Mastering High Ticket Selling with Jennifer Diepstraten

In this Episode

• [01:18] – Why are people shying away from high-ticket selling and going for lower offers?
• [02:57] – Jennifer takes a moment to talk about all the great things about high-ticket selling, which has a lot to do with the type of clients you get.
• [05:09] – We hear how Jennifer qualifies potential clients or leads and figures out if they’re right for her. She then shares a story to illustrate her point, explaining that successful entrepreneurs are able to “pull apart their toys” and identify the value in their service.
• [11:04] – What would be an example of a quantum benefit that was “buried under the pile” in Jennifer’s metaphor?
• [15:33] – Jennifer talks about the results that her client from the previous example had with raising her rates based on the benefits she offered.
• [16:50] – Stephan thinks it’s important to offer high-ticket items for several reasons, which he explains.
• [18:11] – Jennifer takes a moment to talk with Stephan about why his services are worth so much and his rates are as high as they are.
• [23:43] – Jennifer digs deeper into her discussion about Stephan’s services by asking him how many nuances a second-stringer analyst might make.
• [26:52] – After hearing Stephan’s explanation, Jennifer has heard four quantum benefits already. She explains them in more detail.
• [32:59] – If you want to incorporate these quantum benefits into your signature talk, how would you do so? In answering, Jennifer begins by clarifying what a signature talk is and why you need one.
• [37:10] – The product solves the problem, Jennifer explains.
• [38:09] – How does Jennifer make her potential clients do the “homework” that she assigns to them?
• [40:28] – Jennifer talks in more depth about her homework videos.
• [43:29] – Your quantum benefits are probably already in videos you made before defining what they are, Jennifer explains.
• [46:29] – Jennifer shares her advice on raising fees and having people actually pay you the higher amount.
• [48:26] – Stephan brings up a specific example using his daughter to draw out Jennifer’s wisdom on pricing. Jennifer then offers her advice on how people in positions similar to Stephan’s daughter can increase their income.
• [53:30] – Is there a close technique that works like magic for Jennifer?
• [57:23] – Stephan brings up Jennifer’s One Call Blueprint, and throws in a little plug for Jennifer involving his wife.
• [59:42] – Is Jennifer available if listeners want to work with her directly for a one-on-one coaching or mentoring situation?

Transcript

In this episode number 124, you are about to master high-ticket selling. Do you wanna know what it takes to raise your fees significantly? Even doubling or tripling them without giving away anymore time or freebies? The secret lies in something called quantum benefits. The person who’s gonna tell you all about them and how it works is Jennifer Diepstraten. Jennifer excels at teaching entrepreneurs how to turn interested prospects into excited clients who say, “Yes, I can’t wait to work with you. Jennifer has over 20 years of sales experience and over $14 million in product and service sales. Jennifer, it’s great to have you on the show.

Thanks for having me.

Let’s talk about high-ticket selling because that’s something you’re really known for and there’s a real science and an art to it. First of all, why are folks, people who are selling, shying away so much from high-ticket sales and just going with the lower-ticket items like the tripwires, and the core offer is not high-ticket. Why avoid that high-ticket sale?

I think that there is a pervasive belief that it’s just easier to sell a lower ticket item. It’s easier. It’s less money. It’s a smaller commitment. It’s an easy yes. The perception of that is that it just takes more work to sell high-ticket.

Well, isn’t it a potential just for an impulse buy if it’s a low ticket, like, “Oh, yeah sure. I don’t mind.” Whereas it’s more a considered purchase if it’s high-ticket. Longer buy cycle or lead time, all that sort of stuff.

You would think so. Certainly, you probably wouldn’t put your high-ticket offer on the end cap of a cash register. It’s not like a pack of gum that you’re just gonna pop into your pocket as you’re checking out of the grocery store. I’m really here to challenge a lot of the assumptions about high-ticket being harder. And really because there’s so much benefit of selling high-ticket. I, frankly, I am not a low-ticket person. I don’t even really know how to sell low-ticket. It doesn’t get me excited. The volume of people that you have to have if you have a low-ticket offer, to really have a viable business, is just astronomical. Most businesses, the most challenging problem they have is not enough leads. If you get really, really good at high-ticket sales with the few leads that you have but they’re the right leads, and you know how to convert them, you can have an extremely viable, profitable business right out of the gate.

Yeah. Let’s compare and contrast high-ticket selling and low-ticket selling.

Okay, alright. You want me to tell you all the great things I think about high-ticket selling first?

Yes, let’s start there. Sure.

Sure. When I look back on my career, my history, I’ve always, and I didn’t put this together for a while but I finally realized that when I look back on where I’ve worked, I’ve worked mostly in biotech medical diagnostics, I used to sell scientific and medical equipment, then I left. Now, I have my own business. I teach people, I teach entrepreneurs, coaches, experts, how to sell high-ticket services. What I have really noticed is that the people who are buying the more expensive item, the premium products, for the most part tend to be better clients. Most people don’t think that that’s the case, that somebody who pays you more is gonna be more demanding and all, who knows what, snooty or prissy, or whatever. But that’s not really the case. What I have experienced, really honestly, and I’ve seen my clients have the same experience is that the high-end buyers tend to be the most gracious, the most respectful, they take the most action, and therefore they get the most results, and tend to send their wealthy friends your way.

Yup.

Yeah. For me, because what I do is I want people to have great results. I am first and foremost committed to having great results for my clients. I don’t make an offer to every person. When I’m working with my own clients, I also tell them, “You don’t wanna make an offer to every person.” The sale is not about trying to get anybody to buy anything. The sale is about looking to see if what you have is a fit for what this person needs. Then, if and only if, it is, then you make an offer. That way when they say yes, you know you can do your work with full, give it your all, and that they’re gonna be able to take in what you’ve given them and use it. That’s worth high-ticket all day long because the person is actually gonna get the results.

