Low-Ticket to High-Ticket Sales Funnels with Tom Morkes

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation! JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire! Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the ideal destination for business professionals with great shows like System Saved Me. Today, we'll be breaking down low-ticket to high-ticket sales funnels. To drop these vibe bombs, I have brought Tom Morquez into EO Fire Studios. Tom is a West Point grad, Iraqi war veteran, and founder of Insurgent Publishing. He specializes in growth marketing, publishing, and sales funnels, helping brands and businesses grow their reach, impact, and sales. And today, for our nation, we'll talk about the myth that is out there about low ticket sales, how pricing is always a struggle, an effective process to capture attention and convert effortlessly and oh so much more.

0:42And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Tom and our sponsors. DTC Pod hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. DTC Pod is a podcast about all things direct to consumer. Ramon and Blaine cover everything from starting, growing and optimizing e-commerce stores and DTC brands. If you're interested in the stories behind your favorite consumer brands, this podcast is for you. One recent episode on how the best brands are built is a must listen. Listen to DTC Pod wherever you get your podcasts.

1:17Are you looking to start or grow a successful business? Attend the world's highest rated and most reviewed business growth workshop taught personally by Clay Clark and football great Tim Tebow at Thrivetimeshow.com slash EOfire. Again, request life-changing tickets today at thrivetimeshow.com slash EO fire. Tom, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. I'm going to say that I think success is a trap and a snare for many people. It's at best an outcome. It's what you become at the end when the dust settles, but it's not a measuring stick.

1:59and it should not be used to determine your value. Fire Nation, you can tell that this interview is going to be en fuego as we talk about low-ticket to high-ticket sales funnels. And there's a myth out there, Tom, that low-ticket sales simply cannot lead to high-ticket clients. So a lot of people just, they just disregard that as an opportunity, as an option. So let's debunk that myth once and for all. Yeah, and I think it's interesting because a lot of this has to do with like, what is the zeitgeist, you know, at the time of the recording, like right now. And so again, in 2024, it's like, what's the feeling around high ticket offers, low ticket offers, etc.

2:39And it's funny, I just feel like I kind of keep a pulse on things through social media and different trends and stuff like that. And one of the things that seems to have been trending this year is that is a move to more to high ticket. You know, this idea that like low ticket doesn't really pay the bills, high ticket pays the bills a lot better. You just see a lot of the big names in the space kind of trending in that direction. And then what comes along with that conversation is that, you know, even this idea, and I've seen it from some really big name influencers who I'm not going to call out or anything like that, but who have said things like, oh, you know, not only is that the way to go, but like when you deal with like, say, low ticket offers and you're doing like, you know, again, these low ticket offers, you bring in like low ticket customers and that's kind of a dead end.

3:22And I don't, I don't think that is the case. I think there's actually room for both. And I think you can do low ticket and high ticket together. And I would say just, again, from my vantage point of having done that, we've been doing low ticket offers for the last decade. I've kind of been in that space, but at the same time have also marketed and sold high ticket offers on the back end of those things. And even just the last couple of years, probably done maybe a half a million in sales on high ticket offers from a customer base that had purchased low ticket offers. So I know it's possible. and so I just wanted to dispel that myth around low ticket and high ticket sales.

4:00I think high ticket customers can be found purchasing things that are cheap or inexpensive like they can be and I think it's misleading to say that you have to be one or the other or that there's no place for low ticket offers in your funnel so to speak. I always avoid absolutes because absolutes are oftentimes just the wrong way to go about things. So Fire Nation, you need to listen to people, make your own decisions, test, test, test, make things happen. But one thing I will say, Tom, is that pricing is always such a struggle for entrepreneurs. What have you found to be the best way to optimize our pricing while actually positioning for both more conversions and bigger purchases?

4:46It's interesting because it kind of depends on the overarching strategy or business model, right? But like, if we're talking to, if we're talking to like coaches, consultants, and like service providers, or let's just start with like coaches, consultants, because I'm sure that's a big, big group of your audience or people who create digital products, info products, sell courses, books, and things like that. Like, there's this, again, I think this, this misnomer of focusing on one or the other, like it either has to be like, I have to have this really high ticket offer, or, or I only do low ticket, and there's no, no middle ground.

5:18So I think first is just understanding the business model of what is it that you do. And if we have this idea of being something in that space that I just described, there's room for low ticket offers, medium ticket offers, and high ticket offers. And I don't think a well-executed low ticket item, a book, a course or a mini course, a digital product, those kind of resources, I don't think that diminishes your brand or your value if you offer high-end consulting or coaching or anything like that, or even services. On the contrary, I think those done right actually set you up for success on the back end.

