The Mechanics of a High-Ticket Sales Funnel

If your product price is high, it will not sell via landing pages or webinars

There are 4 parts to the Deep Marketing Funnel. CATT. Content. Attention. Trust. Transaction. Today, let’s dive deep into Transaction and how we can convert our leads into sales.

Every lead has a resistance to buy something from you. If leads had no resistance, then doing business would be so easy, right? Imagine that people do not hesitate to buy from you. All the leads buy all the products. In such a world, everyone would be broke, because you will also have no resistance to buy something from someone.

Every transaction requires us to break that resistance. And the resistance depends on the price and the complexity of the product. If I am selling you a book for Rs.500 or an online course for Rs.5000, you might not have that much resistance.

For example, most of the books are listed on an Amazon page. There is a title, some ratings, and some description. Most of the books do not even have a sales video.

As the transaction cost goes up, so does the resistance. Hence we need better sales materials to convince people who want to buy. A course that is worth Rs.5000 might need a landing page and a sales copy that clearly defines the benefits of the course.

You can check this Facebook Ads Mastery landing page to get an idea of what is included in a long-form landing page:

The upper limit for pricing for a course on a landing page is Rs.30,000 (or $500 if priced in US Dollars). A $2000 course is rarely sold via a landing page.

If you are selling a product for Rs.50,000 ($600) or above, there should be at least a video sales letter on the landing page. It captures attention in a better way and convinces people about the benefits of the product.

The same content delivered live via a webinar might give better conversions because, in a webinar, the salesman (or the creator) is live and can also answer some questions in the chat box. But what happens when the product price is above $3000?

High-Ticket Sales

If you are selling a product for Rs.2,50,000 or above ($3000) then it will rarely sell through a landing page with a sales video. It might not even sell on a live sales webinar.

There is no standard definition of what is a “high-ticket product” but in this case let’s assume that it costs $3000 or more. When people invest such a large amount in a product, they have a lot of questions and objections that have to be handled.

This is how the flow of a typical high-ticket sales call looks like:

Let’s break down each part of the funnel above and understand what each step means.

1. Lead Generation

When you are selling a high-ticket product ($3000 or more) the context has to be set right. That’s why people need to opt in first. This opt-in is not for a generic lead magnet like a 30-day email course. This opt-in is for them to show interest in buying your high-ticket product.

Leads for this opt-in page can be generated directly via Facebook or Google Ads but ideally, it should come from the leads on an email list or newsletter. People have to be familiar with you and trust you before they are ready to buy a high-ticket product from you.

2. Video Sales Letter

Some people will opt in and watch a video sales letter immediately. A video sales letter is usually 30-45 minutes long. Rarely, it can be up to an hour. In some cases, it’s just 20 minutes but they are not that effective.

People watch the video sales letter and then they are taken to a call booking page. In the call booking page, they also enter some information about their business so that a “call setter” can qualify the call and confirm the appointment with a sales consultant.

If from the details collected during the call booking, it looks like this is not a qualified prospect, the call booking is canceled. The setter usually informs the person who booked the call to tell them that they are not qualified. They can be informed with a WhatsApp message or a quick phone call.

If the conversion from the opt-in page to the call booking is low, then it makes sense to call everyone who has opted in and ask them to watch the VSL and then book the call. This step is usually not required if highly targeted leads are generated into this flow.

3. Email Follow Up Sequence for Call Booking

A lot of people will opt in but they will not watch the video sales letter and book a call. That’s because people are busy and they will want to watch the video later when they have more time.

They might not come back if we do not follow up with them. Even if they want to watch it, they get busy with life, get distracted, and forget about it. Spending 30-45 minutes of undivided attention is a hard ask in this day and age.

We want them to watch the video before they book a call so that they are pre-sold. When they watch the video and come to the sales call, they have already received some value from the video and have the right context to talk to a sales consultant.

That’s why instead of doing email follow-ups to ask them to book a call directly, we ask them to watch the VSL. Just like we “sell” the idea of booking a call and taking out another 1 hour of their time on their calendar, we need to “sell” them the idea of spending 45 minutes on a VSL (at any time of their convenience).

The email follow-ups shouldn’t be a dry follow-up that keeps bugging them to watch the VSL. The emails should have some valuable content in them. The content is basically the content in VSL, in text format, broken down into 10-15 email chunks. This kind of creates a “sideways sales letter”.

The sideways sales letter concept was originally introduced by Jeff Walker the creator of the “Product Launch Formula”. He did not just use emails but 4 videos to drive home the message. Four videos launched one after the other in a launch sequence helped users digest the sales message in easier chunks. But this was high-ticket sales before the age of 1-on-1 Zoom call sales via video apps like Zoom. In Jeff Walker’s system, the 4th video directly sells the product. We might not need multiple VSLs in this case because we are only trying to “sell the call booking”. Instead, we use the same system on email to “sell” them the idea of spending time watching the VSL.

Here’s Jeff Walker’s system at a glance as published by Everlytic.