Yup. Sure. making your offer to a qualified lead is really important. How do you qualify somebody? How do you make sure that they are the best kind of lead for you?

This is such a deep question. I could answer this for three days straight probably. But for this purpose what I would say is one of the things that I go through with my clients is I ask them to get crystal clear on what is unique and special and highly attractive about them. If you’re a web developer and you have 10,000 people that do web developing that you’re competing with, it’s really hard to make an offer to somebody that’s different from another web developer unless you know what’s unique and special about you and about how you work. Once you know that, that becomes your point of differentiation and you can actually charge a premium for that.

What’s the process to identify what that unique point of difference is?

If you listen to marketing shows, they’ll talk about your unique selling proposition, your USP, you brand. All that stuff is really valid. But I have a particular – can I share what it is?

Of course.

Okay. What I’m gonna share with you is not only how you differentiate yourself from everybody else. This is like your fingerprint. It’s also how you can see the value of what you do in a bigger way because this is the main question people ask me is, “Jennifer, I really would love to charge more. But how do I feel good about it? How do I connect with that it’s worth more. It just doesn’t feel like it’s worth more.” I take them through this and the best way I can explain it to is through a story.

Okay.

I want you to imagine that I’ve got a pile of toys in my living room. I usually do; I have three sons. I have a 15 year old, a 6 year old, and a 2 year old. All boys. Usually I have toys in my living room. I want you to imagine I’d pick up my pile of toys and I go and put them on the driveway because I’m gonna have a garage sale. Because I’m having a garage sale I’ve gotta price my pile of toys. I look at my pile of toys and I think, “Ahh, this pile of toys is probably worth $200.” I decide that it’s $200. Now, in my story here, your current service is my pile of toys and your current pricing, the analogy is $200 in my story, okay? Now, I go through something that I have coined the quantum benefit process. It’s something that I’ve been doing for 15 years. I didn’t realize that I was doing it and when I finally realized I was doing it I thought, “Aha. This is exactly what is the key.” This is the key to expanding your own sense of the value of what you have, feeling good about charging more. I look at my pile of toys and the first thing I notice is I see some legos. I start pulling out the legos and I put them in a pile. Then I look back at the original pile of toys and I see Hot Wheels cars. I pull out all the Hot Wheels cars and the Hot Wheels tracks and and flags, everything to make the Hot Wheels set. Then I look back at my pile of toys and I see dinosaurs, so I pull out the dinosaurs, and the rocks, and the trees. I keep going with this process until I finally end up with five distinct pile of toys. Now, I look back at the legos and I’m looking at the legos and when I think about how much fun we had with these legos, how many different things are actually in that one pile, you can probably build 14 different Star Wars ships. Every Wednesday night or Thursday night at my house is family night and a lot of times it’s lego night. I think about how the older boys are building things, now the baby comes through and he wrecks everything, and how much fun it is. As I’m connecting with this pile of legos and what’s so special about them, I realize this pile of toys, this pile of legos, all by itself is worth $200, just all by itself without anything else. Then I look at the Hot Wheels cars and I realize the same thing. The dinosaurs, $200. I go around and suddenly I realize when I can actually see what’s in the pile that I have five piles each worth $200. My value of what I had went from $200 to $1000. What I want you to notice is did I add anything? I didn’t. I didn’t download the instruction manual. I didn’t build anything. All I did was I recognized what was unique and specific and highly attractive about each of the piles. This is what happens for entrepreneurs when they are able to pull apart their pile of toys and look at what’s actually in their service. I think when we try to identify one USP or one reason why our service or our product is valuable and put it into a nifty little marketing sentence, it’s fine in some circumstances. But it actually, for the most part, diminishes the value. The reason why this process I call it quantum benefits process is because when you really connect with the value of just one of the benefits that people get from working with you, that one thing is worth the entire praise of admission all by itself. That’s why it’s called quantum because it’s a quantum leap in your business because you think, “Oh my gosh. This one thing is worth the entire price of what I’m charging but they don’t just get one. They get four or five. I’ve never met an offer or a service or a product that didn’t have at least four or five quantum benefits. It was just that they were buried in a pile.

Right. What would be an example of from either yourself or from a client of a quantum benefit that was buried under the pile?

One of my favorite examples is my client, Kristen. I have this for every person that I’ve worked with. This is the core of all the work I do with all my clients when we’re crafting their sales offers and helping them to learn how to sell high-ticket. My client, Kristen, when she came to me she had a fitness bootcamp, an outdoor group training. I think she did it indoor but neither here nor there. She had this group training fitness program. People would pay her $197 a month. They would work out with her once a week in a group. She had a pretty good business. She had several of these classes going on. It was fine but she came to me and said, “Jennifer, what I really wanna do is I really wanna charge $7500 for a six month private training program with me. Because even though I like my boot camp, I’ve had 10 years of nutrition training. I have all of the specialty exercise experience that I can’t do in the boot camp because I have to customize it to each individual.” She said, “What do I do? What do I do?” I think a lot of people would’ve laughed at her but I really got that she had some kind of expertise that you couldn’t really see because it was in the big pile. We started going through the quantum benefits process and along the way, one of the things that we realized that she can do for people is that, she has this ability to test whether or not a particular exercise is good for you and makes you stronger, or bad for you and makes you weaker. As we’re talking about this, I asked her, “Hey, Kristen. Do you have people in your class, in your boot camp that aren’t progressing?” She said, “Yeah. Actually, there’s three women in one of my boot camps that I think really shouldn’t be there. They’re so dedicated, they come every week, they’ve been coming for a couple of years, but they would really benefit from this.” From sort of a superficial perspective, you might think that these women aren’t really good candidates for a $7500 program. They’re not particularly overweight. They’re not particularly sick. They’re relatively in good health. It’s just that they’re not progressing. But when I talked to Kristen about this a little bit more I said, “Do you think that someone who’s that dedicated, they come every single week, they’ve been coming for two years or longer, and they’re so committed. Do you think that them knowing that they’re actually doing exercises that aren’t good for them might be of good interest?” She’s like, “Oh, yeah. I think they would.” That’s what I did. That was one of her quantum benefits was this ability to determine if an exercise is good for you or bad for you. She actually has four or five quantum benefits. I give her a little coaching and she went up and she talked to one of the women in the boot camp but it sounded like this, “How are things going in boot camp?” “Oh, they’re okay.” “Oh, okay. Why not not great?” “Well, it just doesn’t seem like I’m doing as well as everybody else.” Kristen at that point could say, “Oh, no. You’re doing fine. Just keep going.” Or she could say, “Hey, I have this training that I’ve been doing. I haven’t been able to bring it into the boot camp because it’s very personalized. But do you realize that there are certain exercises that are good for you and other exercises that aren’t as good for you but it’s a very personal thing?” What she ended doing was she first offered a $497 because she didn’t instantly jump overnight to $7500. But she sold something for $497, then $997, then $3000, and now it’s $8500 to work out with this woman for six months.