5:56Because a lot of people are, you know, if you go by the principle of like where people are at in their buyer journey, right, if you want to use that as a reference point, not everybody's at that point where they're looking to hire immediately. That's probably, you know, let's say that's 1 % of the audience. And then maybe 10 % are still searching and trying to decide what is the right path forward. And then maybe 30 % or 40 % have just maybe recognized that there is a problem or a challenge. And it just seems short-sighted to me to discount the people that are in that space of maybe just discovering that there is a problem that they have to solve.

6:32Because that's usually the place where a low-ticket item works really well. So that's a book, a course, a digital product or something like that. And it's really to help people do their own due diligence to figure out, is this problem real? Is this really affecting me? What are some possible solutions to it? Again, high level type stuff. Or when I say high level, I mean maybe not the nuts and bolts tactical type stuff, but high level in terms like 10 ,000, 50 foot thousand view perspective on it. And so again, when it comes to pricing, if that's what we're looking at, if we're putting something like that together, I think that just depends on what is, again, what's that funnel?

7:13What's that customer journey going to look like for you? And if they come in through a book or through a digital product, that's, again, it could be five bucks, could be 10 bucks, could be 20 bucks, could be 50 bucks, could be 100 bucks. I kind of categorize anything under$100 as low ticket, although you can make a case that that's totally arbitrary, which it kind of is. But I think anything under the$100 range, I think it's just a matter of does this do a job and who does it do the job for, right? It's like the jobs to be done philosophy, which I know you're familiar with, right? And so I look at products that way.

7:50And so even a book or a mini course or a guide or an info product for$7 can help solve somebody's problem right now. And of course, there's still plenty of value in giving things away for free, lead magnets and all that stuff, again, if they do a job. and just to understand that I think the people that are purchasing low ticket items, I think the big thing is just that you're not, you don't want to cannibalize sales of the high ticket, high end stuff. And the way to avoid that isn't so much pricing, it's more what is the offer? How is it positioned relative to your other offers, if that makes sense?

8:25And Fire Nation, one thing that I've recognized in doing this for over 12 years now is that buyers are buyers. And so it's great when you find buyers, even of a$7 product, even of a low ticket product, because that's somebody who's willing to invest in themselves. And guess what? If you deliver value on that, you continue to walk them up that ladder. And Tom, you've created a process to effectively create low ticket products that both capture attention and convert keyword effortlessly. Tell us more about that. I think about it in that framework where it's, I think about the low ticket typically as this is like when people are doing research into a problem that they have.

9:09They're doing research into an area where they're stuck, but they don't necessarily know how they're stuck yet or where or why. Or they might know a little bit of this, but again, that's going to be probably the broadest audience to reach with low ticket offers. So it's like, here's this thing I'm kind of dealing with. A low ticket offer makes a lot of sense at that point because people are just doing research. They're just trying to find out who is trustworthy in the space. Who can I trust to, say, move forward with something else that will be like, this is the implementation service I need immediately, effective immediately.

9:44So again, I think there's value in those low ticket offers. I think there's value in having something like that for the broader or wider audience of people who are just coming to recognize what it is that they're struggling with in an area that you serve, whatever it is that you do. So again, pick it. This applies to software. This applies to service providers. So if my software is, again, a support bot and I work with small businesses, I could say, well, at some point, people before they're ready for that, some will be. A percentage of the audience will be ready right now for that tool. But there's going to be a large percentage of small businesses that haven't even come to that realization because they're still managing support on their own.

10:26They're still doing those kind of things, dealing with their own support tickets, haven't even thought about, say, getting a tool that would help them with their whole support channel. And using that, then the next level of that is using that as a sales channel and a marketing channel in effect, right? So you can see there's layers to this. but if I start at the end point, like what's the core offer, right? Whatever that core offer is, if that's high ticket, let's roll with that. Let's see if you have a core high ticket offer. I just want a backward engineer basically or backward plan. What would be the process to get there?

10:56Again, from when that person's ready to make a purchase and they just need to have a final conversation with you or a demo, before that, where are they at? What is the mindset? It's while they're looking for options, they're looking for solutions. And maybe they're comparing yours to somebody else's. Well, go back one step before that. they're just kind of they're coming to grips with the fact that they actually have a problem so again if i'm if i'm creating a low ticket product that's the space i'm in is right there is the discovery of the problem they've just discovered there is something here there is a problem and this low ticket item this low ticket product will serve a function to give them clarity because that's what they're looking for so i think that's the core element of creating effective low ticket products is they should be built around creating clarity and helping people basically get through the weeds and the woods or whatever analogy you want to get give to get to a real clear understanding of where they're at and where they need help.

