Few high-ticket clients or many lower-paying members?

Do you need to attract high-ticket clients or sell to a bigger audience?

Your business model contains so much good information. It goes way beyond the sales and marketing to outline how you deliver to each customer, how long you serve them and how much you charge.

Making sure you have a plan on how to approach prospective clients, pitch them and ensure you seal the deal is critical.

Despite that, deciding on how many people to work with can be tricky! Do you want fewer high-ticket clients or many lower paying ones?

Today I’m sharing two different approaches, along with the pros and cons of each.

Two different approaches to the same business

The first style is the many “low-ticket customer” model and it means priced to sell.

A business can price their products or services lower than the average competitor in an effort to attract multiple clients at once. You’ve probably seen this often with group programs, monthly subscriptions and online courses that run on demand.

Then there are the entrepreneurs who go with the fewer “high-ticket program” model. They focus on securing a few clients while offering their services at a higher price. These businesses usually offer one-on-one services, group programs or operate as agencies who implement on your behalf.

There are many ways to generate revenue in today’s business world. Both many customers or fewer clients can bring in similar amounts of income for an owner. It’s the work put in to get to the endpoint and desired scalability that needs considering.

Picture the scenario below using freelancers:

Freelancer A: Is just starting out in the freelance writing business. She’s done some small gigs but left her full-time job and needs to begin replacing her income pretty quickly. Freelancer A has built a DIY course on business writing and has decided to price it conservatively at $297. She decides to build a list via offering to speak at a number of events and developing relationships with others who’s audience contains her ideal clients. Within a few months she’s grown her list to 500 people and his ready to offer her course.  After a week-long campaign she ends up with 10 sales for a total of $2,970.

Freelancer B: Freelancer B is also new to her business and also needs to generate income as soon as possible. Freelancer B chose to use the cold pitch method to prospective clients and sends out about 50 emails offering to do some writing for them. After two weeks, freelancer B gains 3 new writing gigs at $1,000 a piece for a total of $3,000.

Looks the same? At the end of the day, it’s close. They both earned $3,000 from their writing expertise.

The difference is that Freelancer A did the work up front to build the list and the course. And Freelancer B did relatively little work up front other than research prospects and now has to do the delivery.

They are both earning from their craft and both need to continue to find clients.

Now the question is: which approach is the BEST approach for your business?

It depends mostly on how you want to spend your time. Let’s go through the pros and cons of each.

Fewer High-Ticket Clients Model

For a newcomer to the online business world you need to start generating revenue as soon as possible. Building relationships and doing sales calls has a higher chance of bringing in revenue quickly. You don’t have to build a big brand, fancy funnel and close a lot of deals to bring in income.

While you work with just a few clients you will have time to hone in on your skills, get experience and establish confidence and a reputation. This way will help you secure clients quickly in a limited amount of time.

However, when you sell high ticket services or products you spend more time nurturing your clients and much more time nurturing each prospect, leaving you little time to build up that list if you ever were to want to sell a course or a membership.

You’ll be working “in” the business instead of on it, which can suit a lot of personalities.

Plus, it it may take longer to secure the right client who can afford the higher payout.

Many Low-Ticket Clients Model

This model requires volume. A business owners must be excited about growing with numbers as the product that’s sold is normally sold just once to a prospect and at a lower price-point than done-with-you work … unless it’s a membership which can deliver up recurring revenue, month after month.

One of the upsides to following this business model is that you are never fully dependent on a single client or even a few. If you lose a single client or even two, but you have a source of leads and a proven funnel, your income does not suffer a major setback.

Splitting up your revenue generating sources has its upside. The downside is that in order to grow, you need volume. You will constantly be looking for new leads.

This means building an audience, optimizing funnels that produce sales and being visible. It’s all about working “on” the business versus “in” the business. You must enjoy marketing and generating new leads if you are going to sustain your current revenue. Sometimes it feels like you’re always hustling, especially if it’s not leading to results.

And you still need to produce a high quality program that enables your students to get the outcomes you promise. Having wildly satisfied clients will help you get the testimonials that will encourage future sales by people who won’t know you as well.

Can you offer both low-ticket & high-end products?

A business owner can choose either model in almost any type of industry. It’s possible to sell many smaller priced products to multiple consumers online or while packages of product lines or higher volume/priced products can be sold to just a few buyers.

A lot of it has to do with what you are selling and what type of customers relationship you are interested in having.

Do you love spending time with your clients ensuring you get them great results? Or do you like selling to as many people as possible, maybe even facilitating their own relationships with each other?

What you sell to them will influence how involved you’d like to be in delivery the product or service.

In some cases, it’s possible to do both.

Structuring your prices can feel overwhelming. This is why I dedicated a whole podcast episode to discussing my #1 Pricing Rule, and 3 Common Pricing Mistakes. Have a listen below.

Lower-priced offers to supplement your suite of services

Adding an offer that sells easily to customers who are not ready for your full service can be a great supplement to a higher paying client model. The key is creating a fluid system to bring in those leads and convert them to the new offer. Because the offer will be less expensive and hands on, you’ll want that system to sell with less effort on your part.

The point of this approach is to secure the client, not to focus on the lower price point. The lower price point should naturally attract more prospective clients.

Attracting high-ticket clients to get off the client attraction treadmill

Alternatively, it can get exhausting working with countless clients just to make ends meet. After working the many low paying clients business models for a while it’s normal to want to switch to a business model that will generate as much, if not more, revenue. And one that will allow more time and flexibility in your schedule.

To do this, think through clients you’ve worked well with and established a trust. More than likely, they are not willing to lose your support so approaching them all with a new offer and a new price is the first step.

It’s likely some of your clients may not be able to afford your increase. But if you already have 10 clients, keeping even 2 or 3 of them at rates that may be double or even triple what you previously charged, is more lucrative.

The secret to winning them over is to explain the increase in value they’ll get via your new package.

This would also free you up to pitch new prospective clients who are comfortable paying more money for high-quality work. Be patient, this transition may happen in weeks or months, but once it does you’ll wonder why you ever did anything else before.

What kind of business do you want to run?

Truthfully, both of these paths can lead to burnout. But an efficient, predictable program like a membership can turn into a low-effort high-reward offer if you stay committed to getting it to that point.

Whatever type of business model you choose to follow make sure it works best for your business and you.

Knowing all your options and how to execute them is over half the battle. Now that you have the knowledge, it is as simple as putting in the effort and waiting for the payoff.

Want to find out more how to grow a wildly successful, recurring revenue membership?

>> Hop into this free training and I’ll share my top three secrets with you!