That’s cool. Looks like she can offer as a mid-range or a bridge offering between the boot camp and the $7500 or $8500 six-month program. Something like, “I’ll do an audit or a gap analysis or something to see where you are, where you wanna be, and kind of road map how to get there, or let’s audit the exercises that you are doing and I’ll tell you which ones are actually helping and progressing you and which ones are hurting you or not helping you or kind of a waste of time.” That analysis could be the thing that steps them into the $8500 six-month program.

Yeah. She could steer that way. Ultimately, she ended up just selling $8500 for six months. I think that what happened with her is really illustrative of a lot of people who are first connecting and getting used to the idea of charging that much. Her goal is $8500 but the most she could stomach at first was $500. It’s a big jump from $200 to $500 and then it was another big jump from $500 to $1000. It went really, really quickly. In four months she was up at that number. That’s sort of what I normally see with people is that as you connect with the incredible value you have in your quantum benefits, your ability to expand your pricing goes quickly. Also, your own acknowledgement, in a way, of how important your service is grows, and your ability to explain it to others grows. That’s where the money really starts flowing and also, you’re able to call in the right clients for you because you now have better words to explain why your stuff is so great.

I think it’s important to offer high-ticket offerings, services, products, because not only does that give you a good ROI as your time investing in certain activities and building certain things as the business owner or the marketer or sales person, but also, there’s a perception of value as well as the value itself. If people don’t perceive it as valuable because it’s low priced, I could offer an SEO audit for $497 and nobody would perceive it as being valuable. My price for an SEO audit is $35,000. I charge that and that’s my price. I don’t discount it. I don’t figure out special deals or whatever for people. I don’t do flash sales or anything like that. That’s an SEO audit and that’s what it costs. I’m one of the best in the business, I’ve co-authored the bible on SEO, The Art of SEO, so if you want me to do the audit, that’s what it costs. If somebody is willing to discount and low ball just to get the business, they just destroyed their perception of value with that client, I think.

Yeah, that’s a great example. If you want, we can play a little bit on why the value is the value.

Yeah.

If you want. You want to?

Yeah, let’s talk about it.

You wanna talk about it? Okay. I think this would be a really great kind of mini example for people who are listening, kind of what it evolves when you look at quantum benefits. Stephan, why do you feel like your service is worth what you charge? Why don’t you charge a lower price point? What’s so great about you? Because you know that’s what your clients are thinking or at least your prospects are thinking. Like, “Woah, why is he charging so much?” What’s so great about you and why should we pay so much?

If you look at the industry and what you normally would pay, it might be anywhere from several thousand dollars to maybe as much as $50,000 or $60,000 for an audit. If you’re going towards the low end, well, you get what you pay for of course, but you’re gonna get assigned an account manager and you’re gonna get an analyst doing most of the work and the consultant who is probably a second stringer or third stringer, not the kind of person who’s authored books and keynotes at conferences, and so forth. It’s just doing what they understand to be true and may or may not have a great deal of expertise and they’re kind of overseeing it and adding their piece to it. But it’s mostly done by the analyst who’s not that skilled at SEO. If that’s the kind of audit that you want, that’s probably not gonna get you the outcome that you’re after. You need to hire somebody who’s really high-level, top in their field, and has a great deal of depth of experience across a lot of different industries. Has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world like Chanel, Zappos, Sony, and Nordstrom, and so forth, and has also worked with startups, and funded startups, ones he can see the value in it, and being able to bring all that experience across all those different industries and types of sites to bear and providing recommendations and findings, advice, to the audit. That’s, I guess, how I would describe it.

Okay, awesome. Awesome. You wanna keep playing? Great. This is fun. Somebody got a second stringer analyst who didn’t have much experience or much knowledge, what would they not see or what could they potentially miss?

