TCC Podcast #204: High-ticket Sales with Jereshia Hawk

Too many copywriters have a limiting belief around how much they can charge for their services, so our guest for the 204th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast is Jereshia Hawk, a high-ticket sales coach who shared how we can overcome that mindset issue. But that’s not all we talked about. We also covered…

•  how she became known for helping clients increase high-ticket sales
•  how her “engineering” approach shifts her thinking about products, problems and failure
•  overcoming objections—after the sale
•  why she carves out an hour on Monday’s for “superthinking”
•  her thoughts on building a team (and our role as an “employee” of your company)
•  what a personal performance review should look like (questions you can ask)
•  the zero sum budget approach to goal setting
•  how copywriters can overcome the idea that they can’t make a lot of money
•  the first steps toward building a high-ticket offer (like as much as $40K or more)
•  the simplicity rule that can instantly help you sell more
•  the POP method that helps you synthesize your offer and audience
•  her “champagne closer method” that completely changes a sales call
•  rethinking the free content you provide and what it has to do
•  the one metric everyone with a business needs to know <— this is critical
•  how she leverages one piece of content to show up everywhere
•  a step-by-step breakdown of the Jereshia’s sales call process
•  the mid-call check-in/pattern interrupt and why you steal this idea
•  the “hidden” mindset shift that changed Jereshia’s path into the online world
•  why your success isn’t reflected in your latest success or failure

This is a great discussion you won’t want to miss. Be sure to do what Jereshia suggests at the end of the podcast and share your “one thing” on Instagram, Twitter, or elsewhere in social media. To listen, click the button below or scroll down for a full transcript.

The people and stuff we mentioned on the show:

Jereshia’s question list:

•  What expectations would I have of the CEO?
•  How would I measure the performance and success of the CEO?
•  Am I living up to those expectations now? How so? Why or why not?
•  Would I hire myself again? Why or why not?
•  What uncomfortable decision am I putting off right now that is preventing me from moving forward?

Copywriter Think Tank
Brook Castillo
The Road Less Stupid
Shape Up
Perry Marshall’s Renaissance Time
Kira’s website
Rob’s website
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

 

Full Transcript:

Kira:   Selling a product or service for $2,000 or even $10,000 takes a different approach, even a different skillset than selling something for $47 or maybe $500. Your high-end prospects have different needs, different problems, different beliefs, possibly even a different outlook on life. So naturally, reaching those prospects takes a very different approach.

Today, on the 204th of The Copywriter Club podcast, we’re speaking with high ticket sales coach, Jereshia Hawk. Jereshia started her career as an engineer, not an online business coach, so her entire approach to systems and processes and sales is different from anyone else we’ve spoken with on the podcast.

Rob:   We’ll jump in to our interview with Jereshia in a moment, but first, we need to tell you that this episode is brought to you by The Copywriter Think Tank, our high level mastermind for copywriters, content writers and brand strategists who want to grow their business to the $200,000 mark. This is also where Kira and I both provide our one-on-two strategy sessions and coaching. It is designed to help you achieve more than ever. If you’re interested in learning more about The Copywriter Think Tank, drop us an email at [email protected], or [email protected].

Kira:   Jereshia shared so many great ideas in this interview. Both Rob and I were texting each other during the entire interview with the different ideas that we could test in our own businesses, and we learned not just about selling, but also about designing client experiences so you can deliver the results your clients need and even processes for thinking differently about your business. Let’s jump in to our interview with Jereshia as she tells us about how she became a sales coach.

All right, Jereshia, welcome. We want to kick this off with your story. How did you end up as a high ticket sales coach?

Jereshia Hawk:   Well, I kind of stumbled my way here. I was an engineer by trade before even knowing this whole online world existed. And I started doing some of my videos, started getting into coaching, just people asking me to give advice or insight on how I was able to navigate my corporate career and how I was able to position myself for upward mobility opportunities in a nontraditional way or in a way that just wasn’t the same beat and path of how you’re supposed to excel in corporate. And one thing I started recognizing during my coaching calls at the very, very beginning, when I was charging $60 for a month of coaching, less than what you would pay for a fitness class, and the biggest thing that I noticed was the transferrable skills that I had acquired in corporate America.

