is.

Speaker 1:

But then I know other people who have like 40, 50% close rates and they have a very intuitive process around not putting pressure on someone to make the sale. They simply make sure everyone has the information that they need upfront and then by the time they get on the call, they're basically ready to close. They just need a little bit more information. So you can do without what you will, whether you want to, whatever direction that you want to go in. If you want to go volume or friction, it's up to you. So but the idea is, if you want to close quickly, you usually have to be willing to take some extraestaques first up anyone on calls and more or less anyone into your program without having a ton of qualification process.

Speaker 1:

This is not meant to be derogatory, but these people, when you're willing to take, just wow, I really think that I could help this person because you know, oh, they're a web designer, which means I'm gonna be able to help them. You're not really taking into account are they an aligned fit for your style and personality and the work that you do? Maybe they're not really even willing to do the work there. They have different expectations. Maybe they're method hoppers. They're constantly searching for the next best thing. They want a quick fix. They don't really know what they want.

Speaker 1:

The more you're willing to like overlook those things, the more you might wind up with problems in the long run. If you're newer in business, you're gonna have to figure those things out, because there's a good chance that you don't really know what those things are yet. But if you're further along, like it's time to start maybe putting some more friction into your process so that you're getting better quality quote, unquote. I don't mean anything bad around quality, but that you're getting a higher quality, not only lead, but you're getting a higher quality client that you're going to have a great working relationship and it's going to be ongoing and you're gonna get great reviews and great feedback and everyone is happy on all sides. You aren't gonna be burnt out by that client. You're not gonna feel like you're doing a bunch of work that you shouldn't be doing. You're gonna feel there's not gonna be scope creep, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

When you're pushing for fast closes, your attrition rate will also probably go up. No one is talking about this. When you push for fast closes, because you are getting people who might not be as aligned to your style and personality and methodology. They're not necessarily willing to do the work. They have other expectations that you maybe don't know about. They maybe are method hoppers, they want that quiff it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, your attrition rate is very likely going to go up. And when I say attrition rate, that means people who stop paying you. So someone enters into a three month payment plan, after the second month they're like I don't wanna make that third payment or whatever. That means your attrition rate goes up. But having an attrition rate of zero is very unlikely. Where no one ever stops paying you, that's great. If you have that that's amazing. But, like if you've been doing this long enough, at some point you're probably gonna have someone fall off a payment plan and it doesn't necessarily mean anything about you. But when your attrition rate is higher, then that's more problematic.

Speaker 1:

You want to be able to rely on. I know that I have this much revenue that I'm counting on for the month of January or the month of February or whatever, and when you're pushing for those faster closes, you're more likely rather to get people who are maybe going to wind up defaulting at some point because it wasn't actually an aligned match to begin with. So, to recap, the only thing that's really going to speed up the buying process is better marketing. You'll occasionally get unicorns that happens and if you don't wanna do this and you're going for volume, it typically requires that you are going to need to use some type of pressure on the call to get these clients closed. Where you are overcoming lots of objections, where you're using sales psychology and NLP on the call to get them to understand that this is what they want, you're essentially convincing them, and if you wanna close quickly and you're willing to take anyone, they might wind up not being the most aligned client for you. It could wind up moving your attrition rate up, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

I hope this was helpful and in some way illuminating for you. Just quickly before we wrap up, I want to let you know that there are a couple things going on. If you're listening to this close to when this is released, I've got two things that might be able to help you. If you are already pacing for six figures or you're over the six figure a year mark when I say pacing six figures, I mean the last couple of months you've been making $7,000 or $8,000 in cash US dollars consistently that's how I'm thinking about this and you have a pretty consistent sales process. Like you understand how to do sales calls. You're not totally like where's my next client coming from? I have no idea. I have no idea how to. Where's the next person and if I don't get another client, like everything's gonna be, it's gonna be a big problem. Like you've got some recurring revenue.

Speaker 1:

You're maybe, if you're a service provider, maybe you're to the point where you're getting booked out, et cetera, et cetera, and you now want to start moving into the real growth process of your business to eventually be able to scale it in a way that, like it's not gonna take as much as your personal time. You wanna get out of the day to day tasks of your business and focus more on like the growth level tasks, more of the vision, the strategy, et cetera, of your business. There's a three day event that I've got that's going to essentially help turn your. It's only for service-based businesses. It will essentially turn your business into like a well-oiled machine or show you how it's. The three day training itself cannot do all of that, but it's gonna show you how it's gonna lay out the pieces of what you would need to be able to turn your business into a well-oiled machine that is able to run with or without you and able to grow. That's the key that can not just run but also grow with or without you, so that you can get your time back and then sustainably scale.

Speaker 1:

You can sign up for that free event at solepreneurcotime. It will be linked in the show notes. If you are not to that point yet, then I would encourage you to get on the waitlist for Scalable Foundation's Accelerator, which is the little tag I'm putting on. This is like it will help you go from feast and famine cycles in your business to flourishing and scaling and it's about creating a sustainable system for generating consistent, recurring revenue. If you don't already have that, it's gonna give you a foundation for clients in cash and you can get on the waitlist for that. There's gonna be a January cohort cohort enrolling starting for January, so you can get on the waitlist for that. At solepreneurco again, it's dotcocom solepreneurco slash SFA. So that stands for Scalable Foundation's Accelerator, solepreneurco slash SFA. The links will be in the show notes and I will catch you in the next one.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Adriane Galea

Host