11:55And and you would I think people underestimate the value in helping, you know, users or potential clients become clear on what it is that they're doing. And I think those that are the most effective teachers, like I'd say, you know, John, you're one of those cases with what you teach and how you do it with Podcasts Paradise and everything else you've done. It's like one of the reasons people trust you is not just that you walk the walk, which is evident in your podcast and things like that. But when it comes to teaching, you've done a really good job of making the case at a macro and a micro level.

12:30And you've done that far and wide. So when people come to you, that trust is built in. And if it's not, after interacting with some of your content, even lower ticket or free content that you have, they build that knowledge around who you are. They get to know you, like you, and trust you. And I'm not saying all those things are essential for a sale, but they don't hurt. And at that point, again, as people are growing and progressing, I always like to think of it as I love helping people when they're just getting started because a lot of those people will end up – not everybody, but a portion of them will become – will grow and will get better and better and become more and more successful, quote unquote, at what they do as an outcome of what they do.

13:12And I love being able to help those people. If I get my name and brand in there at the beginning when they're coming to the realization of what they're coming to, guess what? I have a leg up on all competition because I'm already there. I'm already in their heads and they already know my voice and my way of thinking. And again, that's a tough, thing to kind of bite off and think about, I guess, for those who are just getting started, for those who are more established, I think you can probably see the value in it immediately of why that's so important if you're playing the long game. And Fire Nation, I spend every day building know, like, and trust with you, my audience, by releasing a free episode of Entrepreneurs on Fire every single day.

13:52So ask yourself, what are you doing to build know, like, and trust with your audience, with your potential customers and clients. So we have a lot more to talk about around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Marketers have never been spread so thin. Trust me, I feel it too. Between creating content, launching campaigns, generating leads, nurturing your prospects, and more, you barely have a second to breathe, let alone do your best marketing. But I've got some great news. There's a better way to do things and it's with the help of HubSpot and Breeze. It's new built-in AI. When you combine the power of HubSpot's marketing hub and content hub, You can have your best quarter every quarter.

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16:15Tom, one thing that we love as entrepreneurs is automation. So share with us the details of creating an automated sales sequence that can actually lead to a high ticket sale? On the low ticket front, I think this is probably pretty common knowledge. So I'm not gonna go through the exact details of putting together the low ticket offer because I think that's almost, I won't say that's common sense. It's definitely not common sense, but it's something like if you're working on that, there's certain, it almost doesn't need to be repeated. But let's just say we have a low ticket product. We're doing an e-book or we're doing an info product or we're doing some sort of resource like that.

16:56And again, it's from the zero or we'll say$1 up to$99 or something like that. All the rules apply, especially based on the last kind of segment when we were talking about it in regards to what are we targeting in terms of messaging. and again, is there a price point where it's like that's worth$7 or that's worth$50 or that's worth$100 to get that clarity or get that realization, that understanding to help people kind of move up that ladder. So with all that understood, like that offer on the front end, kind of all the same rules apply. It needs to be a compelling offer. The messaging and positioning has to be on point.

17:34You want to know exactly who your target customer is. You want to have an understanding of how they're finding you too, kind of where they're at in that journey. and again, that's all this top of funnel conversion rate optimization of landing pages and things like that. So I'm going to just say that that's the high level overview and say that once somebody comes there and then purchases the item, the next step here, and this is important, is the follow-up sequence. And again, I think this is why it's super important that people do email, that you have email marketing in your business. It's crazy to me.

18:09There's another zeitgeist kind of thing, pulse in the space, where it's funny how newsletters and email lists, I feel like took a backseat in the last decade because people were hyping up all these social media channels. And now look back in the last couple of years and it's like, what are people doing and what are people talking about? It's newsletters again, as if this is like a brand new idea. So it's just interesting. I think the older you get, the longer you're in these spaces, the more you witness these cycles. And so again, I just come back to it would say that email is still probably the most effective sales channel or can be.

18:41Again, I think if you're good at it, it can be the most effective sales channel there is. So you want to have that set up. You want to put together an automation that follows up on the product you just sold. And this can be as simple as just repeating stuff that was in that content, whether it's a book or it's some other type of resource or product. It's like email one is just confirmation. You got it. check it out, download the resource, go back into it. Email two would go and highlight something from the book or from the product. Maybe it's like in chapter two or chapter three, you know, there's this story about XYZ and you just basically extract it out of the content and rewrite it in a short, short email.

19:21And you do that for emails three, four, five, and so on. There's no set number of how many there have to be here. If you're just getting started, just start with like one or two or three emails. The point is to be able to drip out that content across time and hopefully in kind of like a consistent, cohesive manner, whether that's weekly, whether that's daily. If you're not doing daily, don't get ambitious. I would say start with weekly at best and just drip out that content weekly and come back to that resource that that person already purchased. And the reason for this is, and it's often overlooked when people are doing digital products, especially low ticket ones, it's like the sales complete and then they ghost.