I was a lead engineer of a $400 million pipeline project, I was responsible for managing our money on a day-to-day basis, making decisions based off of input and output, and so I understood how money moved from a corporates perspective, but then I also understood kind of a gap that I noticed in the industry, or that I noticed just from people that I was discussing on, how do you effectively articulate your value in a way that whoever is in the other position, the buying decision or the position of authority to make a decision, how do you articulate your value in a way where they get it and that it also correlates to how it impacts the bottom line or impacts the thing that’s most important to them, and how do you position yourself to be able to do that repeatedly.

And once I started to recognize that those three things were really my sweet spot and as I started growing in the coaching business, that’s where high ticket sales was my natural zone of genius. Because I think when you are selling offers that are $2,000 to $20,000, it’s usually the range most of my clients are in, there’s just a different way that you have to articulate your value than if you’re selling something for $500. There’s a different way that you have to position yourself in order to attract people to know just know, like and trust you, but to believe you, respect you and align with you from a value base perspective, to want to be able to invest with you at a higher level.

So it was definitely a work in progress. It took about two years to feel confident in myself to be able to kind of own that as an identity in this online world before I really dove head in. It’s really recognizing these transferrable skills and also identifying where is the gap that I see in the industry that we’re in and where can I really be adding value from a unique perspective.

Rob:   So before we jump in to all of the aspects of high ticket sales, I want to ask about your engineering background because this seems really unique to me. I talk to a lot of people who’ve built online businesses, who are working in the online space, and I don’t think any of them are engineers. So is there something from your engineering background in education that made you especially good at what you’re doing today, skills that you learned there that you apply to how you help today?

Jereshia Hawk:   Yeah. I have clients that joke and say I’m never hiring a coach that was an engineer after working with you now. I think one of the biggest things is that as an engineer, we’re trained to use the resources that we have to creatively solve problems. So I think that was a mindset shift that individually helped me as a business owner in the online space, or just with my business, because I don’t look at problems as, I don’t know, opportunities of failure exactly. It’s more of a big experiment and it’s like, okay, I’m willing to test and try and experiment until I can figure out a solution rather than if I try once, feeling ridiculously defeated if it doesn’t pan out.

And I think that’s a mindset aspect that really does correlate to how I coach my clients is really getting them onboard that it’s really progress over perfection. We’re really here. It’s continuous improvement, not get it right on the first time. And so I think that it correlates into how we teach and coach our curriculum. And I think it makes me a bit different but I think the other thing that really has been a huge advantage for me because of being an engineer is I think very process-oriented. So all of my curriculum is designed in a way where if a client comes in, it’s like an assembly line. How can we design our curriculum in a way that moves them through that assembly line so that they are getting consistent results from client to client, and it’s very predictable, it’s very repeatable.

And I think that is a huge reason why we have a very high success rate of our clients. We have a coaching program that’s around the $2,000 price point. I’d say 75%, 80% of our clients earn a full return on investment within the first 90 days, which traditional courses or online programs, they normally have about a 10% to 12% completion rate in our industry on average with our higher programs that are in the five-figure price point, we’re just able to help people grow pretty fast pretty quickly, and I think that’s 100% attributed to how we design our curriculum, and that is something I learned from being an engineer. How do you think about the step-by-step process that would guide somebody through knowing when they need to do what and where their focus needs to be, to be able to produce whatever the desired end objective is that was promised to begin with.

So I think just how I think about curriculum is more aligned with maybe how Apple thinks about creating a new product or how maybe software companies think about developing software, it’s this alpha beta, delta launch is through this continuous improvement and this feedback loop that you get from clients to enhance your curriculum. And I think even the clients we get to serve, when they start to think about their curriculum and their client experience journey, it really puts them at a huge advantage against their peers because most other coaches or service providers or copywriters in the industry, they may be amazing at what they do but they may not know how to deliver their client experience and the delivery of whatever they do in that predictable of a manner. So I think those are two things that I 100% attribute to my engineering background, for sure.

Kira:   Well, let’s break that down even more because I’m not naturally a process person. I don’t have a background in engineering, so if I want to create this incredible experience for my copywriting clients and also with my programs that we run together, I want high completion rates, I want them to be engaged, I want them to perform well in those programs, how can I do that better? What are some really specific steps I can take, especially if I’m not naturally process-minded like you?

