Segmentation for High Ticket Sales

In email marketing, you’ve probably found out that segmentation is the holy grail. Segmenting your list by engagement is the most important thing you can do to offer the right products and services to the right subscribers at the right time. Essential.

Having a properly set up autoresponder is pretty much mandatory these days for any chances of success along with automating the process, not to mention the ability to re-target unopened emails.

Unlocking the Power of Segmentation for High Ticket Sales

You just need to look at the problem and connect the dots. The solution is simple and basically comes at you.

If you are unaware of the different types of internet users, you can easily find out. You can easily check the segments of buyers or potential buyers in your niche.

You can also look at your statistics or you can research your competitors and see their strategies in attracting potential buyers who are ready to buy.

Regardless of how you do it, it all leads back to the same place. It all leads to segmentation.

You have to master this. You have to figure this out. Otherwise, you won’t get those high-ticket sales. They’re just not going to happen.

What is a High-Ticket Sale Anyway?

Before I go any further, I want to nail down some definitions.

I know you probably already have some sort of understanding as to what “high-ticket sales” mean. I can also almost guarantee that your definition is a little bit off.

I’m not saying that you’re flat out wrong. I’m just saying that it’s slightly off.

Most marketers define high-ticket sales as products and services that cost at least three figures if not four. Once you start selling products or services that cost several hundred dollars or thousands of dollars, you can safely say that you are selling high-ticket sale items.

But this is just part of the picture. You cannot stop here. If you do, your high-ticket sales strategy is going to be very shallow and, ultimately, self-defeating.

What do I mean by that? Well, if you know that each item you sell in your niche can get you $5,000, it’s very easy to build a business that is geared towards just getting that first and only sale. You put in a lot of work, you burn through a lot of time, to get that $5,000. Once you get that sale, it’s too easy for you to think that this is a one-time sale.

You can easily be forgiven for thinking that way because that’s how most marketers think. It’s a one-time bigtime kind of affair.

This is too bad. And this is also the reason why a lot of those marketers end up failing later on.

The Key to High-Ticket Sales

The key to high-ticket sales involves two very powerful components. They impact what you do before and after the high-ticket sale event.

If you’re clueless about this strategy, you will be left in the sad position of constantly working to get new customers so you can get them to sign on the dotted line and give you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars with that one sale.

The problem is, they’ve gone after the deal. They may not have been all that happy, but they may not be so unhappy that they demand a refund.

Regardless of how you play it, it’s still a one-time big-time kind of situation.

This is a tremendous lost opportunity because when you are scaling up or you’re ramping up your relationship with that prospect to get them to buy that high-ticket sale item or service, you are presented with a tremendous amount of opportunities.

After they enter their credit card information and they go through with the sale, you’re given another opportunity.

Think in Big Picture Terms

The secret to high-ticket sales is sustainability.

This has nothing to do with the one-time big-time mindset. Get that idea out of your head. If that’s how you think, you are playing this game to lose.

To win in the high-ticket sales game, you have to take care of what the customer goes through before the sale, and you have to have a plan for what happens after the sale.

Build a Solid Brand First, and then Get Them to Upscale

A lot of people who try to sell high-ticket sales items basically think (more like hoping and wishing) that when prospects get enough information, they will finally decide to spend thousands of dollars.

It doesn’t work that way. Do you understand what you’re requiring of the customer?

If you’re like most consumers, it’s hard enough for you to buy something that is worth $50 to $100. You would need to see the brand several times. You would need to feel assured about the brand and that the people behind it are not going to rip you off.

You probably would expect to hear enough about the brand’s products for you to think that this brand or product line is legit. This is what you would expect, at a minimum, as a responsible consumer.

The bottom line is, you’re not going to buy something that costs hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on a whim. This is not an impulse buy.

If you’re like most consumers in the United States, a purchase of thousands of dollars is going to set you back quite a bit in terms of your household budget. This is why high-ticket sales marketers set up a scaling relationship with the customer.

They go through different types of information to build trust, and then they are sold packages that scale up, depending on need and familiarity. This then culminates or climaxes with the big-ticket sale.

At that point, it wouldn’t feel like that much of a jump. Each step of the way, you have demonstrated the value your brand brings to the table.