19:57But I think you do a disservice to yourself and what you've even just sold. And I know it's ticket. Even if it's like five bucks, you do yourself a disservice if you ghost the customer. But if you continue to follow up talking about that resource that they bought, there's a couple things that happen. One thing that happens is that person values the purchase more. It begins to be inculcated into their being that what they purchased was the right thing to purchase because you're just talking about it again and again. You're referencing. And so when they open those emails, which people still open emails and people read emails, even if they're skimming them, It will reinforce the idea that they made the right buying decision.

20:35You might not think that's a big deal, but when we're moving to high ticket, that's super important, right? Because what we're trying to do is we're basically – what I'm describing to you is another way of thinking about it. It's almost like a Cialdini way of thinking about it and a neuro-linguistic programming way of thinking about it. But it's kind of almost creating through reinforcement types of positive reinforcement that you are somebody that this person should trust. And we do that through an automated email sequence very effectively and very easily. The second thing it does is a lot of people buy a low-ticket item and they won't ever open it up.

21:12It just goes into their hard drive. They download it or they never even redeem it. I don't know what the stats are, but like I was talking to Noah Kagan on my podcast like a month or two ago. And, you know, again, I look at something like AppSuma, and I know I'm a culprit on this, but I wonder how many people buy, you know, those tools and just actually never redeem the product. You know, I bet there's a substantial portion. So, again, this helps people to, you know, it incentivizes them to go and redeem the product or go access it, get their value out of it. And so, again, I think that's super important.

21:42And then the third thing it does is, again, kind of coming back to that consistency and creating this kind of – this renewed interest and renewal and seeing of your name and your face and your brand again and again in the context of somebody – of them trying to help you that builds trust. So you're building all the trust on the back end of this low-ticket product. And that's when I segue. So I'll do that for several emails, and then I segue that into whatever the next steps would be. So again, we've just provided clarity with this low-ticket offer. The next step is zooming in on what the solutions are and maybe even going – zoomed in more specifically to addressing like what for sure is the specific pain or problem.

22:23And so by setting up the high-level overview and the getting clarity, we can then basically narrow the focus. We can continue to narrow the focus, and we do that with subsequent emails. And the only thing here is to move them to high ticket is we need some sort of conversion event to move them to high ticket. So we built trust. We've now started to narrow the focus on what it is that they need help with, getting closer and closer to what your high ticket offer is. So again, we do that through email and we do that through content. We do that through just trust building and showing up and being somebody that they can rely on, even if they aren't aware of it.

22:54They're subconsciously realizing, the user's subconsciously realizing, this person is somebody I can trust and rely on when they're consistently producing content. And we want to bring them into a really tactical approach to solving that problem. And that's where things like a webinar can be very effective. And I know you know this is the case, John. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right? And it's like, again, even today, people could say, well, webinars don't work. It's like, no, man, they do still work. Maybe you didn't hit the heyday, but an effective webinar position the right way to solve somebody's problem right now, people still sign up.

23:27People still show up. People are still having a great time at these events. They can learn a lot. They can go away with a ton of great value. And guess what? Some people will be ready to spend a lot of money with you. And that's the conversion event we use, which kind of reduces the timetable here, if you will. that we kind of collapse the time frame or the timetable to get somebody from low ticket to high ticket by doing an event like that. Because when it's live and it's interactive and they can see my face and I can teach and I can kind of prove myself, even if I've kind of been doing that already with email, you kind of still have to reprove yourself with the live training and things like that.

24:04Again, it's just like leveling up the trust, leveling up the trust. And when you deliver great value on something like that, you can walk away knowing that, listen, even if 99 % of people don't buy anything. It's no big deal. They got a ton of value out of it. They'll leave you good, great praise. But you know that 1 % or hopefully on a webinar, we're talking maybe 5%, 10%, you know, if we're talking conversion rate numbers are going to move on to what's going to be the next thing. When we're talking high ticket, I, we, we, at least how we do it. And I haven't cracked the code on if there's another way to do this, but it feels like the higher the price, you know, going into, you know, basically around 5 ,000 or more, I kind of need to get on a call or get somebody onto a call with an advisor of ours to have that call to go through their personal information, their personal details, their personal struggles.

24:48So we'll go from my typical strategy then is from low ticket to a webinar or some kind of live training or something like that to continue to prove the value of what I do and what I deliver and then moving that into an application process that ultimately goes to a phone call that then ultimately goes into the process of kind of closing the sale and onboarding. And I hope that's not too much. And I hope that's helpful for people who are listening. It was a lot, no doubt. I think a lot of people's heads just popped off listening to that and Fire Nation. That's why you can go back and listen again.