Jereshia Hawk:   Yeah, that’s a great question. One of the first things that I recommend and I think really what elevates a client experience and really differentiates a person from peers or competitors in the industry is your ability to be able to anticipate your clients’ needs before they know they need them.

So I think in sales or in marketing, a lot of us can default to know, okay, I need to overcome some objections to get somebody to buy. And we think that’s the only time that we’re going to have to overcome an objection. Once a client enrolls and pays and signs on for the copywriting services, you still have to overcome objections that they are going to have to do to provide you the deliverables that you need to produce the website. They need to send over the copy… well, I guess you guys are writing the copy, but whatever the deliverables are, there’s still objections that we have to overcome once they become a client to get to the finished product.

So one of the first things that I recommend to enhance your process, even if you’re not process-oriented, is look at your client journey from the moment they enroll until a project is complete, and identify what are the two to four key areas where there’s typically resistance or resistance to doing whatever is needed to be able to move them forward in the process, and then start to creatively think of, okay, what could I be doing to help either remove that barrier altogether or to upfront communicate with the client and say, “Hey, at these points during the journey, you may feel some resistance, you may experience X, Y or Z, and I may not be able to remove that feeling or that fear that you may experience, but here are the tools that you’re going to need to be able to manage them so that you can still move forward versus stalling, stopping or quitting altogether.”

And I think that is one thing that everybody listening to this can absolutely do in their client experience journey or their curriculum delivery journey, depending on how you show up as a copywriter to be able to enhance that experience and help increase the likelihood that your clients are going to get the result that you promised when they enrolled with you.

Rob:   So those are client processes, what about personal processes for things like getting more work done, or maybe even we talk about morning routines, those kinds of things, how can we take those same principles and apply them to processes that help us be more effective?

Jereshia Hawk:   Oh, like in the business, like on the backend operations?

Rob:   Yeah. Business and just with execution in getting things done, and making sure that we’re actually moving forward with building the parts of our business that maybe aren’t client facing.

Jereshia Hawk:   Man, I wish I had the perfect solution for that because I struggle with that on a daily basis, Rob. But…

Rob:   Me too, that’s why I’m asking.

Jereshia Hawk:   Well, one of the things that has been really powerful for me as a business owner is either every Monday or every Friday, just depending on the week, I carve out about an hour in my calendar to do what I like to call super thinking. Brooke Castillo has an amazing podcast about it and there’s also a book called The Road Less Stupid that also really discusses just the importance of giving yourself time to think and come up with ideas and come up with solutions rather than just reacting. So that carved out time has helped me improve my processes from business owner and operational backend because now, I’m starting… I guess the way… a problem can present itself, right? Like, how do I enroll 10 new clients by the end of the month?

And if we just start… I think the natural default for a lot of us is just you kind of just start throwing spaghetti at the wall and waiting to see what sticks, without fully diagnosing what’s the actual problem that we’re trying to solve and really planning the process rather than planning the outcome. What is really required of me to accomplish that goal given the parameters and conditions that exist? And I think that’s I guess a process… developing a process on how you make decisions is probably one of the most important processes I have developed as a personal individual and has allowed me to lead a better team, a very lean team and being effective business owner is having a process for how you make decisions.

And that’s something that have been a work in time but it all started with me setting up time to just give myself time to think. What are the challenges that I’m currently experiencing this week? What is the actual problem that I’m trying to solve? Really giving myself space to diagnose a situation or a challenge or an obstacle beyond just what I’m seeing at surface level. And it normally always boils down to something like mindset shift or internal fear that I have that I haven’t reconciled yet that’s really the thing that’s preventing me from moving forward.

What I’ve noticed for me at some area or specificity within a self-sabotaging activity that is preventing me from taking to action or making the decision or making the hire or being bold and courageous enough in my marketing content, or whatever it is. So I don’t know if that’s the answer you were looking for, Rob, but I think creating space in your calendar to give yourself the opportunity to actually think and properly diagnose challenges and situations. And something I recently told my clients to do, and this is something I revisit on a quarterly basis personally, is look back at past over the last quarter, what were some key decisions that you made, but really think about how did I make that decision and what influence that decision? Did I make that decision out of fear? Did I make that decision out of an abundant mindset? Did I make that decision reactionary? Was I proactive in that decision?