There’s so much. There’s so many nuances in SEO. Let’s say that they’re looking at the site and they see that there’s maybe some duplicate content but they’re not noticing or they don’t understand the correct way to eliminate duplicate content from the site. Most SEOs do not understand the distinction between disallow and no index. I’m gonna geek out just for a little bit here and say that, they’re using the easy approach which is let’s add a line to robots.txt, that says disallow, and then whatever directory or file type or URL stringer and whatever and that’s like, “Okay. That’s gonna stop those pages. They’re gonna get blocked from Google bot and they’re not gonna be in search results anymore.” Well, that’s actually not true. Disallows says, “Google bot, don’t come and visit this page anymore or this URL.” It doesn’t say, “Google, drop this page from the search results.” They wonder like, “Okay. I had identified all those duplicate content. I told Google bot to stop visiting and the page is still showing up in the search results. Hopefully, Mister or Miss client, that will kind of sort itself out overtime because Google takes time to do these things.” Well that’s actually not true at all. They should’ve used a no index and said, “Google bot, drop these pages from index.” They needed to have removed a disallow from the robots.txt to say, “Google bot, come on and have a look around. These pages are now available for you to access.” When they access it they see that there’s a no index meta tag that says, “Oh, this shouldn’t show up in the search results. Okay, we’ll honor that.” But Google bot would never see that if you continued to have a disallow in place in your robots.txt. This might sound really esoteric and geeky but it’s one of so many critical distinctions that the average SEO doesn’t understand and the expert, like the world-leading SEO experts out there are just finding these mistakes all over the place. The cost of missing one of these nuances can be huge.

Okay.

You will never come back from a penalty because you’ve had so much low quality content that you never successfully removed from Google. You just stopped Google bot accessing hose pages to see if anything’s changed on them. It just looks like a whole bunch of low quality content.

Okay. This is so amazing. You said you might not ever come back from what?

A penalty.

A penalty.

You might be penalized.

What does the penalty do to you ultimately?

It decimates your traffic from Google.

Like you end up on page gazillion instead of page one?

Yeah. And then your lead flow goes down the tubes. Your sales goes down the tubes. Next thing you know, you’re filing for bankruptcy.

Got it. Okay. How many different–I know we haven’t counted them but probably if we took our time, we could make a list of all the nuances. It might take you a day but how many nuances like this don’t understand what to do with duplicate content could a second stringer analyst make as a mistake? How many of them do you think there could be?

Well, with just duplicate content, there could probably be at least a dozen. But there are hundreds of these little nuances across all sorts of different aspects of SEO, especially technical SEO. There’s a lot of geeky little things like you’re doing a set of rewrite rules. This requires regular expressions and doing pattern matching and using asterisk instead of a plus sign in the string of code. You’re like, “That works. Seems to work.” But it was overly greedy and it catches things that it wasn’t supposed to because an asterisk is for zero-to-many occurences of the previous character. A plus sign is one-to-infinite number of that previous character. If you’re thinking that you’re doing the one-to-infinite number of that previous character but actually you’re using the asterisk, you’re saying that character that preceded doesn’t even have to exist to be a match. Doing stuff like you’re thinking, “Oh, this works because I tested it and I put in a URL and it’s redirecting or it’s rewriting, it’s good. We’re good. Good to go.” And then all these things that end up happening that they don’t even notice and or realize for potentially years, could come back to bite them or things just don’t work correctly and they had no idea, they would have no idea how to diagnose it. There’s so many of those things like you’re doing HTTPS migration and a list of other things. It’s all on the news now or at least in the SEO industry that Chrome is going to have a warning message for websites where they’re not secure. If you’re just a regular HTTP, da, da, da, whatever URL, then you’re gonna get as a user, a warning message by Chrome that, “This site is not secure. Are you sure you wanna proceed?” “I don’t know. This is an unsecure website, maybe I better not…” You’re just running a regular blog. You didn’t invest in migrating to HTTPS. There’s gonna a mass migration of websites this year to HTTPS and they’re gonna screw it up. They’re gonna screw up their SEO. They’re gonna miss little nuances like, “Oh, I redirected everything. I wasn’t supposed to redirect everything but I didn’t know that distinction.” I redirected my robots.txt and I shouldn’t have. I should’ve kept my old one alive as well as have my new ones so both versions of the site have a robots.txt. I should’ve done the same thing with all my sitemaps file.” Nobody knows this, very few people.

I’m gonna share back some things that I heard because I heard just in that few minutes four quantum benefits. We have to really develop them more. But here’s, just from this cursory glance of what you said, is that people should work with you and get a real SEO analysis because one, most places that they hire, you get what you pay for, and then in most cases, you end up with a second stringer analyst whom there are literally hundreds of mistakes that can be made by this second stringer person across SEO. For example, in just this one area, this don’t understand what to do with duplicate content, should it disallow or no index, I know I’m butchering this because I don’t really know what I’m saying but just in that one area, there’s dozens of mistakes that can be made. Just in that one area. That dozen things, and there’s another 99 at least across SEO in general. What happens is if people don’t know to look for that, that’s why you charge with what you charge because it takes the time and the expertise to know what to look for and then to go find it.

Well, yeah. It took two decades for me to get to this level of SEO expertise.

Exactly.

That’s what’s you’re paying for. Not for the fact that you’re spending three times as much time as the average SEO person doing the audit. You’re not paying for my hourly rate or whatever. You’re paying for the last two decades of me accumulating all this expertise.

Expertise, right. The problem is if you use a second stringer analyst and they miss even one of these hundreds of potential landmines then your site might not ever come back from a penalty and it will decimate your Google ranking.

Not that every site is gonna get penalized or is at risk of getting penalized but the cost of missing one of these important distinctions is maybe you missed out on doubling your traffic from Google. It could happen and you didn’t achieve that because somebody missed to put the wrong directive in robots.txt or didn’t do the sitemaps file correctly, whatever.

