The Ultimate Guide to High Ticket Closing: How to Succeed in Remote Sales
If you’re joining the world of high ticket sales, you’re in luck. Selling a high ticket item is a great privilege, because with a high price point you and your team can afford to offer an incredible product or service.
I think most salespeople would agree that they feel the most fulfilled when they are driving great outcomes for their customers. And that’s what you get with high ticket sales. (If you’re trying to charge a high price point without a product or service that’s incredibly valuable, you may need to reconsider your price point.)
In this article, we’ll look at
(1) What are high ticket sales and how that definition can mean different things to different companies based on the context
(2) The Skills You Need to Succeed in High Ticket Closing
(3) Tips, Tools and Resources for Remote High Ticket Sellers
Section 1: What are High Ticket Sales?
The first time I saw an enterprise contract - I was in shock. My company had just received renewal terms from our primary data provider. They were seeking $80k for the next year’s service.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had never spent $80k on software in my life. In fact, I’m hesitant to this day to pay 99 cents for an iPhone app.
During the conversation with our vendor, I shared my trepidation. He guided me, through a thoughtful set of questions, how much we had saved in the past year using their software. Their data solution was instrumental to our business. And to build it in house, we’d need 3 full time engineers which would run us a minimum of $600k (not to mention the overhead of hiring and training new employees).
Next, he walked me through the time and resources his company had spent developing their product and the ongoing support staff they employ to provide us with near instant SLAs.
And finally, he lopped on a nice discount. Over the course of 30 minutes, I went from appalled by the asking price to feeling we were getting away with highway robbery on our deal. Is $80k the threshold for a high ticket sale? In the moment, it certainly felt like it met the criteria.
As a result of the recent Elon Musk led Twitter layoffs, they announced they were able to reduce their Salesforce contract from $20 million to $5 million.
In context, Twitter may look at our $80k contract as pocket change.
The point of my story is not to set a numerical benchmark for high ticket sales - it’s to show that the contract value is not the only indicator as it’s highly context dependent.
Another benchmark for high ticket sales may be that the sales process is human driven. High ticket sales, as opposed to low ticket sales, can include a human in the process because the revenue from a deal is high enough to cover a salesperson’s salary. Moreover, high ticket products tend to be more bespoke, rather than out of the box, and benefit from human led consultation.
Human driven sales is not a perfect proxy either however. Many luxury goods, like Louis Vuitton luggage, can sell for tens of thousands of dollars to buyers who purchase online without ever speaking to a representative. And while these goods are handmade and have great craftsmanship, they are not bespoke and do not require consultation.
In general, high ticket sales meet the following criteria:
- Are >$1k in cost
- Have a human in the loop for both parties
- Have negotiable / bespoke pricing
- Involve an ongoing relationship between the company and the customer
For the rest of this article, we’ll limit our focus to sales driven go-to-market functions for high ticket B2B products. If you instead want to learn how to sell high ticket luxury consumer goods, you should check out this book.
Section 2: The Skills You Need to Succeed in High Ticket Closing
When most people think of sales, they picture a charismatic closer who creates urgency and overcomes every objection that hurdles their way. This caricature of a salesman is great at selling knives door to door. But he can’t sell an enterprise contract to save his life.
Why is high ticket closing different from low ticket sales?
Low ticket products are a one size fits all solution. You don’t often need to know your client well to make the sale. Everyone needs steak knives. If you focus your pitch on why your steak knives are best, and create social pressure to buy, you can get your sale and be on your way.
While everyone needs steak knives, not everyone needs an $80k fintech data provider. And even if you do, it may not be immediately apparent why it’s worth $80k.
The sales rep who sold me was great at asking questions, not pitching. Through his questions, he came to understand me, my company and our goals. He got me to talk about how his product would help us achieve those goals. By the end of his questioning, he didn’t even have to pitch. His second most valuable skill was responsiveness. He answered my emails promptly. He returned my phone calls. And he left me with the impression that he was the type of person I like working with. I don’t care if I enjoy working with my steak knives salesmen because I’ll never see him again after the sale! My software sales rep, on the other hand, was my main point of content for another full year of service.
In summary, asking great questions and responsiveness will get you far. If you want to dive deeper on how to ask great questions, check out Neil Rackham’s book SPIN Selling.
Section 3: Tips, Tools and Resources for Remote High Ticket Sellers
Whether you like it or not, Enterprise sales has moved from an in person, golf course driven industry to remote video conferencing. Once you’ve accepted this fact, you can embrace the benefits and fill the gaps where possible.
First and foremost, you need a decent home video setup. I emphasize decent here because I think a lot of people went overboard during the pandemic. The only requirements are that you (1) position a light behind your camera to shine on your face (here’s the light I use) (2) have a quiet, distraction free environment. If you want to level up further, check out this guide.
Next, consider how you can leverage the strength of remote sales. Since you no longer need to travel from meeting to meeting, you can spend the extra time taking more sales calls & following up with leads. Packing your calendar means more commission for you.
More importantly, since a face to face video chat is only one click away, you can reduce your time to responding to inbound leads to zero. You can drive high intent leads into instant video calls with you and your time using Cuda. Video calls, rather than phone calls, help drive personal connection.
When possible, leverage in person meetings as an added boost for rapport building. Keep track of where your key accounts are located and reach out to line up meetings when you’re in town.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the best high ticket closers are great listeners and create rapport just as well via zoom as they can in person. High ticket sales are great for you (since you can earn huge commissions) and great for the client (because you can profitably offer a great product + service given the price point).