Because then you can start to reverse-engineer. Like, I had this obstacle, this is the criteria that I used to make that decision. I maybe not didn’t recognize it in the moment, but reflecting back, I can kind of see it. And then I can now make a decision, do I want to continue making decisions that way? Does that actually serve me and serve where I’m trying to go? And that’s something that you can teach your team how to do as well so that when you start delegating and hiring team members, you’re not just delegating tasks, but you’re also teaching them how to make decisions to move the company forward. So that’s one that’s relevant. I literally did it yesterday, Rob. So yeah, I hope that answered the question.

Rob:   I mean, it definitely gives me things to think about here because the process for making decisions and the process for using your time more wisely, that’s something that I’m always trying to dial in too, so I love hearing your perspective on it. There’s some things here I’m going to try. I’m definitely putting The Road Less Stupid on my book list. I could use a lot less stupid in my life.

Jereshia Hawk:   It’s a good read, for sure.

Kira:   Okay. So you mentioned you did this yesterday with your team, can we run through that and your process for making decisions with your team after you’ve already diagnosed a problem, can you give us some examples of what that conversation look like with your team? So we can start doing it within our own business, whether or not we have a team.

Jereshia Hawk:   Yeah. I mean, my team is two part-time employees. We’re a seven-figure company. We are very lean, and I was doing this before I had the team. But I think sometimes, I want to point this out before even diving into this, Kira, if this is okay, is I think sometimes, when we’re solopreneurs, we forget that we’re also employees to the company that we’re building. And I think it’s so important for us to not lose sight of that. Yeah, it might be just you building this company but also think about yourself as an individual. I’m also an employee of this company, and that means, am I giving myself performance reviews? Am I sitting down myself and being an active participant in the strategy meeting that you would be having if the team was bigger? So I just wanted to point that out because regardless if you have a team or you don’t, it’s super important to be having these conversations.

But with the team, one of the ways that we’ve been doing this. Before, I was very terrible at this. I would just have a list of tasks. It would have very clear outlines of what… well, a lot of the time, it actually didn’t have clear outlines on what success looked like or how to get it done, and then I would hand them over to somebody. What I realized is that I’m still the one making all of the decisions and I stop necessarily having to execute the task but now I’m having to answer all the decision questions that they have, which is you now become the bottleneck in the business and can stall the growth of the company.

But how this looked this past week with the team, I did this yesterday individually, but about a week ago, we did this with the team. When we are creating new projects, so it’s like, okay, this is the end objective that we’re trying to get to by the end of the year. That was what this discussion was, is how do we finish the year based off of these goals and metrics that we set at the beginning of the year. And we kind of start from a clean slate. That’s something I also learned from corporate is I think it was called a zero sum budget where every year, we would start from zero. You would have to basically reestablish necessity for purchasing things, hiring things, where we spend money, where we spend time, we’d have to do that every single year. So I kind of take that same approach on a quarterly basis on when we plan goals.

If we had to start from where we are right now, not obligated to doing anything we were doing yesterday, not obligated to do anything that we said we were going to do tomorrow, what are the things that we would do to hit the objective that we try to hit, and everybody submits their project ideas. And once those project ideas are established and set, then we start to diagnose. Is this scope of work clearly defined? Is this something that we can complete in the next six weeks? So, this is something we also learned from Basecamp, the software company. They have a really great book called Shape Up, and the Shape Up book walks through the process of how they plan projects. So a lot of the inspiration for what we’re doing now for our company is actually based off of some of the framework that they teach inside of that book on how to break down problems and clearly define the problem that you’re trying to solve and all of that.

But one of the things that we have all of our team members do is, okay, what are the things that have to happen in order to accomplish this project? But then also, it’s the responsibility of the team members to say what decisions would somebody need to be able to make, to be able to complete this task? And now this allows us to start shifting ownership. It also allows them to see themselves as owner as a part of the process because it’s not just about you doing what Jereshia told you to do, but, okay, what are the decisions that I need to be able to make to be able to complete this task and kind of thinking about them before the project actually rolls out.