Yeah. That’s just one. As a listener who doesn’t know much about SEO, what I’m getting is that I don’t want a second string analyst, and I definitely don’t wanna take the risk. If my website’s important to me, and traffic, and being ranked on Google is important to me, I don’t wanna risk that there’s some guy out there or gal that’s a second stringer that’s gonna miss the hundreds of potential landmines that could be done wrong just because they don’t have the expertise. That’s just one thing. You ask the business person, “If your website accounts for half a million dollars worth of business a year because of traffic and sometimes it can be hard to quantify and we even, just from leads through your website, well, can you afford to have a penalty on Google that decimates your ranking forever? No. That’s just one reason why people would buy. Continuing to develop that, you could put it into a talk, of course I’m sure you have, really illustrates that and the impact that it has maybe a couple of different examples. And then, we touch on your other quantum benefits. We’re not gonna, I’d say for the purpose of time, we won’t really develop these right now, but you talked about experience with this big name brands, a bit of those startups, you talked about making recommendations that people could implement on their sites, and then you talked about how most SEO people wouldn’t even know what happened, much less how to diagnose what the issue is because they wouldn’t be able to find the asterisk versus the plus sign. They wouldn’t even know to look in the code for that. That’s just the beginning. Now I’m starting to see why that could be worth it to somebody who relies on their website for business.

Nice. I love it.

Yeah.

That’s powerful stuff. If you identify your four or five quantum benefits and then you’re good at articulating them, then you can raise your prices. It’s easy for you to justify that higher price because you’ve uncovered the gold, the diamonds in the pile and you’ve presented them front and center for that prospect or client to consider.

Exactly. You said it.

Nice. Okay. Let’s say that you wanted to incorporate these quantum benefits into your signature talk. Let’s first of all explain what is your signature talk, why do you need to have a signature talk versus other talks that you might give, other presentations, workshops, and keynotes, or whatever that you’re giving. Probably, we all need to have a signature talk.

I think you do, even if the only place that it exists is on a website and certainly speaking is an amazing way to grow your business, one of the most powerful marketing tools I think out there. Your signature talk answers the question why you. Why should I do business with you as opposed to anyone else in your business category? Or as opposed to spend my money on a trip to Belize. You really have to answer that question. What I see that really helps my clients is when you take your quantum benefits and we pour them into your talk. For example, I’ll use myself since we’re talking about quantum benefits, one of the things that I do really well is I help people to communicate the value of why what they have is worth it. You know how many sales trainers and sales coaches there are out there?

A lot.

Yeah, right. I’m in a crowded industry as well. But I’m crystal clear that one of my quantum benefits is I help you know what to say and when to say it, so your ideal client says yes. Because I know that’s one of the things that I do and I’ve just demonstrated that by sharing a little bit about pulling out the language about how to describe your quantum benefit, I know that the person that I’m looking for is someone who has, because of what I do, I’m gonna say it again, I help people know what to say and when to say it so the ideal clients says yes. What that means is my ideal client has a hard time knowing what to say and they’re looking for ideal clients. They’re not just looking for any client, they’re looking for ideal client. When I speak, what am I talking about? I’m usually talking about how to get over being tongue tied about explaining why people should buy from you. Because that’s the problem that my person has that would be interested in working with me as opposed to some other trainer. When you know your quantum benefits, it goes into your signature talks, it goes into your marketing, and it goes into your sales conversations. Because let’s face it, if somebody says to me, and I have had this happen where people ask me, “Hey, how do I work with you?” And I ask them a few questions, I say, “Well, tell me. How do you feel about how effective you are at communicating what you do? Do you feel like you’re really good at explaining what you do in a way that other people get why they should buy from you as opposed to somebody else?” If they say, “Oh, yeah. I’m really good at that.” They’re not my client. What would I do with them? That’s not my thing. I can ask that question, “How about when you’re out networking? When you have to stand up and give your 30-second elevator pitch, did you feel like you’re very effective at communicating why you’re different, why people should buy from you?” “Oh, yeah. I’m super good at that.” “Fantastic. Well, good luck.” Because my gift, one of my main quantum benefits is I help you to know what to say and when to say it. If you don’t have that as a problem, I can’t help you. That’s how you can start to craft that signature talk and the marketing around what makes you so special. You end up calling in the people who literally–if they listened to your talk, they don’t know why they love you, but they have the exact problems that you solve because you illustrated it in your talk. You end up with these very warm leads.

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Essentially once you’ve identified the quantum benefits and you know how to articulate them, you package those in to you signature talk, into your elevator pitch, into your marketing, your collateral, everything. It’s a continuum from the elevator pitch, the 30 seconds that you have when you’re in the elevator with somebody and they ask you what you do, to 45-minute keynote presentation that you might give at a conference where you’re actually paid to present it, or where you’re not paid and you have to even give a percentage of the back of the room sales to the person who’s running the conference.

Yes, exactly. Guess what the product is? The product solved the problem. My flagship product is called the One Call Sales Blueprint. It’s literally how to raise your fees and fill your business with high-paying clients who value what you do. It’s just right there but I can only do that because I know what my quantum benefits are. I’m very clear. I’m high-ticket. I don’t really speak on low-ticket. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s not just my expertise. Once you’re clear about that stuff, the marketing gets much simpler. When you do spend the time talking to leads, people who are interested, if they consumed any of your marketing materials which I highly recommend before you get on the phone with someone, have them watch your videos or have them listen to your signature talk, by the time you talk to them on the phone, they’re three quarters of the way sold.

Yeah. How do you make them watch your videos beforehand or do the homework that you assigned them?

The way that I do it is I like to think of it, and this is really a marketing question, is I like to think of what is their top of mind problem that would make them wanna click and watch a video of mine? If we took 60 seconds and if you’re listening to this episode, you might just wanna grab a pen and paper, and just jot down what are 10 or 20 top of mind problems, what are they walking around thinking or worried about? I know that my person is probably not walking around going, “Uh, I need a high-ticket offer.” That’s literally not what they’re thinking about.

Yeah.

They’re thinking, “Oh my god. How do I make more money? I need to get more sales in the door.”

Yeah. Or one of my projects is wrapping up and I don’t have a client waiting or new client waiting in the wings. I need to hustle fast.

Yeah. Where do I get my next client?

Yeah.

