Wie ich meinen ersten High-Ticket-Verkauf gemacht habe

0:00And so the reason that entrepreneurship is such almost like a spiritual journey is that you you earn the right to charge more because you no longer think the smaller amount of money is worth your time. There are beliefs that people who have money have which translate to behaviors that poor people don't have and translate to different behaviors. So, what does that mean? A rich kid will choose not to pursue a lower leverage opportunity because it's not worth their time because they were taught it wasn't worth their time. The career paths that they'll have to choose from will be significantly skewed towards things where they'll get disproportionate returns. And a lot of that is just knowledge about it, not even knowledge how to do it. I remember when I first found out I'd never heard of management consulting, I'd never heard of private equity, I'd never heard of investment banking, I'd never heard of any of this stuff when I went to college because where I was from in Baltimore, a rich person was a doctor.

0:52That was a rich person. And so, and to be fair, my dad's a doctor. So, I felt I was like, "Okay, cool." When I went to Vanderbilt, I felt like one of the poorest people there because I'd never seen what New York money was. I'd never seen what California money was. I'd seen what Baltimore rich was, which is that you have, you know, my dad has a business two secretaries and, you know, we always had food, I never had to worry about it. I still have the immigrant mentality of like, we don't use, you know, paper towels cuz they're expensive, but like that's just cuz he came here with a thousand bucks. And I that still got transmitted. In some ways, you almost have to you almost have to bat above you have to hit above your weight class, right?

1:29Which is even though it sounds un like an in the story of when I actually made my first high ticket sale in my life was when I I actually set a number that I wanted the person to say no to. And then they said yes. That was how that actually that belief was broken for me. So, as much as I want to say like, this is what you have to do. I'm this guy, you know, guy on YouTube that you just saw or whatever. Like Leila and I were selling uh we we started doing these gym launches.

1:54We would sell memberships through gyms. We would collect the money. Um and that was the model. We'd fly around the country, that's what we did. Um there were some issues with that model, which I've talked about in other videos. And so then all of a sudden uh Leila started selling weight loss directly, made a little brand for her called Queen Transformation. We started selling these $500 online training packages um over the phone. And that started working. And so I had these gyms that were I was supposed to do these launches at that I had decided I wasn't going to do them anymore. And so I had eight gyms I was supposed to call up and like basically cancel on them.

2:23And so um on the first phone call the guy was actually a referral, and he was like, "Dude, you saved my my friend's gym. Like I know you can do this." And I I was so beat down at this point. I was like, "Dude, I'm not fly like I I'm not doing it." Um and he kept asking for it. And then I finally I was like, "All right, dude. Like I'll show you what I do, um but I'm not flying out there to help you if you can't close." And mind you, I come from the done-for-you world of like I literally did everything. I fronted the money, I fronted the cash, I built you know I'd literally buy the tables, I'd print the the contracts out, I'd run the ads, we'd work the leads, and we'd sell them straight in the gym.

2:51So I did everything. So me saying that was just a hope that he would just like say screw off. And he was like, "No, I get it. I get it." And he was like, "Well, how much?" And so I said, remember, I'm used to selling $500 16-week training packages where you have to show up like every you know three times a week to do stuff. I said $6,000. So for me it was a 12x compared to the price that I was used to selling at. And I just said it so I was like, he's just going to say, "Nope." And then I can just hang up and just move on to my next call. And he said, "6K?" And I was like, "Yeah."

3:20$6,000. And he was like, "Done." And I I remember like floating out of my body in this moment being like, "Holy [ __ ] Six grand from one call." And I didn't I didn't even have the thing. I didn't even have the thing that I had sold him yet cuz I just didn't think he was going to say yes. I didn't think to have to build it, right? And so I was like, "Holy shit." And so then the next So I had seven more calls. So I called the next guy, same conversation.

3:49I was like, "Oh, now I got to build this thing." But it went really smooth. was like Uh he was like, "How much?" I was like, "Eight grand." He was like, "Yeah, done." And I was like eight grand. I was like, "I'm up $14,000 in a I'm not even in a day. It's in a morning." So then I had six more calls and by the end of the you know, the next call, same thing. How much? 10K. Next call And by the end of the day, I'd done $60,000 in in collected. And I was like what the [ __ ] just happened?