According to Everlytic

In our marketing funnels guide, we explain the psychological principle of a Yes Ladder. It suggests that, by getting someone to say yes to smaller asks first, you warm them up to saying yes to bigger asks later. The Sideways Sales Letter provides similar value in that it delivers what would otherwise be a long sales letter into smaller, easier-to-digest chunks of information, increasing engagement and improving your chances of conversion at the end.

Launching with a Sideways Sales Letter also provides you with the value of storytelling; another powerful way of keeping people engaged. By weaving your sales letter into a journey with a beginning, middle, and end, you’re more likely to keep readers interested than with one bulky sales letter alone.

This email follow-up sequence is not the same as a free lead magnet such as an email course. We offer email courses to cold audiences.

This email sequence is for a warm audience who has already opted into our email sequence or has purchased a trip wire (such as an ebook, book, or community access for less than $25).

Optional WhatsApp Sequence

Apart from an email sequence, you can also add a WhatsApp sequence. A WhatsApp sequence cannot be too frequent. It has to be contextual and timely.

You have to segment your lists properly and add and remove subscribers dynamically. If they have booked a call already, you don’t message them to watch the VSL. If they have not yet booked a call, we can assume that they have not watched the VSL fully and we can keep following up with them until they watch the VSL.

4. Application and Call Booking

The goal of the high-ticket sales funnel is to get as many call bookings as we can. These calls are consultative sales calls. We don’t just sell a high-ticket product. We consult people on their problems and then offer a solution to them.

If you have a low-ticket product or a mid-ticket product that is sold via sales pages or webinars, it really doesn’t matter if unqualified prospects are going through the sales message. Why? Because it’s scalable. It doesn’t matter if there are 500 people on a webinar or 5,000 people on a webinar because the cost of an additional participant is negligible.

However, when it comes to 1-on-1 sales calls with sales consultants, we need to only let qualified people book the call. A salesperson can only take so many calls in a day so we need to value their time and help them get the maximum opportunity.

If there is a crystal ball to predict the people who will be converting, ideally we would only talk to those people. However, that ideal state is impossible. So we try to predict who will be likely to convert.

For example, for my business coaching program, if I expect only people with 10+ years of work experience who might be in a position to start their own Micro Startup, then ideally I would cancel the calls booked by someone who has just finished college and has 6 months of work experience.

This qualification is usually done by a setter by reviewing the information on the application. People can book a time slot and then fill out a form to qualify themselves, or they can fill out a form that filters out some people automatically based on their entries and they can book a time slot on the calendar.

If there are multiple salespeople, calendar appointment booking apps like Calendly have a feature where you can assign leads to sales consultants in a round-robin matter so that the leads are equally distributed.

5. The Sales Call

This is the most important part of the funnel where the call booking appointment is realized and the sale is made. Explaining the sales process is out of scope in this blog post. I will write a separate blog post on the “Magnetic Sales Framework” that is used in 1-on-1 sales calls.

Before the prospect shows up for the call, a few follow-up emails and calls are required to make sure they show up on the call. This call is done by a setter who aspires to be closer but doesn’t have enough experience to close yet.

The sales commissions:

• 1-3% for the setter for every sale closed

• 10-20% for the sales closer who closes the deal

Generally, sales closers do not expect a standard fixed monthly salary. However, new closers who are not confident of their closing skills might want a base salary plus commissions. In such cases, the sales commissions are on the lower end towards 10%.

Closers who want to work only based on sales commissions expect a higher sales commission. This is usually not a challenge for most businesses because they are paying the sales commissions only when a sale happens. It’s a percentage of the revenue generated and not a fixed expense on the business.

Most of the sales are expected to close right on the sales call, however, if the closing doesn’t happen, then the sales consultant will do a few follow-up calls to close the deal.

Lead Quality and Pre-Selling

This funnel will not work if the leads are of low quality or if they are not pre-sold and nurtured enough.

Please read this article on the Night Club Business Model to see how this funnel fits into the overall business funnel.

The Night Club Business Model (For Coaches)

Since we want the leads to be nurtured before they enter this high-ticket sales funnel, I recommend one more step before this: a Walled Garden.

Many people have had success with this funnel with cold audiences but it also needs a very strong brand and a strong offer combined with a hard pitch to close the deal.

I do not believe in hard sales pitches because more often than not, hard pitches lead to a lot of buyer’s remorse and refund requests.

People who transact with you for a small fee, buy a book, or ebook, or join a community are more likely to effortlessly convert into a high-ticket product than the people who have never transacted with you before.

That’s why a lot of people sell workshops for Rs.99 even if they lose money on the sale. A better way is to sell a community membership for Rs.999 to get people to transact with you, get some value out of your offer, and then it makes sense to pitch them a high-ticket product.

I will be practicing what I preach and putting the same funnel into stress test with my Micro Startup education business. Stay tuned for updates.

Please leave a comment below or reply to this email. Let me know what you think about this funnel.

Cheers,
Deepak Kanakaraju