Resources in this Episode

Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 138

Unknown Speaker [0:05]
Hi, this is Frank Bria and you are listening to Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy!

Christine Schlonski [0:11]
Today’s amazing guest Frank Bria is all about high ticket selling. And when this episode we want to make it easy for you. Frank Bria is the author of the international best selling book, Scale: How to Grow Your Business by Working Less. He is the go-to authority on scalable program design and execution. And he has helped thousands of entrepreneurs design and executes their high ticket programs. So if you are a coach or a consultant, and a healer, and you have something that you can package up, this episode is really for you. It’s going to show you how you can scale your business with ease, how you can create massive, massive value for your clients, and how you can have fun in the process. So enjoy the episode with Frank Bria. Well, I am so excited to have you on the show today, Frank, welcome.

Frank Bria [1:09]
Thank you very much. I’m honored to be on thanks for inviting me.

Christine Schlonski [1:12]
Yes, You’re so welcome. And we have such an amazing topic, I’m so excited to get to share that with my audience. Because it’s all about high tickets. And it’s a wonderful way to get people engaged in your work, to get people committed to your work as well as for you to deliver outstanding value and then come up with a high ticket offer which helps each business because of no sales, no business. Let’s dive in like that. How do you define high ticket so that people you know that might still charge by the hour do not really have packages might be up and down on in their own journey? What can they learned if they hear the word or words high ticket?

Frank Bria [2:04]
Yeah, that’s a really good question. Because a lot of people have different definitions of what is a low ticket and high ticket. I don’t have like a number that I would say that’s the issue, it’s more of a mindset. I think the high ticket offer is something where you are delivering enormous value to your client. In fact, I tell people to think about solving a six-figure or even seven-figure problem for their audience. So that means you’re generating $100,000, or euros or pounds or whatever currency of value to your client. And if that’s the case, and you learn to price based on value, you want to deliver some kind of a 10 to 20 times return on investment. If you’re delivering $100,000 of value, you can easily charge between five and $10,000. for that. I kind of think about the high tickets in that sense of, if it’s 3000, 5000, 8000 that’s not really the issue. It’s more, are you delivering massive value? Are you getting paid to deliver that massive value?

Christine Schlonski [3:27]
Yeah, yeah, well, we definitely don’t talk about like overcharging, we do want to give the value in return, but just that people get an idea. It’s not the $500 program or the thousand dollar program, there’s much more to it.

Frank Bria [3:43]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [3:43]
And when you when you’re looking at the industry, what did you see in the businesses, that the change in the businesses that applied that strategy and delivered amazing value, but also charged a high ticket?

Frank Bria [3:58]
Right. Really there are two major things. First of all, you know, there are a lot of people who say that being able to charge a higher price is just a mindset problem. If you just get up in the morning early and look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m worth it”, you know, you raise your prices. While there definitely is something to that, that’s not enough, you can’t just take your same $500 product and slap a zero on the end and suddenly make it $5000, you really do have to change how you structure your services, because you need to be focused on helping your client get the outcome they really want. So the first transformation is that a lot of times we have to focus now on, “Well, I am a social media expert. And so all I do is help people manage their Twitter accounts or something”, we have to move beyond that, too. Okay, what does that really mean for my client? Why do they even care about their Twitter account? Well, it’s because they want leads and sales. And so you have to think about sort of expanding out your service offering to deliver the end result that your client actually wants. And so it’s easy to kind of hide in, “Well, all I do is I just write copy. All I do is I just….”, if that’s what you’re saying is all I do is just fill in the blank, then you’ve missed something. The true value needs to be there. So these businesses first have to transform by realizing that they’re in business, to get their client, the end outcome and not just one little piece of the pie. So that’s the first thing. The second thing that has to happen is that you need to be fiercely committed to getting your clients an actual result, to get the value out of it. So many, and we all hear it. There are so many people who will put out a course. And they say, “Oh, I just teach people, I don’t really care if they put it into practice. that’s their problem. It’s not my problem. They’re just teaching me and they’re just paying me to teach.” I just reject that completely. As a service provider, we have a responsibility to do everything in our power to help our clients get the result that they want. Now, clearly, they still have to take action. But if we haven’t thought through all of the support mechanisms, all of the content, all of the accountability, all of the mentorship, answering all the possible questions, everything that they would need to get results, to be successful, then we haven’t done our job yet. As you move into a higher ticket offer, the expectations go up. The second transformation I see is businesses starting to take more accountability for their clients actually getting results. I think that’s an amazing, good thing. I’m glad to see it. But those are kinds of the two major transformations in a career.

Christine Schlonski [7:13]
Yeah, I totally agree. But you know, the truth is that in business, sometimes there are people that are so undercharging, that they can easily slip that zero on to the 500 and still deliver so much more value, right?