Even if you’re an affiliate marketer selling somebody else’s product, you earn your high-ticket sales customer’s trust by giving them the right solution at the right time, at the right stage of their relationship with you.

Know the Big Picture

Understand that high-ticket sales require the right system. You have to filter them properly. You have to scale them up in terms of their purchases.

Here’s the secret: at first, get them to pay $1.00. That’s how you separate the simple information seekers from actual potential buyers.

Now, let’s be clear. You’re not going to get rich from one-dollar sales.

Once you have people transferred over to your buyer’s mailing list, you have to continue scaling them up and filtering them until you get your target audience.

These are people who are willing to pay a lot of money because they can see the value of whatever it is you’re offering, and they have a tremendous sense of urgency.

Either they need to buy right now because there’s some sort of deadline that’s about to pass, or they have completely given up on doing it themselves or having it done locally or tapping their own network.

You have them eating at the palm of your hands.

The Big Picture Also Includes What Happens Next…

Now that you have gotten somebody to pay $1,000, $5,000, or several hundred dollars or whatever it is, don’t stop.

MBA students from China who are often sons and daughters of multimillionaires have needs once they get to Canada, Europe, or the United States. Even when they’re in the MBA program, they would also have needs. This is crucial because you cannot drop the ball here.

It’s very tempting to think, “I already got several thousand dollars from this list member. Why should I even bother about what happens next?”

Here’s the simple answer. The cheapest and most lucrative form of business you will ever get is repeat business.

Let me repeat that. The cheapest and most lucrative income you will make is from repeat business.

These people already know what you’re capable of. They already trust you enough to spend big money. Now is not the time to drop the ball and forget about them. They still have needs.

In my case, they would need a place to stay. They would need job placement services. They would need networking services. In some cases, they needed life coaching. I can go on and on.

You have to look at your customers in the same way. Just because you have converted them already within the main niche of your business, it doesn’t mean that all their other needs go away.

There are many related niches as well. Visa assistance, immigration and legal and other services cab be natural extensions of the services you could provide to your customers.

You have to think along these lines. And if you do, your list goes up in value over time.

The more your relationship with your customer base matures, the more valuable it becomes. What started out as a $1 sale quickly turns into a sale of a few dozen dollars, which then leads to several hundred dollars’ worth of sales, and then the big one – the $5,000 or even $7,000 commitment.

After that, believe it or not, lies even more money. It costs several thousand dollars to retain an immigration attorney. Helping somebody get settled in certain parts of the world can result in commissions to the tune of several hundred dollars.

Do the math. Think long term. Think in terms of relationships.

The Secret: Filtering

If I wasn’t clear yet, let me just break it down. Your job is to filter your prospects as quickly and as cleanly as possible.

Separate information seekers from potential buyers. This is where your “$1 product” comes in.

You then separate low-value buyers from intermediate or long term, high-value buyers. These are people who are willing to buy immediately, but they will remain stuck at a certain low price.

You can monetize these people by selling a book or an online course. You can safely segregate them into another mailing list.

You can still make money off of these people, but please understand that there’s going to be a ceiling. They are never going to level up like your big-time clients.

For your big-time clients, think of the long term, high value, high-ticket funnel that I described above.

The Key Secret You Need to Keep in Mind

You have to have a means of constantly communicating with higher value clients. This is the key. This is why I insist that you build not just one mailing list, but several.

Your mailing list must be segmented based on how quickly somebody wants to buy and the value of the things they want to buy.

For everybody else (and I’m talking about information seekers who just don’t want to spend money), you can set them up with a fairly short autoresponder series. If they don’t convert by the sixth email or the eighth email, cut them from your list.

Depending on your mailing list service provider, there’s no need for you to burn a hole through your pocket supporting list squatters. Identify them and quickly delete them.

For everybody else, work on converting them and pushing them higher and higher in the value chain. This is how you create a consistent flow of high-ticket sales.

In fact, if you play your cards right, based on the system that I’ve described above, your mailing list goes up in value over time.

The more mature your relationship becomes with your customer base, the more they trust you, and the more they’re willing to buy a wide range of directly related and indirectly related products and merchandise.