When I make a list of those, I can kind of match them up with each of my quantum benefits. “Oh my gosh, I have a networking meet on Friday. What am I gonna do with my elevator pitch? I’m so uncomfortable. I might not go.” If I know that that’s one of the things that they commonly think like, “Oh, my gosh. I’m so uncomfortable when I go to networking.” Guess what I’m gonna have? I’m gonna have a video. It’d probably gonna say, “Feel uncomfortable when going to networking meetings?” Then when I come on you hear me say, “Hey, do you feel uncomfortable going to networking meetings? I totally understand right where you’re at. It probably feels really uncomfortable when people ask you what you do. What I’ve discovered is that’s because when people ask us what we do we’re on the spot to really communicate clearly what makes us different and what makes us unique. Here’s one tip on how you can do that better.” And then I give my tip and then I tell them to click the button and book an appointment.

That’s really great. Do you do these as super professional kind of highly produced videos? Or you just kind of winging it, grabbing your phone, and taking a quick 2-minute video to give them a tip and then you’re matching up which of those quick and dirty videos you’re gonna send to them as the homework?

There’s two things there. One is if you check on my Youtube or Facebook page, you’ll see I’ve got hundred of videos and they’re all varying levels of professionally shot and not professionally shot. It kind of depends. I’ve got certain ones that I take the time and money to do professional shoots because that they’re really important and then there’s other ones that’s like this is a really great tip, it doesn’t need to be professionally done, my phone is fine. That’s sort of the attraction stuff that is out there that I’m hoping people come across in their searches, probably what I need lots of good SEO for. But then there’s also the ones they’ve expressed some interest and it kind of gotten in, they’re looking. There’s certain material that I want every person to read, listen to, or watch before they get on the phone. That is the signature talk or at least three to five videos that have your quantum benefits in them. That’s what I want. If I meet somebody when I’m out and they say, “Hey, Jennifer. I’m really interested in talking with you more.” But they haven’t seen any of my material, they just liked me. I’ll say, “Okay, great. Let’s book an appointment for Friday between now and then, can you do me a favor and watch these three videos of mine? Because it’s really gonna give you a solid foundation of my philosophy and of who I am and if we’re really a match. And they mostly do, they mostly do, and they’re like, “Oh, my gosh. I learned so much from your videos.” Or they watch them and say, “On second thought, I don’t wanna meet with you.” Which is fine. Because we don’t want every client, we want the right client.

Right. You got the quantum benefits baked into the video, you’re strategically sending them the right videos that speak to their pain points and that moves them, moves the conversation forward, so that when they’re having that initial call with you, they’re already primed.

Exactly. Really, it’s a self-selection process. I want them to watch or read my material so that if they feel like it doesn’t resonate, they just unsubscribe themselves. That’s totally fine. If it does match, it’s amazing how many messages I get, “Jennifer, I watched 14 of your videos. I just wanna know how can I work with you now.” That’s what I think good marketing should do.

Yeah. Awesome. Let’s say that you just created some videos, professionally shot and so forth, and you didn’t do this quantum benefits process beforehand. I have some professional videos on my channel, on YouTube. In fact, my welcome video on stephanspencer.com is really nice, professionally shot video. I didn’t know what my quantum benefits were. I don’t even know what quantum benefits were. I didn’t even know that terminology. Now do I have to go back and reshoot and have it professionally done and spend all that money all over again?

Well, what I would say is your quantum benefits, they’re probably in the videos already.

By accident.

Well because your quantum benefit isn’t like – I’m not telling you what your quantum benefit is. We’re pulling out the distinguishing phrases that define what makes you unique. This is what I tell the people. If they wanna grow their sales and they’ve had some sales but they haven’t had as much successes, I’d say that’s really good news. The good news is that you’ve already been saying something that’s resonating with people.

Yes. Otherwise you wouldn’t be in business. You wouldn’t have a business.

Right. You’ve already done good work. You’ve already said enough that people get it. What we wanna do now is we wanna hone. We wanna refine. We wanna pull out the 1 minute out of the 60 minutes that’s really the best way to articulate what you do and just say that. We wanna say just that one minute over and over. You know how many times I’ve told that lego story, Stephan?

I’m sure at least 10.

Yeah. Just like this week. Because it’s one of the best ways I know how to articulate this concept. Once you know what that is for you, that becomes your platform. What I’m saying, you don’t need to go and reshoot all those videos right now, but you can start to develop your quantum benefits, know what they are, and then you kind of look at your video library and say, “You know what, these four actually really are pretty darn close to what my quantum benefits are.” Maybe you make a video series that you highlight on your website, you make sure that they watch those. I have had people many times go reshoot videos or rewrite some piece of their website to make it more clear what’s so special about them. But it’s not like you switch from a chocolate cake to a carrot cake.

You don’t have to [inaudible [00:48:49] everything.

Exactly. Like, “Oh, I have a chocolate cake. Now I’m gonna put some whipped cream and cherries on top.” It’s fundamental but it’s not like the other information wasn’t good. It’s just another level of nuance in your marketing that’s gonna make your marketing more efficient.

Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s say that somebody listening is on board with this concept of, “I wanna figure out what my quantum benefits are. I wanna raise my fees. I wanna raise my prices. That sounds really good. I’d like to double my prices but I don’t wanna do it where I’m giving away more of my time. I don’t wanna give away a bunch of freebies or bonuses. I don’t wanna create artificial scarcity. I just wanna be real. I think I’m worth it but I don’t know how to articulate that I’m worth it. I’m afraid that I’m gonna lose a bunch of my clients when I double my prices. Maybe I should just double my prices on my website and not double my price with all my current clients.” What do you do?