And what Shape Up kind of calls it is identifying the rabbit holes, what are the potential pitfalls that you might run into, and how can you do more of that thinking on the front end rather than being reactionary to it once things roll out. So that it something… it’s very collaborative. There’s some work they do ahead of time and they bring that to the meeting so that we can be a bit more efficient, because we have a remote team, during our time together.

But I think just diagnosing, what are the decisions that we have to make. And then now, it’s been my responsibility. And I think as an individual business owner, if you have a team, it’s really important… this is new for us. How do we make decisions as a company, and then how can I start to coach my team members on how to do that more effectively while we’re learning and growing so that they can feel more confident in their decision-making ability rather than just running back to me, saying, “This is the problem. What am I supposed to do?” And me giving them the answer.

Rob:   So I’m really taken with this idea of running a performance review on a single person in the business. That’s not…

Kira:   Me too.

Rob:   I’ve never considered that before. And there’s a lot of talk, when you start as a freelancer or whatever, that you may have the worst boss in the world, right? Because we are our own bosses, we don’t hold ourselves accountable to the things that we maybe say we do. Do you have a formal, like a form, or a set of questions that you ask yourself when you do that kind of thing? Or is it informal and you’re just thinking, what am I doing to reach my goals, what is the goal that I’m trying to reach. What does that look like?

Jereshia Hawk:   Well, I’m working on creating it a bit more formal. I’m laughing because the first question I ask myself is would I hire myself again.

Rob:   Yeah, that’s a terrible question.

Jereshia Hawk:   It is. It is, but it’s very enlightening. I do it with my team members every question or every six months, I’m like, knowing what I know about this person’s performance, their interactions, would I hire them again? So when I do my own performance reviews, I’m like, “Well, would I hire myself to do the things that I say that I’m supposed to be doing?” And I’m laughing because I’ve had to fire myself multiple times and luckily, I’ve been able to rehire myself multiple times. But it’s a really good reality check. And if the answer is no, why is that? And it’s really having these conscious, radical conversations with yourself.

And, I mean, I always say I think entrepreneurship is the best form of therapy if you allow it to be, because some people, well, one, not maybe give honest answers to that question, and two, if they are saying that, okay, yes, I’m dropping the ball here, here and here, are you going to operate with the level of self-integrity to say, okay, take ownership for where I may be had been dropping the ball and recognize, this is what I’m committed to doing moving forward. But that’s usually the question I start with.

And then, asking myself, okay, well, why or why not? What’s actually coming up? And then that starts to peel back the layers of where the actual… again, it’s going back to really properly diagnosing the actual problem, because then it starts to say, oh, well, maybe I’m not doing a good enough job actually communicating expectations to my clients that’s why I’m having this issue with boundaries being abused. And it’s like, okay, well, what do you need to be doing to better communicate expectations with clients so that there are healthier boundaries between your working relationship rather than you burning yourself out or getting to a place where you absolutely resent your clients?

That has always allowed me to actually dig deeper and actually find out, take ownership of what’s going on rather than saying, well, this is just what it is and kind of, I don’t know, crying wolf to the circumstances. But it’s actually been a really empowering exercise as long as I maintain that angle of perspective. It normally starts with that question, then it’s a series of, well, why is this happening? Well, where is this coming up? Okay, well, what caused that?

Another question that I always ask in my performance evaluations is where am I not taking ownership, and where do I need to be taking ownership at a greater level. And then another question, I might need to pull this up, I might be able to send this to you guys to put it in the show notes later, because I do have some questions that I ask myself every single time, but another one is just what decision am I delaying out of fear? What decision am I not making because I’m afraid?

Kira:   Those are good. Those are really good. So yeah, I definitely need to fire myself. I’ll do right after this recording.

Rob:   So obviously, we’re a bit taken in by this idea of doing a personal employee review. And Kira, I know you’re mostly joking when you just said that you’re thinking about firing yourself, but I had exactly the same reaction. There are a lot of things that I should myself for getting wrong. So what do you think about this whole idea of the personal employee review, reviewing ourselves and the role that we’re supposed to be filling?

