Variety is the spice of life. You’ll find quite a bit of variety in the business world — everything from companies who fix refrigerators to solo entrepreneurs who make a living advising the world’s largest brands. And just as the focus of one business can differ wildly from that of another, so can the price of their products or services. Snickers sells a 99 cent candy bar. Software development bootcamps like App Academy sell $17,000 courses.
The App Academy example is what we’d call a high ticket item. It’s a pricier item that isn’t designed to sell in large volumes. It’s focused on a very specific group of people: those who want to change careers quickly, want to develop apps for a living, and require the knowledge necessary to make the switch. Those who sign up for App Academy view it as an investment in themselves, which is why they’re willing to pay a significant sum to join the program.
If you’re selling a high ticket item of your own, there’s a lot you can learn from App Academy and others like it. Put these tactics to work and you’ll put yourself on the path toward high ticket sales success.
Dive Deep and Understand Your Target Market
The most important step you can take when selling a high ticket item is knowing who your target market is. Know their demographics. Know their income level. Put yourself in their shoes, imagine how they might be feeling, and try to understand what would interest them in your product.
Why is this important? Because your efforts will go largely unrewarded if you try to target your offering far and wide. Income, for example, is one of the fastest ways to narrow down who you can sell to. If someone doesn’t make all that much and, as a
result, can’t afford your product in the first place, you’re burning resources trying to market your product to that person.
Knowing your audience well also enables you to create a deeper, more meaningful bond with them once you have their attention. You’re able to relate to them. You understand the position they’re in and can better articulate what your product can do to help. This is a bond you can’t create at scale.
Know Your Niche Better Than Anyone
Chances are, you’re not going to be the only party in town in terms what your business has to offer. You’ll need to set yourself apart from those you’re competing with. You can do this through marketing, certainly. But you can also do it by becoming the expert in what you do.
Read about your industry every day. Write about your industry every day. Do research. Commission reports. Create infographics. Make yourself available to the press. Establish yourself as a fountain of knowledge and impart that knowledge into those you’re selling to. You’ll quickly find that you’re able to build trust at a more rapid pace when you’re perceived to be the authority of your given niche.
Focus on the Essentials
It can be tempting to try and offer as much as you can to cover as wide an audience as possible. But you’re selling high ticket items, which differ vastly from, say, items on the Dollar Menu at McDonald’s. The more you try to do, the more you’ll spread yourself too thin, and the less you’ll be able to offer the quality your customer deserves for the price they’re paying.
Eliminate the unnecessary. Do a few things very well instead of being mediocre at many. By narrowing your focus, you’ll be able to concentrate on delivering the most
value to your customer. And the more value you’re able to deliver, the more you can potentially charge as time goes on.
Sell to Your Takers
When you offer, for example, a free webinar or regular insights and advice via an email newsletter, you start to build an even more receptive audience. These are people who have bought into your initial sell — that you’re an expert and you have important knowledge to share.
These are the people you want to focus on the most.
There’s a reason Amazon ads follow you around the Web once you visit a product page. The tactic is called “remarketing” — delivering ads to those who’ve already expressed interest in a product or service. Every time Amazon reaches out to a visitor again through an email or an ad, the likelihood of converting that visitor into a customer goes up.
The same holds true for your webinar attendees or email subscribers. They’ve already marked themselves down as “interested” — they may just need a little more coaxing to take the plunge and make the purchase. In situations like these, offers of a free mini coaching session or a quick phone consultation could sell them the rest of the way and cement their decision to buy.