Yeah. There’s a couple of questions kind of inside that one question. What I would say to folks is in order to raise your fees and actually have somebody pay you the raised fee. It doesn’t count if you just raise the fee but nobody pays you the new number. If you wanna raise your fees and actually have somebody pay you the raised fees, you’ve gotta be 100% in alignment with that new number. When I do quantum benefits work with people, that’s usually where that shift takes. That’s like Kristen, “I wanna charge $8500 but I don’t really know how to explain that it’s worth it.” I’ve got a gal who when she started working with me, she does Power Points slides for high-level presenters, and when she started working with me, she was charging $1500 for a slide deck and to prep the presenter, now it’s $7500. The difference is she knew kind of intellectually that she wanted to go to the higher price point but she didn’t believe that it was worth it. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

It’s like you’re split. A part of you knows it should be more or your friends have told you it should be more but inside you still can’t say the number with a straight face. Part of the work is to have that alignment. That is what some of my courses really focus on. What are the words that when I say them, I’m now aligned. Then the second half is what are those same words that when I say them to other people, they get it. Because you can’t just raise your price. Two things have to happen. You’ve gotta believe it and you’ve gotta have the words to communicate it.

Yeah. If you don’t convey it and if they don’t buy into the value proposition of that new price, yeah, you’re gonna lose a lot of your existing customers.

Yeah. Really, once you know what your quantum benefits are, you see the benefit and you have the words to describe it, from there it gets pretty easy.

Yeah. At the very moment, we have a case study situation brewing. My youngest daughter, she’s an entrepreneur, she’s 21 years old. She has a piano teaching business. She drives to her students’ homes and teaches them piano. She wants to raise her prices, she needs to raise her prices, I think she’s undercharging. She’s doing well but she could do a lot better. She’s gotten too busy. She’s gotten 45 clients now. It’s like how do you even have time to sleep? I don’t even understand it. She’s bought into what I’m saying that she needs to raise her prices, but she doesn’t want to do it to her current clients. She put it on her website, she’s like, “No problem.” She’s really terrified to tell her existing clients that she’s gonna raise her prices. Like, “What if they all leave? What do I do then?” What would you say to her in that situation?

The nice thing about every industry is that there’s somebody who’s charging less than you and somebody who’s charging more. We’re in business too. You just have to decide where you wanna be. What we do with existing clients is we usually grandfather them in for a period of time. There’s two things that I would recommend for her. One is to stop selling lessons by the hour or by the kit, like six sessions for $500 or whatever it is that she sells and start selling an outcome. One of my sons is in kindergarten and he graduated from the Bob books to the early readers. However long it takes from the Bob books to the early readers, she could package it up and say, “Okay, for the next eight weeks, you’re gonna be in the Bob books. The price for that transformation is a certain amount of dollars. That, first of all, disconnects the price per hour and reconnects the pricing to the outcome. That makes it much easier to charge. The second thing is if she’s charging by the hour and this is great for massage therapists, any kind of therapist, anybody that does work by the hour, is with your existing clients you might say, “Look, I’m raising my prices as of March 1st and what I want you to know is that I’m gonna give you three months grace period at the old pricing. If you’d like to purchase in advance, all of your sessions for the next three months, I’ll give you the old pricing.”

What if they wanna get the same pricing for the next three months grandfathered without prepaying for it. You say, “No, that’s not the offer?”

Yeah. It’s just not the offer. It’s a business decision and there is some letting go that needs to happen. One of my clients, she was a voice teacher, she was selling her voice lessons for $90 an hour, two days a week, she did $90 an hour voice lessons. She had 16 lessons on Monday and Tuesday. But on Thursday and Friday, in the other part of her business, she was selling $5000 packages. I had to arm wrestle her to get to give up two hours on a Tuesday so she could make phone calls to sell a $5000 package. She eventually only kept a handful of students because she really enjoys them but it just didn’t make sense anymore. You don’t have to do anything but what I would say is if she wants to raise her prices and have a quality of life that expands, then she has to make room. It would behoove her to make room for new people who get the value at a higher price point. Maybe she does it only with a certain group. The people that only came in in the last six months and say, “Hey, you know what, I’ve grown so much I have to raise my price. It’s gonna go up $10 an hour this month and then six months it’s gonna go up another $20 an hour.” Everybody that’s new coming in could come in $50 an hour or higher but she has a certain group that she’s bringing them up to speed with the new pricing. Some of them might go away. But that’s okay because more people who are up to speed with the new pricing will come in.

That’s right.

That’s what happens when you’re good.

Yeah, and she’s crazy busy right now, 45 clients. There’s no time– that’s crazy. How do you have time to even breathe?

Yeah.

Cool. we’re getting close to time here. I was just curious, just a last question, what are some of your favorite close techniques? There’s so many of them out there. The assumptive close and the Ben Franklin close and all these sorts of things. Is there something that works like magic for you that you just love, kind of your go to close technique?

You know, nobody has ever asked me that before. I think that’s awesome. Like what is my favorite close? I don’t know what my favorite close is. I really like to think of the interaction as when people see a possibility for something to be different in their lives, they naturally, the natural next step when you see something possible is to take action. In a conversation with something that you wanna purchase, the next action is just to buy it. For me, I don’t like to use the word what’s my closing tactic because it’s not really a tactic, it’s actually a conversation. When I’m saying it, it’ll sound like, “Here’s what I recommend for you based on what you said. Here’s how I propose that we work together. What credit card would you like to put that on?”

Yup.

Right? Or, “When would you like to start?” Because if I’m truly connected to that I’m providing a service to someone and they’re ready for it, then of course I should ask them to pay. It’s sort of like if I went to a clothing store and I tried on a bunch of dresses and the woman that was helping me pick out the clothes and stuff, the salesperson of the store, and I come out of the dressing room and I’ve got all these dresses in my hand, and she says, “Which ones worked for you?” And I’ll say, “These four.” If she didn’t say, “Okay, I’ll meet you up at the cash register.” She just said, “I’ll see you later.” That would be weird.

