Five Ways to Sell a High Ticket Offer
A few weeks back, a friend sipped her coffee across the table and asked me for gift ideas for her husband. She said, “What are you getting Robert for Christmas ?” She was exasperated from shopping and stated, “Everyone gives whiskey stones, ties, socks, shirts, etc. I want something original, and I want to wow him!”
The common thread to selling a high ticket offer? Creating a premium client experience.
My first thought was hey just go to Miami, buy a Lamborghini, and put a giant bow on it? Voila! However, since they live in NYC, they don't have parking and he doesn’t actually have a license, a Lambo is likely not going to cut it.
I then listed off my best ideas for brilliantly out of the box gift ideas for your male partner or significant other.
An experience like a VIP at the Masters or the US Open, Wimbledon, or a Formula One race.
A tennis trip to Tanzania with the McEnroe brothers including tennis matches. (This is available, fyi.)
Trip to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.
Tickets to the Super Bowl, Final Four-March-Madness, or the World Cup.
A trip to Vegas and tickets to favorite artists like Adele or Usher or U2 at the sphere.
An experience, like a ride in a nascar.
A flying lesson.
A pasta making or pizza making experience with a private chef.
A Barbeque tour of Texas. (Yes this is a thing, it even has a flier with a map enclosed. I recommend you get to Franklin’s in Austin before 8 a.m. if you want to have a BBQ there.)
A trip to the mountains with a sleigh ride, lift tickets, snowmobile adventure and snowboard.
A trip to Iceland with an early morning run to see the Northern Lights.
A train trip on the Orient Express.
You’ll never find me gifting common gifts. I love giving the unexpected. This year we gave each other a cruise for Christmas.
Next year he might get the Lambo.
For now, let’s concentrate on this list and what we can learn about selling something expensive or high ticket.
Every single item on this list is expensive. Some gifts cost tens of thousands of dollars. The barbecue is fairly low cost, but you still have to fly to Texas, rent a car, and drive the roads to get to the BBQ.
The McEnroe trip will set you back $60,000 for two people for ten days.
The question is, why are these offers available for people if they are literally a one-time thing? Who would pay for these?
It turns out loads of people buy experiences because it’s once-in-a-lifetime, specialized, and scarce experiences.
Many of these people already HAVE all they need and want. If they want something, they buy it. They desire things that are not available!
This brings me to my point: there are many, many people who buy all kinds of things at high prices, and some buy short-term offers at expensive rates. They either have a deep desire or they have an intense pain, or both. Offers that solve pain must solve the most significant pain point for clients, usually fear of loss or regret. Offers that reach aspirations are more fun to buy but slightly harder to sell. If your offer can do BOTH, get them faster to the aspiration and entirely out of the pain, you will have more clients than you can handle.
There are five key ways to sell higher ticket offers (anything from $12,000 up to a million-dollar offer!)
1. Sell high ticket offers with a superlative position in the market.
If you don’t understand positioning it is the perception about your brand as compared to other people who sell what you sell. However, in this level and in this environment, you will need to set yourself apart from the rest of the competition. In other words, you stop competing by showing you are a market of one.
While everyone else positions themselves based on their skill set, features, etc., you are able to move into the personal brand space where you don’t have competition. There is no competitor for Beyoncé. You cannot get a Beyoncé concert from Boys 2 Men, no matter how they come to the end of the road. If you want to see Beyoncé, you must get tickets to Beyoncé. There is only one. She is no longer comparative.
This is how you will sell out your high ticket offers this year. By becoming the market of one, the only one who can deliver your programs the way you deliver them. (Read more here and here about why becoming a personal brand will be the way to succeed in your business in the foreseeable future.) The personal brands who are comparable will be fighting for clients. When you are superlative, you no longer compete. And can charge what you wish.
2. Know your high ticket buyer avatar inside and out.
In the last year and even the last 30 days, your clients have been super savvy and more skeptical than at any time in history. They can spot inauthenticity a mile away and know what they are looking for in a service provider, whether that is a systems person, a virtual assistant, a coach, or a consultant. The next step to selling to this person is to understand your person better than they know themselves. Your clients believe they are making rational decisions, but, SUPRISE! We aren’t rational at all. We buy from those in the market that offer something we can’t get anywhere else. We are buying from coaches and consultants who understand our inner monologue and can speak to the whispered desires we would never say out loud.
You must know your clients’ biggest pains and desires. Understand precisely why they are buying and why they are buying now! You must practice interrupting their habits to get them to pay attention. And you will need to know where they are, what they are consuming, what they love, and what they value. You’ll need all those elements to sell your offer this year. (This is something I help with within a quick hour call; we can reset your client's avatar so you know their emotions, pain and desires. Book that call here.)
