High ticket sales: what it is, how it works, and how to close

By Zach Schleien

Learn what high ticket sales is, the step-by-step process for closing premium offers, and why your price is rarely the reason you aren't closing deals.

High ticket sales is selling an offer with a price high enough that most buyers need to talk to a real person before they'll pay. When someone sees a big price on a website and there's nobody there to answer their questions, a lot of them back out, so you need a human on a call to walk them through it and handle their objections.

I had to learn this myself. My video speed dating app, Filteroff, was running out of cash, so I let go of the outsourced sales agencies to get my retainer back. That left me taking the sales calls, and I hadn't done consistent sales calls in years. My close rate started around 20% and nearly doubled within 30 days. The business hit $50K in revenue in a single month, with me running the ads, building the landing pages, writing the copy, and taking the sales calls myself.

TL;DR

• There's no official price cutoff. An offer is high ticket when the price needs a human to explain it and answer objections.
• The process usually runs in this order: get attention, explain the offer, qualify the lead, run the call, ask for the sale, and follow up.
• When deals don't close, the price should be the last thing you change. Check your sales calls, your landing page, and how clear your offer is first.

What counts as high ticket?

There's no official number. A lot of people use the term for offers that cost thousands of dollars, but a better test is how the sale happens. If someone can see the price and check out on your website without talking to anyone, it's low ticket. If most buyers need to ask questions, raise doubts, and hear answers from a person first, it's high ticket.

The price range is wide. At Filteroff, we sold a $1,900 matchmaking package over the phone. Other people in the matchmaking industry sell $30,000 packages. Both are high ticket sales because both need a conversation to close.

Common high ticket offers include coaching programs, consulting, done-for-you agency services, larger software contracts, and premium services like matchmaking. In each case the buyer is paying for a result, and they want to trust the person delivering it first.

High ticket vs low ticket sales

Low ticket offers are cheap enough that people buy them without talking to anyone. You need a lot of buyers, so most of your work goes into traffic and an easy checkout.

High ticket offers work the other way. You need far fewer buyers, but each one takes more of your time. They take longer to decide, ask harder questions, and care a lot more about whether they trust you. The sale usually happens on a phone or video call. I write about sales and growth every week in my newsletter.

You don't have to pick one. At Filteroff, we had low ticket subscriptions at $9 to $25, but the higher priced options were missing early on. Looking back, I'd build low ticket, mid ticket, and high ticket offers from day one:

• Low ticket is do it yourself, like a subscription.
• Mid ticket, roughly $75 to $200, is "do it with us."
• High ticket is done for you, with a lot of personal attention and a real outcome.

It's the same customer at different levels of support. Someone who can't afford your top offer today might still buy the middle one.

How the high ticket sales process works

Most high ticket sales follow the same basic order, whatever the industry.

1. Get their attention. This can be ads, content, press, cold outreach, or a webinar. Buyers usually need to see you more than once before they're ready to talk.
2. Explain the offer on a landing page. Tell people what you do, who it's for, and how it works, ideally with a video. Our matchmaking landing page at Filteroff started at a 15% conversion rate. I added logos, testimonials, a video at the top of the page, and other conversion elements to lift it.
3. Qualify them before the call. Qualifying means checking whether someone is ready, committed, and able to afford what you sell before you spend an hour on the phone with them. A short application form works for this. Keep your premium prices off the page, and share them on the call once someone qualifies.
4. Run the sales call. This is where you ask questions, find out what's really bothering them, and show how your offer fixes it.
5. Ask for the sale. A lot of calls go well and still end without a decision because nobody asked.
6. Follow up and offer other options. Follow up by email, text, and phone with people who didn't buy on the call. I covered what to send in Follow-Up Email After a Sales Call: What to Send and When. For people who can't afford the main offer, have a cheaper option ready, like group coaching, so a "no" can still turn into revenue.

Some businesses split this into two roles. A setter qualifies the lead and books the call, and a closer runs the call and asks for the sale. When you're starting out, you're both.

What to do on a high ticket sales call

I've managed sales teams, watched their recorded calls, and coached reps with specific feedback. Close rates went from 20% to 40% after coaching sessions. These are the questions I check a call against:

• Are you getting micro-commitments, small yeses, as the call goes?
• Are you asking enough questions?
• Are you digging deep enough into their pain?
• Are you handling objections honestly?
• Are you asking, "What would life look like if you don't make a change?"
• Are you actually asking for the sale?

That last one gets missed the most. A lot of people end a good call with "Do you want to think about it?" That question gives the buyer an easy way to put off the decision. Ask "Are you opposed to moving forward today?" instead. It's direct, and it gets you a real answer.

Record your calls and listen back honestly. The patterns I found in bad calls included not digging into pain, not asking real questions, dodging objections, and not asking for the sale. Each one is a small fix, and small fixes add up.

How to price and structure a high ticket offer

This is how I set up pricing for service businesses:

• Keep it to about three tiers. More options than that make it harder for people to pick one.
• Don't sell one-month packages. Packages of 6 to 9 months work best. If you offer a 3-month option, price it so it's the least appealing choice.
• Don't include unlimited text support by default. Sell it as an add-on.
• Add an order bump and a one-time offer. An order bump is a small extra people can add at checkout. A one-time offer is shown right after they buy.
• Have a downsell ready. Group coaching works as a cheaper option for people who can't afford the main package.
• Use real deadlines. I used a lot of timers at Filteroff and would typically do 50% of our revenue in the last 48 hours.

How you feel about your price shows up on the call, too. My friend Malik closed 3 of his first 12 sales calls in two months. His first close was $1.5K, which was lower than it should have been. In his own words, he doubted how much what he was offering was worth. If you don't believe your offer is worth the price, it's very hard to get a buyer to believe it.

Why it's almost never the price

When deals aren't closing, a lot of founders want to lower the price. That's almost always the wrong move.

At Filteroff, one sales rep kept telling me our price was too high. I cut him early once I realized he only sold small packages, couldn't handle objections, and his calls were the real problem. If other people in your industry sell packages that cost far more than yours, the price probably isn't what's stopping your sale.

Before you blame the price, check these first:

• You're not a strong salesperson yet.
• You're not handling objections.
• Your landing page is too short and has no video.
• There's no trust and no testimonials.
• The offer is confusing.
• The offer itself isn't good.

First, fix the spots in your funnel and landing page where people drop off. Or change how the offer is built: add a low ticket entry offer, one-time offers, order bumps, and email follow-up. Changing the structure usually works better than a discount.

Also, don't trust what people say they'd pay before you launch. A few years into Filteroff, I emailed potential customers asking if they'd want matchmaking from us, and at what price. Almost everyone said no. I launched it anyway, with a thoughtful landing page and a video explaining how it worked. People bought like crazy, including the same people who had said no. Surveys are more useful after you launch, when you can ask buyers what was missing or what confused them.

Where to start

If you're selling a high ticket offer for the first time, start with the calls. Take them yourself, record them, and ask for the sale every time. That's how you learn the common objections and what your customers really want.

If you're a founder doing this without a sales team, I wrote more about that in Why Hiring a VP of Sales Is Wrong (And How to Master a Founder Led Sales Strategy High Ticket).

Want help building a high ticket sales process for your business? Book a consultation.