Frank Bria [7:30]
I’m sure there are. That’s for sure.

Christine Schlonski [7:33]
Yeah. That’s shocking, actually. I love how you just said, and we’re talking about a high ticket program, like something that would go like for six months or a year, over a longer period of time. It’s not necessarily your one on one coaching that you hand hold anyway. But it becomes a little bit more difficult when you have several people in the program to make sure that everybody’s taking action. That everybody pushes through the blocks they have or the challenges they might be facing. I love that approach thinking the programs through in terms of what can I do to motivate the people to do what needs to be done.

Frank Bria [8:19]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [8:20]
Because transformation is not always that easy.

Frank Bria [8:27]
No. I was gonna say, most of what we see is that clients require three things. They require skills, they require accountability, and they require mentorship. These are different, they’re not the same. When you design a program, you have to make sure you’re delivering the skills necessary. But skills are not enough. You know, people, a lot of times we think, “Well, I’ll just teach them how to do it, and they’ll be fine.” But without accountability and mentorship, there’s no way for the client to have the support infrastructure they need to get the results. When you design a program, you have to think through it. How do we present skills? How do we create accountability? How do we allow for the potential for mentorship so that people can ask questions, people can say, “Okay, well, I learned what you taught me, but in my situation, they are allowed to adapt for their own situation.” When we get all three of those working, then we’ve surrounded the client with a lot more support, a lot more infrastructure, and that helps them put those skills into practice.

Christine Schlonski [9:36]
Yeah, that’s wonderful. I mean, you, you started several tech companies.You definitely have taken the team from zero to success. That also gave you the background probably to create those high ticket programs, because you knew what it took to put everybody on the same journey.

Frank Bria [9:59]
The interesting thing about software is that a lot of people think about it as a product. But fundamentally, most software starts as a service, especially higher-end software. I spend a lot of time in the tech companies just taking a consultative process or taking an analytic process and turning it into a repeatable form so that it became a product. I started up a, we had a couple of tech startups, some of them were really successful, some of them we drove into the ground. That’s just the way it goes and startup sometimes. But then on the back end of that, because of the few of the exits that were really quite good, I was able to take that same process and use it for larger corporations. I was able to go into large financial institutions, large consulting organizations, a lot of Fortune 500 companies and help them do the same thing. That process that I’ve used for these larger corporations, it’s so applicable to small businesses. That’s the thing that’s been a lot of fun for me is to see all of that work that, was years and years and multi-millions of dollars and spend for these folks, that you can actually apply those exact same principles in a personal development company, or a business coaching firm or health and wellness organization. It’s really fun to see these programs, like come to life where the entrepreneur was just confused before. They were really passionate about what they did, but they just weren’t able to execute it in a repeatable way ever before. So now they’ve got this great group and they’re all getting great results out of it. They’re having a lot of fun with it. That’s the end state transformation. You just see the entrepreneur just loving what they’re doing.

Christine Schlonski [12:00]
Yeah, yeah, I was just going to ask is, if it is applicable for smaller companies, but thank you for answering already. We probably have coaches listening in or personal development, people, consultants. They might be at the point where they have filled their one on one coaching. So the question is, like, there are only 24 hours in a day for all of us, and you can’t coach all day, you need to look after your business. You should work on your business instead of in your business. But that might be a different story for a different time. If somebody is really at the level where they say, “Well, you know, I, I’d like to free up some time, but I want to make sure that I don’t lose the revenue or I don’t lose the income stream.” What are the points they need to look for to figure out if a high ticket program is the next best step for them?