Kira:   Yeah. I was not joking. I did fire myself. No, I really do think that, that resonated with me because I’ve never done that. I’ve never thought through how I’m performing as an employee. And that was such a big mindset shift for me listening to Jereshia talk through that and kind of a much needed kick in the butt for me to stop blaming others, not that I’m necessarily blaming others for everything, but I think it’s really easy to not take ownership of everything you’re doing as a business owner until you sit down and start to evaluate honestly how you’re performing and looking really hard at where you need to improve.

And I think it was just a big switch in the way that she described it compared to just sitting down and journaling every Monday, which I’ve done. I’ve done that, but it doesn’t quite penetrate deep enough for what we need to do as business owners.

Rob:   Yeah. I think anybody who’s been through that corporate review process has done this for themselves, but more to justify their position. You’re not looking at it like a manager looking at yourself. You go through that process, you’re like, oh, I did this and I did this and I did this. Therefore, I need my 3% raise. Looking at it from the other direction where I’m the business owner and now I’m looking at myself also as an employee, and I’m not trying to justify what I’ve done in the past, but I’m saying given what you’ve accomplished in the past or what you should’ve done, would I hire myself again to do this same job?

And I think the answer is often no, and when we have done this… we haven’t gone through this process, but when I thought of things like what should I be giving up? I used to edit the podcast. I’m not a good podcast editor. That should not be the thing that I spend my time on. And so fortunately, we’ve got somebody who’s much better at doing that and I could fire myself from that job. And there are probably another dozen things that I’m doing today that I should fire, both in our business, The Copywriter Club, and in my own business. I shouldn’t be doing the bookkeeping, or I shouldn’t be doing the invoicing. There’s somebody who is better at that stuff that lets me focus on the things that I’m really good at.

Kira:   Yeah. And I think we should incorporate it into what we’re doing for TCC, what we’re doing together. If you and I had a call once a month where we critique ourselves and even critique each other, which we’ve never really done, it could be a little uncomfortable but probably would help the business in the long run. So it might be worth us testing it too. And I was just going to say, on the flip side, you mentioned, in some ways, we have to defend… if you’re working in a corporate environment, you’re defending your position and you’re trying to defend it and get that raise. But as business owners, I think we need to do a better job of also complimenting ourselves and identifying our strengths too.

So, as much as I should identify where I’m not doing as well, I should also spend some time to identify what were some of the big wins, because as copywriters, I do think we tend to be really critical of ourselves and we don’t celebrate the wins or what we have done well. I know you and I don’t do that very well either. So, it could go both ways.

Rob:   Yeah, for sure. One other thing that really stood out for me from what Jereshia was talking about is that hour of super thinking. This is something that I think both of us do in maybe a different way. I know we have set aside days where we don’t do calls, we don’t do other things in our business so that we can really focus in on one or two things. And this is a concept that I actually learned from Perry Marshall. He calls it renaissance time. And you get up in the morning, maybe you exercise or whatever, but then you take some time to sit down and to really think about your business, what should you be doing to find bigger ideas in your business, or you ask questions like, okay, if I’m going to make $1 million this year, what do I need to be doing differently? How much do I need to be charging? What kinds of clients do I need to be working with?

And just taking time to really think, CEO time, renaissance time, super power hour, super thinking, whatever you want to call it, but taking some time every week to focus on the big questions in our business so that we’re not just doing the same thing week in and week out. I really like that idea. I just wanted to point that out as well.

Kira:   Yeah. And I’ve struggled with this CEO hour of Mondays. I’ve talked about how I do it. I do set aside time, most of the time, right? Some weeks, I miss it. But I’ve also struggled to figure out, okay, now that I’m sitting down on my couch and I have a journal in front of me, what am I doing with this 30 minutes or hour that I’m thinking about the business and having this CEO hat on? And so Jereshia definitely gave some really good ideas. I think that performance review could be a weekly idea that you integrate into that Monday hour or even half hour, or maybe at least once a month.

And then also, a lot of what I took away from this conversation with her was about diagnosing our problems. And she’s clearly a problem solver, we all are. She’s just developed a lot of great systems for problem solving. And so I could easily use that hour, that renaissance time, to really properly diagnose our problems as a business and go much deeper because a lot of what she talked about is that we tend to identify the problems on the surface level, but if you look much deeper, you can identify the real problem and then you can start to reverse-engineer a solution. So, definitely something I’m going to start to implement during those hours where I’m sitting on the couch and having my CEO hour.