Yeah. Or if she just said, “Okay. That’s great. I’ll take these ones that you don’t want. I’ll fold them and put them back and here are the ones that you wanted so there you go.”

And have a nice day.

And then it’s up to them to take the next action where “assumptive close” would be something like you just said, “What credit card would you like me to put these on?” Assumes that you’re buying.

Well, you are buying.

If I didn’t say that, “I’m ready, I wanna buy this thing.” You jump in and say, “What credit card would you like to put them?”

Because you are buying. If I go into a store, I try on a bunch of dresses, I come out of the dressing room, and I’ve got four dresses in my hand and say, “I like these.” What else is there for me to do? I’m buying dresses. All of my action and all of my words are matching that I’m now buying dresses. This is, I think the one thing that I wish people would really get. When you’re talking to somebody on the phone and they’re like, “How much is it? What does it look like to work with you?” They’ve talked to you for an hour because they’re so interested, they are buying. It’s really us as a salesperson who do silly things that unsell. We actually unsell them and it’s so frustrating for the buyer because they’re thinking, “Man, I thought this person would be different. I was really hoping that they’d have the solution for me but then, they got all weird and couldn’t name the price.”

They started throwing stuff in when I didn’t even ask for it. You know what, if you make a decision by Friday, I’ll lower the price or I’ll include this bonus.” It’s like, “What? I didn’t even ask for that.”

Right, it’s weird. They’re buying. They’re talking to you. You told them what they needed. You’re gonna say, “Great. This is what I feel like you need. What credit card would you like to put that on?” Or if you really wanna be super soft, you can say, “Here’ what I think you need. This is what I recommend. What do you think?” Then they’re gonna say, “Sounds good.” And then you say, “Great, what credit card would you like to put that on?” It’s just like they’re already buying. Sometimes we get so weird about sales that we don’t realize that they’re already buying and we actually push people away.

Cool. Speaking of people buying, the One Call Blueprint is one of your cornerstone systems that you offer, if you could give a little elevator pitch again of what One Call Blueprint is and why they should get it and we can send them somewhere to go buy the thing because it’s pretty darn awesome.

I love it. I love it. I love it.

I have to throw in a little plug here for Jennifer, listeners. My wife, Orion, is a client of Jennifer’s and she’s gone through the One Call Blueprint and is in Jennifer’s mastermind, and she’s gotten so much value from working with Jennifer. I definitely endorse her. Okay, go ahead and proceed.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That’s awesome. Orion is amazing. Here’s what you can do. Number one, this is a free thing that you can download. It’s my book, it’s a short PDF, and the URL is highticketsellingbook.com. It’s free. It’s my guide. It actually has my formula on how to have a very empowering win-win sales conversation with somebody that really looks to see if they’re a fit and then really come from a powerful, wonderful place to make an offer. Grab that, it’s free. In there, there’s a link in there to book a strategy call. In that strategy call, we’ll actually figure out which of our flagship courses is the right one. It might be the One Call Blueprint which is how to raise your fees, gain confidence, and fill your business with high-paying clients, and then we have other levels of work. We’ll just talk out which is the right one for you.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Jennifer. This was a lot of fun. Lots of value was delivered here. I very much appreciate it. I’m sure our listeners do as well. If someone wanted to work with you directly, is that something that’s available as an option, like a one-on-one coaching or mentoring type of situation. I’m sure that’s set at a very high-ticket price but is that something that you do?

It is. It is. I have diamond-level clients. Those are my high five-figure investment right now to work with me privately. Extremely, extremely valuable. Of course, I have quantum benefits for why. And then I have other levels that are appropriate for different levels of businesses as well.

If somebody wanted to work with you on that level, would you still have them go to book the strategy call, get the high-ticket selling book, and go through the same funnel?

Yup. Absolutely. Or you can go straight to my website and request to speak with me. There’s a link on my website highticketsalessuccess.com.

Awesome. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you, listeners. This is Stephan Spencer, your host, signing off. We’ll catch you on next week’s episode.

Important Links:

• Twitter – Jennifer Diepstraten
• LinkedIn – Jennifer Diepstraten
• Facebook – Jennifer Diepstraten
• The Art of SEO
• High Ticket Sales Success
• The assumptive close
• The Ben Franklin close
• Orion Talmay
• High Ticket Selling Book

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

☑ Aim for high ticket sales. High-end buyers tend to be the most gracious, attentive and respectful set of customers.

☑ Identify my quantum benefits so that I  understand what I can offer that’s truly valuable to my prospective clients.

☑ Be meticulous with my leads through systematic targeting. Find out how to successfully approach them and get their attention.

☑ Find clients who need me. If they don’t need me, it’s never going to be an effective sale.

☑ Formulate a unique selling proposition that can give me an edge. Differentiate myself from my competition and get people to see my true value.

☑ Take small steps to increase my price if I’m hesitant to raise my value. I can gradually increase my prices.

☑ Be prepared to answer the questions “why you?” and “what’s so great about you?” to my prospects.

☑ Clearly communicate my value by practicing my signature talk. I should know what to say and when to say it.

☑ Be 100% aligned with my new price point and be confident that I am selling an outcome that will give my client total satisfaction.

☑ Download Jennifer’s eBook to increase my fees, convert more sales, and magnetically attract top dollar clients.

About Jennifer Diepstraten

With over 20 years of sales experience and over $14 million in product and service sales, Jennifer Diepstraten excels at teaching entrepreneurs how to turn interested prospects into excited clients who say, “Yes! I can’t wait to work with you!” Her One Call Blueprint initial sales consultation system is the cornerstone piece that’s grown her own coaching and consulting business to multiple six-figures in less than two years.

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