3. Perfect the message and speak to the highest level of clients
Most people market the way they are marketed to each day. We tend to mimic the things we see, and marketing is no different. This old-school marketing is usually based on focus groups or marketing calls and not buyer behavior. Old marketing is stale and ignores our client's current state. Unfortunately it also doesn’t reach the primal brain where the buyer decisions occur.
It’s not your fault; you just have the wrong information and listen to the wrong people.
Remember, many coaches and consultants may go out of business this year, and it is already happening in some industries. Some of the movers and shakers in the industry are experiencing challenges they haven’t had before. One person (who makes over a million dollars in her business a year) is scrambling because the ads that once worked like crazy (she said it was like “printing money!”) aren’t working well anymore.
Elevating your message means tapping into your differentiator and showing clients why you are the only solution. You show them they are successful, and they deserve the best. They deserve to be pain-free and to achieve every dream. They deserve to get their time and energy back, to have not just a good relationship but the BEST relationship. They want it all, and they want it now. Show them in your message that you understand, and you will be booked solid.
4. Take a lesson from luxury markets where your clients purchase
Do your clients love Fendi? What about DIOR? I am a sucker for all things Dior. My son and husband received a large Dior cologne for Christmas. The inside of my son’s pickup truck now smells like Sauvage. (*Breathes deeply and swoons.)
If your clients love Phillip Patek, the watches cost $100,000. At that price point, you don’t lead with the message of function, engineering, materials, or quality.
You lead with Legacy.
The intrinsic reason someone buys a luxury brand at a luxury price is based on something besides “Hey, I need a watch because I don’t know what time it is.”
While Rolex leads with status, the deeper meaning of buying a $100,000 watch is based on relevance and legacy. Ok, yeah, status, too. But in the back of the mind of this audience, there is a deep fear of loss and regret. Will I be remembered? Will something of me be passed down to future generations?
We desperately hope someone will remember us, even if it is just a descendant glancing down at the time.
I have a ruby ring from the 1920s that belonged to my Grandmother. This distinctive piece of jewelry gets comments and compliments everywhere. Especially in stores like Cartier in Vegas, jewellers spot the ring, and comment. For me, the value of this ring surpasses the value of the gold and jewels.
It IS worth quite a bit, but that’s not what I think when I wear it. This ring represents my beautiful Grandmother and her legacy. I was very close to my Grandmother, and she was such a joy. I don’t want to forget her. And when I look at the ring, I remember.
None of us would say aloud, “Wow, I hope I’m not forgotten!” But we DO think it, particularly the more successful we are. Our success drives a need to be relevant to future generations and a fear all our accomplishments will be forgotten.
I am an older Gen X, and suddenly, I've seen so many famous folks being forgotten by Gen Z. My 24-year-old son has no idea who Elvis is, or Frank Sinatra, James Brown, or even Aretha Franklin (this might be the only place I stumbled with parenting.) Even Taylor Swift is only two generations or so from obscurity.
I digress.
Patek Phillip knows their audience is wildly successful, but also knows their audience has wishes and fears they never tell anyone. When you tap into the deeper reasons people buy luxury brands, you can market your higher-level offers, so they sell easily and immediately. If you know the wishes and fears beyond the surface, you speak to the primal and can sell your offers quickly. It works a little like magic.
Want to know the luxury trends working in the current market? Get into my TRENDS subscription, where I unpack the current buyer behaviour and the marketing working in real-time.
5. Offer an even higher level offer not accessible to everyone.
Exclusivity creates a stellar customer experience.
Sales are sometimes complicated, but humans aren’t.
We are relatively simple to read! We want what others have, and we want to have what others cannot have. We want to be unique and go to the head of the line. Who has not looked longingly at that priority lane and wished you could skip the line? Who has bought the private lounge, the lay-flat seats, the VIP experience, and thought? I am so glad I do not have to wait, be cramped, or miss out. I am so happy I’m not like those poor people waiting so long.
Scarcity creates demand. The more in demand something is, the scarcer it is, and usually, the more it costs. Going back to my gift list, the Safari with the McEnroe brothers is expensive because it is a limited edition. There are limited spots. You can’t just play tennis with John McEnroe. He doesn’t have a free Calendly where you can book time on the courts. He’s not going to be there!
In other words, this is a high-end offer targeted to a specific person who values this experience and likes it because it is scarce and exclusive.
When you offer a high ticket, consider also having an additional ascension offer. Give more access, and make it bespoke and personalized with customized client experiences. Go deeper. Offer things no one else gets. Invitation only. I call this your ‘unapologetically elite’ offer. Keep a mystique around the offer and allude to it on calls, but don’t necessarily offer it to anyone. Mention the price point of this more expensive offer on a sales call to frame the price of your high ticket offer as your ‘one size fits most’ flagship. Tell your clients they don’t need all the bells and whistles yet. Tell them they “only need’’ your regular high ticket offer right now, and help them aspire to work with you at this elite level.