Frank Bria [13:00]
Yeah, well, if people have run out of time, and therefore, I mean, a lot of coaches that use one on one coaching as their main vehicle, if they’re successful, what they do, they almost all hit an income ceiling. In fact, you know, we did research in the United States in the census data. We found that consulting firms that work in this kind of one on one way, they tend to max out somewhere between $250 to $400,000, a year, that seems to be an income ceiling, they almost don’t get past. While services, companies that are more productized or have a product, they’re able to get past the ceiling a lot easier. If that’s the case, if like, if you’re stuck in that income ceiling, you have to change, like, there’s no other way. It’s way too difficult to continue to push past this. So the question you have to ask yourself takes a look at the portfolio of clients that you have, and start to group them together into journeys. What often happens when you grow up a coaching practice is that you kind of take whoever. People show up, it’s like, “Oh, great, new client, this is amazing.” Sometimes they have nothing in common, you’re working on very different problems. But when you mature the coaching practice, you start to find that there are common themes and common problems that you’re solving, common issues, maybe not with everybody, but with a lot of people, that then becomes the basis of starting to think through, “Okay, how do we create a program where I can still serve these folks, and do what I’m doing without firing everybody and having to start from scratch because that’s not a good plan for anybody?” It comes down to basically switching over to letting your clients tell you the story about where they want to go to you telling the story about where you want your clients to go. I call it a customer journey map. You want to write down essentially, “Okay, if I had my ideal clients, and I work with them for three years, what do they have, at the end of the three years? What does that journey look like?” There are multiple milestones along the way. Multiple things they get wins. What are they? What processes do they have to go through over these three years to get this amazing thing? You start to now talk about the customer journey, rather than the weekly calls. Once you develop a program that’s aligned with that, you’re able to basically say to your one on one coaching clients, “Hey, you know what, we’ve got this great group, this is what we’re going to do. And it’s going to be better.” One of the things that I talked about is a really well-executed group program is actually more effective than one on one coaching. The reason that it’s more effective is that all of your clients begin to learn to give back through the community. One of the best ways to get people to take a skill and embody it is to teach it back. And so they essentially belong to a community where they’re giving back now, you can’t just throw them together and say, we’re just going to get together once a week with no plan. But if you, if you execute it, if you strategically engineer for success, then it’s better. So then you have a conversation with, “Hey, it’s time to join a community and you can migrate some of those folks over.” Some might not. Some of your one on one clients may decide that’s not what they want to do. Or you realize that “You know what, it’s not actually a good fit for my business, in general, it was just a job I took, you know, they’re a nice person, but it doesn’t really align with what I want to do.” There’s always going to be a bit of shifting of clients in that process. But that’s usually the transition process to allow to free yourself up. Sometimes, if you organize it, well, you’re actually able to charge more for group program that executes well, than one on one coaching, it all comes down to value and outcome.

Christine Schlonski [17:16]
Yeah, I was just going to see if there’s some value, the group coaching program can be more, I don’t want to say expensive, like can, you know, have a higher ticket than the one on one coaching because of that community that you are bringing together.

Frank Bria [17:33]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [17:34]
Where people match so that everybody is delivering value for everybody at the same time that they are learning.

Frank Bria [17:42]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [17:42]
And I enjoy those environments myself very much. Because, you know, somebody might ask a question. You would have never thought of it because, in your mind, you’re not even at this point yet.

Frank Bria [17:54]
Right.

Christine Schlonski [17:54]
That opens up new doors. I love that. I noticed that you said something for three years. Why would you go for three years?

Frank Bria [18:03]
The three-year mark is there so that you’re creating enough of a long term view for the client. Now, that doesn’t mean your programs are three years long. That just means you’re building in a vision for working with people over a longer period of time. This is one of the things that we as entrepreneurs neglect because we get very tactical, we want to sell the very next thing, you know, it’s a 12-week program, or even a one year program. Then we get to the end and we go, “Oh, what should I sell next? Like, what’s the upsell? What’s the continuity?” By understanding what journey you want to take people on over a longer period of time, it then becomes natural, and it becomes part of the process. So if you have a very clear vision for what your ideal client should achieve over three years, you can have that conversation in the very first coaching call in the very first sales call even where you say, “Listen, we’re going to go up to the top of that big huge mountain. That’s what we’re going to achieve. Now, of course, to get there, we’re gonna have to get to base camp. And before we get to base camp, we’re gonna have to do one small thing. So we’re going to do that first. And it’s an easier commitment. And you’re not, you don’t have to sign up for the journey to the top of the mountain. But I’m just letting you know, this group here around you, we’re going to the top of the mountain.” It builds on a natural sense of long term customer relationships. Because as we all know, it’s so much easier to continue to work with an existing customer than it is to find a new one. So if we can build an acceleration of value and investment over those three years, then we’re building a solid business plan that’s actually really good business modeling. I find three years is really good, it’s a stretch for people to think. Three years out. What’s it going to look like? But it’s a really good exercise because you then put a stake in the ground like, “This is what I’m about. This is what our clients are going to get. This is the transformation we’re going to create for them.”

Christine Schlonski [20:11]
Yeah, I love that. I love that bigger vision. Because I noticed like once a client understood, let’s say they used to charge maybe 1000 for the program, and we re-structure it. And the value is amazing. And now they can charge five or seven or 10. Once they’ve done it, once they cannot go back. Once you have experienced that level, and then deliver and you noticed, “My client is so, so happy with everything he or she is receiving”, you can never go back to that undercharging thing that was there before.

Frank Bria [20:52]
Right. That’s true.

Christine Schlonski [20:53]
Yeah. So speaking of charging, and money, was it easy for you to ask for a high ticket when you started selling it?