4:19I had no idea what was going on. Uh so Leila came back after she was selling the $500 memberships and I was like, "Babe." I was like, "I just made 60 grand." And she was like "What?" >> [laughter] >> She was like, I She was like, "I thought we were doing the weight loss thing." I was like, "No, I think we're still doing the gym thing. I think we're just doing it wrong." And this is why I'm telling you this cuz like that moment of all the moments in my entire career, that was the moment where I elevated.

4:45That was the moment where my life really changed. And so I'm bringing this up because you might be like, "Well, what at what price point should I start?" Right? It's going to be relative whether you're selling to consumers or selling to businesses. And this is just a couple rules of thumb that I'll just tell you that I've kind of worked around. I'd say that for um for a consumer, an impulse purchase is five or six hundred dollars. A higher ticket purchase is usually going to be somewhere between three and ten thousand dollars, right? Typically. And that's again for services. If you're looking at like assets, it's a different game.

5:13We're buying houses and cars, it's a different game, right? But if you're selling just like pure, I'm going to help you do some stuff. I'm going to help fix some stuff. That's usually a price point that's quite higher ticket. Business, it really depends on the size business. If you're selling to Disney, you can sell a billion-dollar thing, right? If you're selling to just small business owners on Main Street, remember, some of them are poor, too, right? And so for them though, um you know, a more normal price for something will probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of like I'd say like a mid-tier is probably, you know, two to three thousand dollars a month. Uh cheaper price for a business owner would be somewhere in the neighborhood of like four hundred to eight hundred a month.

5:45Um maybe maybe just call call call it closer to 500 bucks a month um as like a a cheaper number for a business and you're like, "$500 a month is cheap for a business?" And you're like, "Yeah, super expensive for a consumer, pretty cheap for a business, right?" One of the big issues I would say that poor people think about compared to rich people is that poor people will think in terms of cost and I would say rich people will think in terms of the ratio, the return, cost versus value. So, if I were to say, "Hey, I've got this thing that's Let's say it's Let's say it's $20,000."

6:17A poor person just hearing the price would say, "That's expensive." But if I said a rich person if I said, "Hey, my thing is $20,000." They wouldn't then say that's expensive. They would say, "For what?" And if I said, uh share a class A share of Berkshire Hathaway, which is an $800,000 stock for $20,000, that would be the deal of the century, right? If I said it was $20,000 for a brand new Lamborghini, they would say that's a great deal. So, even though it costs a lot of money, it's great value. And this is what I did I struggled for such a long time to understand because it was like I almost had this emotional reaction to zeros.

6:57It's like if I saw zeros, I was like, "Oh my god, it's so much, right?" And and so I know where you're coming from because you almost want to you almost choke on the price. So, I'll give you a couple of little tactics for this to like get around it. So, one is if you're in person, you can write down the price and then turn it and slide it to them uh or you can use a calculator and turn it to them if you like literally choke on the price cuz some people do do that. Um the second thing that you can do and this is a really good little little pricing hack for for selling is before you say the price, you say, "Hey, before I tell you the price, it's super expensive."

7:29And so, what's beautiful about telling someone it's expensive before you tell them the price is that if someone's rich, they're going to immediately think what's expensive for them. And so, they're going to think a number and And you're going to say the number and they're going to they're going to literally be like, "Oh, fine." If they're poor and you say it's expensive, they're going to brace themselves for a number that's big. And then when you give them that number, they were at least braced for it. And so in either way, you actually create what I would consider an emotional anchor that's perfectly accommodating to the buying power of the prospect. And most sales people get choked up right at that point. So it's like, give yourself a breather. It's going to be expensive. You take a breath, they take a breath, then you deliver. All right? So just a little tactic that works and also can help uh increase sales. So, a good way to know if you're actually underpriced is to actually look at your close rates. All right? And so, if your close rates are 80% or let's say 60 to 80, I'll put this in tiers for you.

8:24Um 50 to 60, 40 to 50, and then 30 to 40, and then 30. Okay. So let's say these are your close rates. So that means if you talk to 10 people, here you close eight, right? If you're closing 80%, you probably right now have a two to three X in pricing. Sorry, a three to four X in pricing, excuse me. A three to four X in pricing just sitting there. I know that sounds absurd, but think about it. You're going to get the 80% are not going to say yes anymore. I want to be very clear. You might drop to like 35%, but if 35% of people are paying four times more, you're making 120% of the revenue that you were making before. All right? And so like you're making way more money.

