April 30, 2024
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High ticket sales 101: how to build a personalized approach for significant deals

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Relying on low ticket sales to move you through the sales cycle can only get you so far. Especially if you have a target to reach. Mixing these regular sales up with some high ticket products or services can help a sales team thrive. But potential buyers for high value items require more of a personalized strategy and sales tactics.

In this blog post, we walk you through what a high ticket sale is, the key differences between a regular sale and high ticket sales funnel and how your sales professional can craft a personalized sales process.

What are high ticket sales?

High ticket sales happen when you're selling a product or service at a high price, usually defined as a ticket closing at over $1,000. The sales process of a high ticket product or service often involves more stakeholders that follow a complex decision-making process. This may effect the length of the sales cycle.

Some B2B examples of high ticket sales include enterprise-level SaaS products, consultancy services and agency contracts.

Here are some key aspects of a high-ticket sales in the B2B buyer journey that Gartner's research identified:

  • Problem identification: This is when they realise they need to do something about a problem they face.
  • Solution exploration: This is when they start looking at what's out there that can solve their problem.
  • Requirements building: This is when they think about exact requirements they need the purchase to do or solve.
  • Supplier selection: This is when they look at if a product or service does what they want it to do.

At the decision making stage, they consider:

  • Validation: This is when they think they know the right answer but need to be sure.
  • Consensus creation: This is when they reach a decision and get everyone on board.

What is the difference between low ticket sales and high ticket deals?

From the time needed to reach a purchase decision, to the differences between a common sales objection between them there are a few differences sales professionals need to be aware of if you're considering high ticket selling.

What is a low ticket sale?

A low ticket sale are the sales of a product or service that have a lower price point compared to other items. Even though they might not generate as much profit by comparison, they still play an important part of an important sales strategy. Therefore they require a different sales techniques.

Some examples of low ticket sales include:

  • Physical goods such as swag
  • Digital products such as online courses or paid webinars
  • Subscription-based products such as monthly box subscriptions

What are some low ticket item sales techniques?

Low ticket items still require a sales funnel and an understanding of an inbound sales process, even though it requires less time to make a purchase decision. Your sales team will need to work closely with your marketing team to create the right type of sales enablement content.

What are some high ticket item sales techniques?

On the other hand, the sales process involved in high ticket closing require a more complex decision-making process and longer timeframe to reach the decision-making stage. Your sales team will also need to spend time building a deeper connection and trust with potential customers.

Some examples of a high ticket item include:

  • Enterprise software solutions: these systems are often customized for each client to help them integrate iat with existing tools and workflows.
  • Data analytics platforms: these platforms are useful for getting insights into business operations, marketing trends and customer behaviour.
  • Cloud infrastructure and services: Cloud storage, computing and network services are often seen as heavy investments.

How high ticket closers can build a personalized sales process

Done successfully, appealing to high ticket customers can help you make a higher profit. But building a sales process for high ticket products that appeals to the right high ticket clients can be tricky.

1. Deep market and client research

This step requires you to understand your ideal customer profile which we talk more about here. The information gathered at this stage is crucial for crafting a strong sales proposal later and helping you have a tailored approach initial contact.

Know your target industry

To make sure your high ticket offer appeals to the right audience, you need a deep understanding of the industry. Start with understanding how your ideal clients operate. Then go further into their key challenges, competitors and industry trends they face. This will also help your sales team send the right type of content to initiate a conversation that can add value.

Do some client specific research

Assuming you have an idea of your ideal customer profile, leverage this to do some client specific research. Look into their typical business model, strategic goals, past solution attempts and pain points. This can be used to tailor  your sales teams' approach.

2. Segmentation and buyer persona development

Now that you've started to scratch the surface, a deeper understanding of your target audience is required to understand the role of the key decision makers in particular.

Segment your audience

This involves identifying different segments within your target market based on things such as demographic, industry, company size, key decision-makers. You may want to use a customer relationship management platform such as folk for this bit as you need a place to store all your contact information and allow your sales and marketing teams to collaborate closely as you build the right inbound campaign.

folk can show you who your strongest connection is and help you have an overview of your last interaction with someone so you know exactly when to follow up next.

Create detailed buyer personas specific to key stakeholders

Develop personas for the key decision-makers and influencers within the businesses you target. This will help you tailor your sales and marketing messages to match the specific concerns and preferences of these personas. Successful high ticket closers go an extra mile to understand the way the right kind of language will appeal. Tools such as Crystal Knows can help you understand what approach will have a great high appeal. You can make comments on each person in folk to capture the data Crystal Knows shares.

3. Engagement and relationship nurturing

At this stage, you're ready to make the first point of contact. This could be a personalized email, phone call or interaction on a social media platform such as LinkedIn. You then want to maintain on-going communication. The trick is not to have a sales led approach as this could come across as unsolicited or spam. Instead, pay attention to their pain points and share any content that might be relevant to help them solve their problem such as industry insights, tailored advice, or new white papers.

4. Demo booking to demonstrate value

Once you've got warm leads through to booking a demo, you're more than half way there because they've shown interest. Make sure your approach does the following.

Tailored demonstration

Provide customized demos that showcase exactly how your product or service solves their unique problems or pain point that your sales reps observed from their extensive research stage. This way, you're not just listing features they already know your product has as there's a chance they've already done their own research.

5. Feedback and adaptation

At this stage, it's important to take on board any constructive feedback you've received. Use what you've learnt from any sales calls or demos to address what product updates need to be prioritized and how to move forward from any common sales objections you get.

What happens after a high ticket sales process closes successfully?

Once you've successfully closed a high ticket item, your focus should move to building a long term business relationship with your new client. This might include:

  • Post-sale engagement: Typically used to engage with the client after closing the sale to make sure they're satisfied, get any constructive feedback, testimonials and in time – identifying further opportunities for collaboration.
  • Customer success engagement: Further down the line and depending on initial/on-going feedback, you may want to invite your client to have a chat and short follow-up interview to get information for a successful case study.
  • Keeping them up to date: Should you have any new products or services, you may want to allow your client to opt-in to any email correspondences that can let them be the first to know of these new updates.

Conclusion

Even though the sales process for high ticket products require a lot of effort, it can be equally rewarding if you build a long term sales strategy that can help you appeal to potential customers that are likely to value these premium products and services. Using a customer relationship management platform like folk can help you stay on top of which warm leads you need to follow up, and segment them into the right categories. You can also use folk as a single source of truth between your sales and marketing functions. Try folk for free.

More resources

Keen to learn more about sales? Here are more blogs from our business development series.