Rob:   Okay. So let’s get back to our discussion with Jereshia.

Kira:   Let’s pivot a little bit here, and I really want to talk about high ticket sales. Let’s start with where we mess this up. And maybe, I know you work with some copywriters, maybe we generalized it a little bit more, but where do we typically fall down when we’re trying to make the high ticket sale?

Jereshia Hawk:   Well, I will talk about copywriters because it’s really interesting that a lot of writers that, when they initially come to me, there’s this huge mindset that copywriters can’t make money online or that writers don’t get paid high ticket. And I’m not sure if this is the same for listeners here, but that…

Rob:   Yeah.

Jereshia Hawk:   Okay.

Rob:   Yeah, it is.

Jereshia Hawk:   I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just my pool of people in the world. But they come to me with this belief that, oh, because I’m a writer, unless I’m Rachel Hollis or Oprah and have this New York Time’s bestselling book, I can’t make money as a writer. And I just think that belief is where a lot of individuals go wrong because they don’t even give themselves permission that clients paying them $2,000 or $15,000 or $40,000 for projects is even available to them. So, Kira, I think that’s the first where people go wrong, especially copywriters, is they don’t even give themselves permission that, that’s available to them as an option in their business.

Rob:   So, yeah. So let’s assume then that I want to start adding high ticket sales to my business, whether it’s projects $2,000 plus, I’m not even sure, maybe high ticket’s more than that, $5,000, $10,000. What are the steps? How do we start figuring out what it is that we should be offering and how do we sell it?

Jereshia Hawk:   Yeah. I want to say… look, I know somebody, a friend that’s a copywriter. She sells a $40,000 copywriting contract for a 12-month agreement, and she literally sells out every single year all of her spots, but how did she do that or how can somebody listening to this do that?

I think the first thing is, one, actually getting clear on defining what the offer promise is going to be. And this is where the mindset typically needs to shift because it’s not like, well, I’m… we have to really think about it beyond just like I’m writing emails for somebody, or I’m creating a sales page copy, thinking about it from what the deliverable is, but really start to think about it as what is the promise that I’m guaranteeing with this? Let’s say you’re doing a sales page for somebody’s coaching program launch, and I know most people that I know in the space, they charge $5,000 to $15,000 to do that. And it’s not just because of how much “time” that they spend writing, but they understand how to articulate the value from I know that me giving the sales page is going to produce X amount of money for them.

So, really thinking about what is the promise or the guarantee, what is the outcome that is able to be produced by the copywriting that you’re delivering to that client and you getting clear on what that is.

I think the second thing is aligning your price, understanding what does it operationally take from an expense standpoint to be able to do what you do, or a time perspective. But also, think about it of what is the return on investment that this client is going to experience by the work that I’m writing for them and just making this healthy balance between those two things.

And then when it comes to the actual packaging of the offer, you have to keep it simple. Confused clients do not convert, and one thing I noticed with copywriters who are selling lower ticket and then start transitioning in a high, they offer way too many freaking options, too many à la cartes. And I know for me, the one making the buying decision, if it’s too convoluted, I have to figure out what I need. I think as a copywriter, when you start elevating your price points, it’s not like, well, let this client just decide what they want, they’re also hiring you because you’re the expert. They want you to come to the table saying, “This is what you need and this is the package that delivers it,” versus giving them all the variable options of, well, give me this but take out that, like they’re trying to, I don’t know, customize the bill to bear.

I think when you start stepping in the high end, there’s a level of expertise and certainty that somebody is also paying for. And while they’re willing to pay premium, because they’re working with somebody who… and this is really where niching down, we call it the POP method, pick one problem, pick one person, package one process. So when you start elevating into high ticket, it’s really important to, one, synthesize down, really narrow a niche down on what the actual deliverable is going to be, who specifically it is going to be for, not necessarily having this wide swing of customization from client to client, because that does allow you to more position yourself as an authority, as an expert, rather than being a generalist. I call it like the spork analogy. You guys, know sporks? Like there’s spoons…

Rob:   Yeah.

Kira:   Oh, that’s right.

Rob:   Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Kentucky Fried Chicken utensil.

Kira:   Yes.