9:13Now, at 60 to 80, you probably have a two to three X that you have sitting there in price. If you're between 50 and 60, you probably have a 1.5 X to two X sitting there. If you're at 40 to 50%, you're probably at 1.25 to 1.5 X. All right? If you're here, I consider this to be appropriately priced. If you're closing 30 to 40%, you're priced about right. If you're below 30, I would say get better at selling. >> [snorts]

9:38>> Which part of getting better at selling could be make the offer better or talk to better customers. All right, and so sometimes you will try and pitch a high ticket thing but not have your core offer which might be lower so you have an anchor offer. Um, but the people that you're speaking with you didn't qualify them. So, if I want to say, "Hey, I'm talking to million dollar plus business owners." I will have a significantly higher close rate if I'm only talking to them.

10:03So, all of what I described is something called lead scoring or lead qualification. And so, what that means is that there's a certain type of customer that's more likely to buy your thing. Right? Somebody who has more money is more likely to to buy your more expensive thing. And so, if we know that the people who have the money are the ones that buy our expensive thing, then we should try and just tell the world we only cater to these people. Now, the next thing that will come up is people will say, "Hey, um, I would sell for a really expensive thing but no one will buy it because there's guys down the street who will sell it for less because they're broke you selling to brokies." You're right.

10:40And that's because you can't sell the same thing, you got to sell something different. Which is why I wrote my first book on this. Which is the first chapter is you're selling a commodity. You're selling something that someone could reasonably hold your thing and their thing up and say, "These two things are the same. So, I'll chip pick the cheaper one." And that's reasonable for them to do it. The idea is that we want to price our things so high and be in such a clearly different category that people say, "These two things must be different. I have to analyze these independently." And so, within the context of what do I get for my money, the rich person wants three things. They want it to be fast, they want it to be easy, and they want it to be guaranteed.

11:16And so, everything that you do that is more difficult for these people, you have to make easier and these people will be really willing to pay for it. And so, you pre-do some of that work for them. You pre-chew some of the food. You go ahead of time. You drive ahead. You scout the location. You drive it to the door. Whatever it is. But when you look at what was it cost for me to drive this thing to the door? It cost me 10 bucks, but they're willing to pay 100 for it. Whereas, this person is nagging me on the last five bucks. It's a different game, but this is where all the money's at.

11:44The reality of how services work is that you can tell how advanced a service business owner is by how expensive their products is. Because, if you were actually good, you have more demand than you have supply. If you have more demand than you have supply, what should you do? Raise price. That's how the supply demand curve works. And so, you continue to raise your price until you're at a point where you're at equilibrium, where like you can handle the amount of demand that you have. If you're still good, you still get more demand because word of mouth continues, and you keep going up.

12:08And that becomes the virtual virtuous cycle of price and services. Because, when you have a higher price, you have higher gross margins. You have higher gross margins, you can hire better talent. When you have better talent, you can deliver better services. You have better service, you get better reputation. You have better reputation, what does that do? Drives demand. Which then drives price. And so, this is the cycle that every business has to go through. And you signal to the marketplace, you communicate it to the marketplace. Pricing is a two-way communication. You tell them what you're about, and then they will self-select as the correct customers for you.

12:39And so, you can see where someone's at in their business journey by how high they are priced compared to people who sell comparable services. Because, people will very much take price as an indication of value. They just do. Because, in general, things that are priced higher are better. Not always, but often. It's a good enough rule of thumb that people in general will do that. You Like, this might you like not met people with money.

13:04When they go to shop at a store, they price from high to low. They literally look at the most expensive stuff first. Cuz that's probably the stuff that's for them. They don't want to save money anymore. They want to get better value. They want better stuff. They want to skip the line, they want to get it faster, they want it better, they want it to be a higher quality, you know, higher quality ingredients. They want it to be more made by somebody who's more noteworthy, all of these things.

13:31And fundamentally, that is what this book goes into tremendous detail talking about, which is the Offers Book. All right. So, with that being said, sell to the rich, they pay better. It's better to sell fewer expensive customers than many broke customers. And if you sell to rich people for long enough, they will make you one of them. >> If you're business owner and you're not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it in these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it.

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