How to Sell High Ticket Products (Basic Steps)

This post is going to benefit those who indulge in face to face (F2F) meetings with clients to sell high ticket products or any expensive items. The methods explained here, are applicable to both B2B and B2C.

I started my sales career by selling out web services which were worth Rs 7500 at that time, back in 2010. After few years, I entered the real estate business in Gurgaon, (now Gurugram) where the starting ticket size was Rs 50 lakhs in 2013. Within fifteen days of joining, I came across a different section of the company and asked my reporting senior, “Why is this particular region more beautiful than rest of the office?” He replied with a careless attitude, that it is meant for salespersons who manage the HNI clients (anyone who invests in property worth Rs. 1cr and above). My next question was, “what if I only sell the properties costing 1cr?” To which he gave an unrelated answer but became highly motivational to me. The answer was: “Our boss majorly sells properties above 1cr but he never sits in the office to show it off.”

From that moment itself, I committed to myself that I will only sell high ticket products now. And the results to that can be imagined when an immature looking guy starts selling only high ticket products. For the first 50 days, I was on zero, with a risk of getting fired which is quite common in the sales industry.

But from the 51st to 55th day, I don’t remember the exact time but I sold a property costing Rs 95,00,000. After that, I never looked back till I remained in that company, every month my performance kept increasing. Not only did I get my 1^st promotion in the 5^th month for making sales that were double the target, I also quit the company on my 9^th working month and started my own 1st business.

I will share few of those factors which I never forgot while I made sales to my customers. I hope these will surely help you also.

1. HNI Clients are as Ordinary as Other Clients

The biggest mistake a salesperson might end up making is treating HNI clients as if they are some superior creations of God. During my entire journey of sales, I met a lot of industrialists, club owners, professional investors, school owners and some other biggies. I observed that most of these people love to interact with like-minded people or the ones superior to them. But as a matter of fact, when they are respected enough like superiors, they tend to assume that you are much inferior to them.

For this, you need to understand that you are the master of your field that’s why they are trying to close a deal with you and most importantly it is business, i.e. no one gets favored or profited alone. It is a two-way process. As much as you need to crack the deal to earn money, even the client needs the product with similar importance. The more you treat them like ordinary people the more confident you will feel and hence bigger chances of closing the deals.

2. Be Ready to Lose

You need to understand that every penny of the world does not belong to you. Also, you cannot be perfect in everything. By this, I mean to say that you should be ready to lose low ticket size customers.

When I started working in the real estate business, I didn’t have a team under me. Moreover, I was given a variety of leads to call on. I made a choice between low ticket and high ticket clients and chose the high ticket clients.

Quite amazingly, I shared my low budget leads with my colleagues without asking any favor in return, so that I could focus majorly on high ticket products and clients.

The same thing is mentioned in ‘Pareto Law’ (80:20 Rule) in a different manner: That 80% results come from 20% task and the other 20% result come from 80% of the task. So, I made a choice of cutting down my 80% of the task which resulted in 20% result. I completely focused myself on high result producing task, which was only 20% and gave 80% result.

3. Value the Time of Others more than They do

If I’m calling someone an HNI (High Networth Individual), then that means he/she understands the value of time very well. As many great influencers have said it in the past- treat your hour as a $1000. So I simply followed this line and started valuing mine and especially my client’s time as $1000 per hour. This forced me to reduce my total number of words but increased the effectiveness of each word during the conversation and hence I started improvising my sales pitch on a regular basis. Though it might sound contradictory that how a salesman can convert more by speaking less. But you need to understand sales are not about what/ how much you speak about the product, sales are about what the client wants in the product and how efficiently you have explained that to him.

4. Conviction

I hope you already know why conviction is necessary. As many mentors, especially in the insurance and stock market talk a lot about this, by suggesting to purchase the policy or stock for yourself before pitching it to clients. If you can sell it to yourself, you have developed a conviction for the product and you can easily sell it to your clients. But the problem with high ticket products is that we cannot purchase every product for ourselves just to bring in conviction. And for myself, I was just 23 years old when I just started working in real estate. I did not get so much of money to buy those high ticket properties just to bring conviction.

The simplest technique is to use the power of visualization. As suggested in the book “The Secret of Success” – ‘visualize what you have to achieve’. I used this technique to see “what if have 1cr as a hard cash. Would I be interested in this particular product?” I used to make analysis over the same for hours before sleeping and rest were done by my unconscious mind. If I got convinced with pros of the particular product I would start selling it with full confidence.

5. Become Comfortable with Odd Timing

As per my understanding, if someone is buying high ticket products, he has more money than the usual and for that, he surely has to work more and struggle more. That means when at 6 pm everyone is leaving for home he is still reviewing the whole day’s work performed by his team; when at 6 am normal people are sleeping, he is exercising to stay fit and during the traffic jam, he is calling his vendors or suppliers while his driver is driving the car. That indirectly means that you can call such a client anytime without thinking what he will think about the timing of your call as he is also working, provided you are calling to right prospect.

Just like every salesperson, I have also made numerous day calls and found a fact that every high-end client would ask me to call again in the odd hours like 8 pm or 9 pm when most of the people remain with the family. Also when it comes to face to face meetings, be prepared for an odd time, such as early morning.

If a person cannot adjust accordingly then it would be really hard for him/her to deal with such clients. And they don’t do it just to check it. They give odd dates and time because they have greater responsibilities over their shoulders. So it is important to be flexible with time and manage it well.