Frank Bria [21:01]
It’s interesting because I didn’t grow up in the digital marketing space, I kind of came into it later, it was sort of natural for me to be thinking about value. My very first job out of school was at a consulting firm in Chicago. They taught me everything I know, the partners of that company, brilliant, brilliant folks, they came out of the big accounting firms, the big consulting firms, and they knew what they were doing. They literally taught me everything. They taught me how to put a proposal together. They taught me how to talk to clients, make commitments to sell to price, to buying the report up in a way that it looks really nice and pretty. They literally taught me everything. For them, it was all about value proposition. We were doing work with very large corporations. The very first projects we would do were $600,000 $1.5 million. That just became natural to me. At the peak of my consulting career, we were selling between five and $18 million worth of services. When I started in digital marketing, I started working with smaller companies, I knew we’re not selling $80 million things, but I would start talking to people about pricing, and their eyes would just get big, “Oh, what do you mean? This is $300.” I go, “No, no, no, no, no, that is not $300.” Then talking through this return on investment view of pricing, this value-based pricing. Some people know it, I think some people weren’t familiar with it at all, because they were still just praised pricing based on time. Some people were familiar with it, but they hadn’t sort of embodied it, it wasn’t in their soul yet. To talk through, “Okay, what are you actually doing for people?” You realize that when you’re done working with them, you’ve created something that’s worth millions of dollars. Even people in the personal development or the health space, we get them to start talking about things in different ways. I remember working with one fitness professional, and in the fitness industry, it was so like, “Oh, like $100 a month is the maximum anyone will pay for fitness like.” We would start this particular coach, she worked with folks who were in their 50s 40s and 50s, helping them have the sort of strength and vitality so that they could like play with their grandkids into their 70s and 80s. Like, not be stuck in a chair or have a cane and not be able to play and still be able to live. I’m like, “How much do you think that’s worth to people? I mean so that into their 70s and 80s, they have the health, the potential of having the health of being able to play with their grandkids. That’s huge, that’s big.” When you start to recognize this value proposition, then it becomes easier. For me, it’s always been the opposite problem. I’ll talk to people and they’ll tell me about what they do and they’re like, “Yeah, that’s like we charge $15,000 for that.” I’m like, “That’s easy $150,000 service you have.” They’re like, “What?!” So that’s been sort of our claim to fame is helping people find the value proposition to raise the price.

Christine Schlonski [24:22]
Yeah, yeah. I love that. It’s so, so needed. I know, when I structure with my clients, it’s so difficult for them to see it because they are in that box. So they can’t read the outside. For them, it’s natural. It’s something they just do. It’s easy, effortless. So why charge for it? That’s such a great point. Time with you just flies. I’m happy we have set up the next interview. But also you brought us a really, really cool gift called, Black Book. Where can people find it and what is it?

Frank Bria [25:00]
That’s great. Because the program development work we do puts us behind the scenes for dozens and dozens and dozens of entrepreneurs, probably our team’s looked at over hundreds of programs now. We’re able to see what works and what doesn’t work. I always like to say there’s no one right way to do it but there are best practices. We’ve combined those best practices into what we call the, 12 Week Core High Ticket Program Black Book, and it is our Bible of standard operating procedures. Basically, how do you do onboarding? How do you do customer success? How do you do graduation? How do you handle complaints? How do you handle refund requests? Everything, all the best practices from all the programs that we’ve looked at, we’ve combined together in this book, silver, 60 pages long. You can grab a copy of that for free if you go to http://frankbria.com/blackbook but with just one word, and grab a copy of that for free. It’s not our typical if you go to the home page, it’s not the thing that’s on there. If you’re putting a program together, or you’re running a program, especially if you’re finding yourself kind of bogged down with details, or you’ve got customers complaining, we’re not getting value, I’m not really sure what I’m paying for. I’m sure one of these SOP, one of the Standard Operating Procedures is going to help you run it more effectively and efficiently.

Christine Schlonski [26:26]
Yeah, and for those people who want to have a look into creating a high ticket program, that’s obviously gold. Because it gives you a standardized procedure that you can follow to set up your own program and to get your business to the next level. I can’t wait for our next interview. I have so many more questions. I’m really, really excited. Thank you so much for having to spend time with us and see you next time.

Frank Bria [26:55]
Thank you.

Christine Schlonski [26:56]
Well, I hope this episode really, really provided value to you and that you know now what high ticket program is. What you need to do to deliver the amazing value so you can ask for more money. How to get started. How to get an idea and be inspired. Hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/. Find the podcast tab, the show notes, the transcripts, the three key points for this episode, as well as all the links to Frank Bria with just one click away. When you really want to change your sales mindset into a sales success mindset, and you want to tune in something that I used to make millions when selling high ticket life events over the phone, hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ and sign in for the Sales Journaling to Success. This is my 30-day free online course created for you where you receive one journaling prompt each and every day and some news or some knowledge around it, some content around it so that you can take it to your next level and make sales with ease, grace, confidence and ask your price. Have fun, enjoy. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a wonderful day wherever you are in this beautiful world.