Jereshia Hawk:   You can’t eat a $500 steak with a spork. The spork is trying to do too many things, and a lot of the time, in business, when you start elevating… a lot of people, and myself included, when I started my business, I was a spork. I was trying to be a spoon and a fork. I was trying to do all the things, customize and bend and shape, well, I can serve everybody. But when you’re trying to move in to elevated price points and higher end premium services, you got to decide, are you the knife? Are you the fork? Or are you the spoon? You can’t successfully eat a high end steak with a plastic spork. So stop being a spork and you really have to start stepping in to being a specialist.

And the POP method is a really great rule of thumb of pick one problem that you’re going to be solving that’s specific, that’s tangible, that is results-based. Focus on one minimum viable audience, one specific narrow niche target client to go after, and really focus on developing packaging one process that, I would say, 80% is pretty consistent from client to client, and there might be a little bit of margin for variable or customization.

Kira:   Okay. So let’s say we’ve figured this out, we’ve worked through the POP and we figured all that out, how do you structure the sales call for high ticket? What are you doing differently compared to just selling a regular package? What do we need to be thinking about, asking and doing on those calls?

Jereshia Hawk:   Yes, I love this question. I love talking about sales and making money. It makes me so happy. And I love other people making more money. But we call it the champagne closer method, and this came from… when you see luxury, high end real estate, a lot of the time, the real estate agent isn’t selling the house, the house kind of sells itself. All they have to do is just bring the champagne, pop the bottle and pour the glasses. But the house sells itself. And when you start elevating your price points in handling a sales conversation, I want you to think about it from that type of perspective. But we are really big on… I use organic marketing to sell, and I’m giving you guys context because it’s not just about what… there’s a lot of selling that happens before we ever get somebody on the call.

But I will say most people, most of my clients, especially the ones from the writing space, how they used to handle their sales calls were they get on a sales call, they may talk to the client about what results you’re looking to accomplish, what exactly it is they want, and then on that call is when they really start to sell the offer, breaking down all the things that are included. Then they start getting objections or questions that are, not closing questions, but more of maybe objections or those types of things, and they’re trying to handle a lot on one call conversation.

And I know a lot of clients, especially in the writing space, in the past, I feel sleazy, I don’t want to feel misleading, it’s kind of too much spotlight at one time for me to be able to handle that on that one phone conversation, and I kind of crumble in either discount or down-sell versus enrolling them in the thing that I know that they need, because there was just too much to kind of manage and handle on one call. So we kind of like to, not even kind of, we like to break up our sales process a bit. In our free content, instead of teaching people what to do, we start teaching people what to think.

In all of our marketing content, and if you’re selling high ticket, I highly recommend that you start to do this, is what are the objections that you’ve always gotten? What are the limiting beliefs that somebody has? What are all the other options that somebody might consider over you that’s preventing them from wanting to work with you. And then what is the belief that they have and how can you shift that belief in your free content? Because if people are consuming your free content and you’re shifting their beliefs in that free content, you’re kind of taking some of that load of convincing that you have to do on a sales call and you’re doing it before you even ever make physical contact with that person.

So that’s the first thing that I would change about your sales process to help alleviate and streamline the actual sales call. But stop teaching people what to do in your content. No more this how to, here are three copywriting subject line hacks. We want to stop… and that works really, really well when you’re selling low ticket, but when you start raising the rates, the buying decision criteria of a client significantly evolves. So we want to use your free content to not teach them necessarily what to do all the time, but start teaching them what they need to think, what are the beliefs and the mindset that we need to shift them into.

And then once we invite them to the call, once the call is actually starting, you’ve already done some of these belief shifting in your organic content, then at the beginning, we will kind of build rapport. We talk about where they, future wise, want to go. We talk about what challenges they’re experiencing now. And then I pause and say, “What about this conversation has been the most valuable for you?” Because that gives me some… now, I’m not having to sell myself on why I’m so good, they’re now selling themselves on why I’m so good. They’re the ones saying it versus me convincing them. So, it’s permission based sales. It’s leading from a very permission based perspective. So instead of me forcing myself on them or trying to convince them of how valuable I know that I am, I give them the opportunity to tell me instead, and that’s a minor tweak, but it has a significant impact.

Once we talk about value and why me, why now, why this is important for you, I never lead with t