Coaches Cannot Survive Without High-Ticket Programs

Having a high-ticket program is a necessary requirement for the coaching business

Most of the coaches/mentors/trainers are introverts. I am one of them. We are very good at writing, spending time alone, reading, and doing market research. We also manage to do webinars and build a personal brand in front of an audience. Doing sales calls is not something that comes naturally to us. But sales calls cannot be ignored because it’s the only way to sell high-ticket programs.

When the ed-tech industry in India started heating up, many coaches scaled their revenue using sales pages, VSLs, and webinar sales. 2020 gave a boost because many people wanted to upskill and had plenty of time to do online courses due to the lockdown. The conversions with mass-selling methods were good enough to sustain the business.

In 2024, things are different. Everyone entered the market to become an "online coach" and they learned how to run Facebook Ads. Due to the sheer amount of competition the ad cost has gone up.

Coaches who train other people to become coaches have not helped reduce the ad costs. Many of those coaching methods don’t even work anymore. There used to be a time when you could have a margin with a 5,000 rupee course. Not anymore.

The ad costs have sky-rocketed not just due to the competition in the ed-tech space but also because of Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands running ads on networks like Facebook and YouTube. Shows like Shark Tank India have led to many new D2C brands. Even if they don’t have money, they burn VC funds to run ads and get some revenue and traction.

D2C brands don’t compete directly with ed-techs but they still impact the ad cost because they show the ads to an audience that overlaps with ed-tech. It increases the CPMs (Cost Per Thousand Impressions).

Online Coaching Businesses are Experiencing:

• Lower CTRs

• Lower conversions on the landing page

• Lesser webinar show-ups

• Lower conversions on the webinars

If a coach invests 1,00,000 rupees in ads and generates leads (let's say webinar registrations) for 100 per lead, the coach can generate 1000 leads.

If the cost of a front-end coaching program (usually a self-paced course) is 10,000, the coach needs a 1% conversion ratio to achieve 10 sales out of 1000 leads and they will just about break even.

Plus there are other costs like salary, electricity, internet, and online marketing tools (out of which a CRM will cost the most). Unless the coach has a high ticket program, where another 10% of them subscribe for a 1 Lakh program, they will not profit.

But based on my experience, if you are selling anything more than 40,000 rupees, it doesn't convert well on webinars. People need 1-on-1 conversations and get their objections cleared before they can shell out a high price for what they are buying.

If you are selling via 1-on-1 calls, it doesn't make sense to sell anything less than 1 Lakh rupees in price because unlike webinars and landing pages that can scale, you don't have unlimited time to sell 1-on-1.

The sales commission should be good enough for the sales consultant / closer to make it worth his time. The lower the price of the product, the lesser the commissions, and the sales closer won’t be able to meet his personal income targets every month.

Having a sales team is important. As a coach or mentor, I cannot do the sales calls myself and scale the business. I can take 2-3 calls a day at best and if I get into that myself, I wouldn't have time to do anything else.

My time is best invested in building the brand, doing content marketing, doing market research, building products, building a team, and planning for future projects.

How We Sell Our High-Ticket Program

Last year we launched our high-ticket program: AlphaClub, a mastermind program for startup founders. It is a yearly membership. It costs 2.5 Lakhs for one year of membership.

I send out an email to my list, do webinars, and add links to AlphaClub wherever I can. The call-to-action in all these communications is: book a call with us. We have 2 full-time sales closers who do 1-on-1 sales and each person brings in an average of 4-5 sales a month.

At this rate, our annual revenue from just AlphaClub has gone up to 3-5 crores a year. Our pricing is customized based on requirements. Sometimes, we also build landing pages and set up Facebook ads for our customers.

Our sales closers are well-trained in sales methods and we do consultative selling. There are hardly any sales happening in the sales call. We just understand the business challenges of our prospects and add value to the call.

Sometimes we reject them if we think that they are not a good fit for us right now. Yes, we say no to real money and that's how we have built a strong brand for AlphaClub. Without AlphaClub’s high-ticket revenue and sales, it would be very challenging for us to scale our business and stay relevant in the market.

That’s why you need high-ticket programs for your coaching business. I would define “high-ticket” as something that costs at least $3000 (or 2.5 Lakhs INR). Anything below that is mid-ticket or low-ticket.

You need a solid product and you need a solid sales team. There is just no other way to survive as a coach in these market conditions.

AlphaClub is our “Night Club”.

To understand where AlphaClub fits in our business funnel, read this article:

And to read more about how the sales funnel works for a high-ticket program, read this:

I hope this post gave you enough insights about how to structure your own funnel.

Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju