In this episode of the Service Bureau Accelerator Podcast, we dive into the world of software sales and explore the pros and cons of selling low tickets versus high tickets. As service bureau owners, we understand the importance of finding the right pricing strategy for your software. 

Join us as we discuss the benefits and challenges of each approach and provide valuable insights to help you make informed decisions for your business. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you maximize your software sales. 

Tune in now and take your service bureau to new heights!

And that is a huge part of what we talk about in our program, of just really focusing on one thing, because you're never gonna be able to sell something high if you've got five different package options that you're bouncing between and you're doing all this kind of marketing and you're distracted and all these other avenues.

The way that we can do it really well and effectively is because it's the only thing that we sell, and we've done it for a long time, and we've really worked and reworked and tweaked our webinars, tweaked our presentations, listened to our calls.

Welcome to the Service Bureau Accelerator Podcast, where we help tax professionals start and scale a successful service bureau.

Ross: No relation.

Tia: No relation.

Baldeep: And today, the topic of discussion is Selling Your Software Low Ticket Versus High Ticket. We may have discussed concepts like these in other episodes, but I think we're just gonna dive a bit deeper onto these topics.

But before we do that, remember to subscribe, like, share, comment, all of the above on YouTube and whatever you do on the other podcast platforms.

But let's go ahead and yeah, whatever Tia is doing, if you're watching, you see her moving her fingers up and down, so whatever that is. But let's go ahead and dive in.

Ross, you wanna kick it off with the topic of the conversation then?

Ross: Yeah, for sure. This is a interesting one, so first of all, maybe I'll just start the overarching ideas like, look, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter whether you sell high ticket or low ticket.

There's all pros and cons, and maybe for even more simplicity. What do we mean low ticket versus high ticket? Because that's more of like a kind of a, I guess a sales term. I think that maybe not everyone is familiar with.

Because, you know, while everyone thinks, oh, it's easier to sell something cheaper. Possibly, but now you're in the race to the bottom and there's a lot of things that you're gonna be limited on versus selling something high ticket where you're getting more money upfront, it allows you to do more things in your business.

So, there's a whole lot of stuff that kind of goes on between deciding what you want to do, and ultimately, like I said at the beginning, it really doesn't matter. There's no right or wrong way to go out and sell your software. It's just how is your business structured? What are you able to do?

So, we give a little bit more of an understanding of like, why would I want to do low ticket versus high ticket, or the other way around. So, starting with high ticket because with Service Bureau Accelerator, as an example, right, we are more of a high ticket program, right? It is a bit of an investment to join our program.

But a couple reason why we do that, first of all, we like to go out and generate revenue in our business. A lot of people out there when they're a service bureau or they're selling software you know, they have a hard time acquiring clients at a profit. Meaning like, say it costs you 500 to a $1,000 to fulfill on a client and you're only charging 500, you're either breaking even or you're might even be losing money for every person that you sign up.

Meaning all of the marketing expenses, all of our sales commissions, all of our onboarding team, the support, all of that work that goes into onboarding and supporting that customer is basically covered by the amount of money they give us to join our program. Right?

So, that's a huge benefit of high ticket is that it allows you to have generating revenue so you can reinvest that in your business. You can keep running ads, you can keep marketing and out marketing your competition by having a higher ticket program.

Now, the cons of it is, how do you sell a high-ticket program, right? How do you actually get in front of people? How do you convince people to make that investment for them to, fork out a couple thousand dollars? Whatever it is, how do you actually go about and get really good at doing that?

The way that we can do it really well and effectively is because it's the only thing that we sell, and we've done it for a long time, and we've really worked and reworked and tweaked our webinars, tweaked our presentations, listened to our calls.

We've really taken a really deep dive into our entire business and sales process, to really get fricking amazing at, I mean, well, I'll say amazing, we'll pat ourselves on the back there. But just to get really good at selling a high ticket product and being able to have good conversion metrics where we can keep the doors, we can keep the lights on and we can keep everyone paid and we can still generate a bit of a profit as new customers are coming in.

So those are some initial kind of pros and cons of high tickets. Anything you guys want to add into that?

Baldeep: Thank you. The challenge that I see people new to selling high-ticket is, the uncertainty or being uncomfortable doing it. I think a lot of the times

Ross: Asking for the money.

Baldeep: Asking for the money, I think is the biggest thing people struggle with. They're like, okay, like they just keep putting it off 'cause they're scared to say, Hey, so do you wanna put that on a Visa, MasterCard or American Express? You know, I take Cash app, Zelle, Venmo, whatever. A lot of times it's asking.

Tia: Gimme the black card baby.

And one of the things we're kind of trying to simplify for people is helping them really just pick one offer and stick to it. Like Ross kind of mentioned before, you know, you speak to, somebody will hop on a call with somebody and you'll have your package, but now this person's like, oh, but I want this and this. And now you're trying to think, okay, so how do I make a package to sell them versus addressing the objections on why it doesn't really matter, right?

Let's focus on what we have here and moving forward with the sale. So, I think a lot of people struggle with that in the beginning when they're trying to wrap their head around sales. But if you can get past that short hump of getting consistent prospects on the phone, speaking to people and getting that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 deals, then it just starts becoming easier 'cause now it's like, oh, okay, especially if it's the same thing 'cause now your fulfillment becomes easier too. But that's probably one of the biggest struggling points that I see with people when they're starting out.

All right, let me come back, lemme circle back to that 'cause I had another point on that and it just literally just disappeared outta my brain 'cause I was like, oh yeah, we gotta cover the white glove.

Lemme start with white club, we'll see if it comes back up again. As far as the whole white glove experience that is definitely something that is recommended, like look at the end of the day as a service bureau.

What's the first word?

Tia: Service.

Ross: Service, right? And I think a lot of people forget about that, they're like, oh, I'm just selling software. It's like, yeah, but you gotta service your customers, like, oh, so and so left me.

Well, no shit, you didn't talk to them for 10 months expecting that they're just going to jump back into your software. When you never even engaged them, you never even talked to them over the off season and now they went somewhere else because you just disappeared basically.

So, service is a big part and it goes a long way and we've heard, oh man, I don't even know the amount of, like, the nightmare stories that we've heard of people just not being provided service, right?

So, that stuff comes over, comes with time, like the whole white glove experience where you can onboard someone and you can set them up and go through that process and really, it comes from repetition, right?

It comes from doing the process multiple times over to really understand. Like, okay, how are people moving through? Where is there some confusion? Where are people getting stuck? What can we do? Where can we add in maybe another call step or something to reach out to them and get them moving forward? Or, you know, just to give them that better experience when they're onboarding.

I always had someone that could, that I could talk to, people called me multiple times, right? If I had questions, people would just call me and get me logged into all my accounts. Like it was a total, it's a night and day experience that people got onboarding from our program two years ago to today.

And so, that is another thing that I think a lot of people get held up on is that they try to have everything perfect and it's like nothing's ever gonna be perfect in your business, especially even with a high ticket offer that you're coming up with or you're creating, you're going to be improving and adjusting on it over time.

It's just really a matter of putting the offers out there, having conversations and really learning from your customers. Like what are they telling you? What do people want? And you can shape your offer around that and white glove, you know, like onboarding and support, definitely helps with that, where people know that they always have someone to reach out to.

We're just gonna call you directly and we'll get it squared away and so that really goes a long way where people are like, I don't get this kind of support anywhere else, so why would I bother going anywhere else? Which really helps retaining your software customers in your service bureau.

Tia: And then part of being able to have that white glove experience is to be able to sell a high ticket offer where you can get the systems and get the stuff in place to be able to support that service.

Ross: Yeah, exactly. It's gonna be really hard to offer that amount, that level of support when you're charging people like a hundred bucks for the software, right? Guess what they're getting? They're getting email support because those a hundred dollars sales ain't paying any support team members, right?

So, unless you're doing a shit ton, like it's gonna be really hard to do that. Which kind of segues into the, you know, the bene the pros and cons

Tia: Yeah. It does, it will hurt a little more though, in the beginning.

Baldeep: Yeah. In the beginning.

Tia: Through the struggle. Yeah.

Ross: Yeah. So, I remembered the high ticket.

Baldeep: Oh, we already moved on though. We already moved on.

Ross: Before we go there, is rushing the sale. Is getting on the phone with someone and spending five minutes talking to the person and just try to pitch them a $2,000 program. It's like, who the hell is going to invest $2,000 on you after five minutes?

Anyone who's looked at the Service Bureau Accelerator or gone through that process, they'll understand what we mean. It's like, look, there's things that you have to go through because we wanna get you to a certain area of the sales process before we talk to you, and then when we talk to you if need be, we might do a couple calls with you.

And that just helps being able to actually really inform the individual, make sure they know what they understand, what's included with the program and why it's worth the amount that you're charging, right?

That's the biggest thing, you have to demonstrate to them why it's actually worth that to them in their business and in their personal life, whatever it is to really get them to overcome any of those objections that they have. So, they actually make that investment, five minutes on the phone with a random stranger and they're like, yeah, pay me 2, $3,000, they're like, I don't even know who the hell you are. So, I'll think about it, click alright, good luck.

So you really gotta have some multiple steps there.

Baldeep: Yeah, they don't even know what they're buying.

Ross: Build that rapport. Yeah. And they don't even know what they're buying. It's like, ah it's three grand. They're like, well,

Baldeep: what's three

Tia: And if you keep listening in, we'll actually have another episode that goes into detail what those steps and systems look like for your sales pipeline.

Baldeep: Oh,

Tia: Still stay tuned.

Ross: Ooh, tuned.

Tia: Alright, let's get to the bottom of the barrel. The low ticket.

Ross: Hey, now yeah. Well, Tia, why don't I, flip the script and let me ask you about what are your thoughts on the pros and cons of low ticket?

Tia: So before meeting you guys, I was actually one for the deal and I think the most important part that I kind of understood, or the belief I thought at that time was that, if you have something that is affordable, then you attract more people. Because why not? Who doesn't want something for a hundred dollars or who doesn't want to save?

So, if we take away the software and look at everything else you really think about how am I solving a problem? I think with the low ticket item, if you want to sell to someone who doesn't have a problem and literally their problem is just the price they're being charged for software, then it's a good fit.

Ross: I love that. That was an awesome response about people's problems. Right. And we'll get into that in the next episode as well.

Baldeep: I'll also.

Ross: But that is huge though, right? Understanding what someone's problem is in a sales and this actually goes for low ticket and high ticket, right?

Understanding someone's problem, but not everyone is just looking for cheap software and sometimes with cheap software that could be the con with it. With low ticket, you might be attracting the wrong crowd of people where they're gonna be a massive support headache. They don't know what they're doing, they don't do any volume, and now you gotta support this person and you're really not making anything on the back end.

Baldeep: Another way you could look at it too, Tia say you have a hundred low ticket, people that you signed up, right? And you're like, well, I didn't really get a chance to speak to them about what's the real problem. Now, out of those a hundred low ticket people say 20 of them start producing, then you have the conversation with those 20 and you find their problem.

Ross: And have problems

Baldeep: Problems that you can help solve. Right? I think one of the things that we've seen from, and a lot of people wanted to do like tax academies and like that was a big thing and we showed 'em how to sell it high ticket, people made a shit ton of money, great.

The con of that was a lot of the people they sold did no production volume. So it's like cool that you made the money, but the real benefit of this business is the backend residual, right? And that's where we wanna focus on that volume. So how do we take that concept? You could still charge money, still create high ticket, but how do we widen that pool to people that'll actually increase your bottom line?

Ross: Yeah. And that's what I was gonna jump into next is like the pros of low ticket is like, look at the end of the day, and that's exactly what you're just talking about Baldeep, because like your objective as a service bureau is to grow by increasing your bank product volume. That's it, cut and dry.

Doesn't matter whether you're selling high ticket, low ticket, mid ticket, everything in between. Your objective is to grow by increasing your bank product volume, that's where the real money is made in the service bureau industry. And so the benefit of a low ticket is that, you're not gonna have price objections, you're gonna have an offer that you can sell to a mass amount of people, and the objective, again, at the end of the day, is to just absorb volume, right?

You want to grow by increasing your volume. So, if you can go and sell a hundred people at a hundred bucks a pop, yeah, there may not be a lot of money on the front end, but if most of those people are using the software, even if they're only doing 10, 20 returns each on average, that's gonna be some pretty big numbers.

So, it is a great way to get in front of a lot of people and really sign up a ton of people, especially if you're new at sales or, you know, you're new in the service bureau industry. Just getting people set up on your software, and going through that process, learning the process of enrolling someone in the banks, setting up their office, creating their prepare, all that kind of stuff, just really helps you learn the back end of the business so that then you can maybe start offering more support.

Then you start seeing all these people where their problems are, where their challenges are, and then that can help you shape a higher ticket program down the road if you want to do that. But low ticket is like we love both low ticket and high ticket.

Like I said at the beginning, there's no wrong way to do it. It's just there's different things you have to factor.

But I do have a question for you all. Say you had someone that came to you that initially reached out to you because they saw your high ticket offer, and then after going through your sales pitch, realized that they don't need half of the things that you offer, but they do need some of them. Do you offer them a low ticket item? Or do you even have.

Baldeep: Like

Ross: Either you buy it or it's not a good.

Baldeep: That's gonna happen all the time, and that's where people get fucked up in their head thinking they need to change packages to change. No, all right, cool. You don't need that part, all right, great, it's not relevant to you. Right?

But the way that the packages that we show people how to put together our design, the stack is supposed to be so valuable that you're not piecing out these and these things to make custom a la carte services, it's one deliverable.

Tia: Standing on business, y'all,

Ross: Yeah.

Tia: You take all of it or none of it?

Baldeep: That's like, especially how we sell, like with the service accelerator, it's someone's like, oh, well what if I don't need the training? Well then you don't really need to our program. Right? Like it's fine. It's there, right? The way it's there, if you're gonna go through it, if you don't, what we've seen is people that go through it and actually do the things end up having more success than people that don't. Right?

It's up to you though. We don't force in.

And I've always said, you may not need it right now, or it may not be a need that you think you may use, but eventually it does come in handy, and I like Like, no, you're buying what you're buying, and if you don't use it, that's your prerogative.

Ross: Yeah. Because it gets into the habit of like, what you've said of people trying to a la carte stuff. What happens is now you customize everything, that means that now you have to build like a separate, maybe a different training section with all those lessons removed, which you didn't have before.

So that person is something different, but then you also have to make a note somewhere in a CRM or on a sheet or somewhere that, oh, this person only has access to this stuff and all that stuff. When you start to get into that, into the habit of doing that and making everything, customized a la carte for each individual person tracking that stuff, it becomes a nightmare. And at scale, it just, it does not work. That's why it's like, you just don't even do that from the beginning.

Sometimes a sale is a sale, right? You want that money, I get it, I understand it, I did that, you know, when I started my business, I get it. But the sooner you get away from that, the better because you're gonna realize really quickly that all those custom a la carte, oh, this person wanted this, so I just, I sold them what they want and blah, blah, blah.

It doesn't allow your business to scale and move fast, and that's gonna slow you down

Baldeep: Everyone's gonna want something.

Ross: So, You realize that everyone's gonna want something

Tia: It's so much pressure.

Instead of removing stuff, Hey, you know what? Just because I like you, and you're my first sale, but I'm not gonna tell you, I could do all that. Right?

Even if you're my third sale, you don't change.

Ross: You can always negotiate.

So like, it just doesn't matter, right? The package is still the package, you may negotiate on price to get cash in the door, sure. Right?

But if it's not costing you anything extra to deliver it, then why remove it?

Ross: Yeah, for sure. No that's, a good point, right? You can always make deals with people, right? You can

Baldeep: We don't really, we don't make deals with people though. For us, I,

Ross: No, hell no.

Baldeep: No.

Ross: We got two options, you can pay it outright or you can split it up and that's it. That's all you can have.

Baldeep: But I do this, but I do that. Yeah, you know, everybody that tells us that really doesn't do this or that.

Ross: Yeah. Talk is cheap, we'll see how you do after your first year and then we can talk.

Tia: Right.

Ross: Yeah.

Tia: So, why does it not matter at the end of the day?

Ross: Because at the end of the day, it's like, whatever works for you, really, like, it doesn't really matter if you're selling high ticket or low ticket. Everyone's gonna be a little bit different, right? We sell high ticket, but we sold low ticket in the past as well because we had the ability to do it.

However, if you're new, again, I would go back to what we said earlier is like, look, your core objective is to acquire bank product volume. And so, however you can go and do that? Whether it is low ticket or high ticket, that's the main objective at the end of the day. That's why it doesn't really matter what you price your software.

Some people are really good at sales, right? They've had sales experience, they've done it before, we've had a lot of people come into our program where they've done a lot of sales before and they just take our strategies and run with it, and they're just selling people, you know, every single day they're selling a new person.

Some people struggle at that and it's like, well, hey maybe the low ticket is gonna be a little bit better for you. Just play to your strengths and, you know, do whatever works for you, for your business.

Baldeep: Yeah.

Tia: What are the top three questions you need to ask yourself and determine whether you should do high ticket or low ticket?

Baldeep: Are you comfortable asking for money? Are you comfortable talking to people? I think a lot of it's gonna come if you wanna go the high ticket route, a lot of it's gonna come down to your confidence, right? That's probably the main, thing

Baldeep: Confidence in sales, right? If you don't like talking to people, you struggle like asking for money or this or that, it's gonna be a bit more of a uphill battle in the beginning, right?

I mean, it's not impossible, but you have to practice and work at it, right? Having one conversation every five months isn't enough practice, right? You need to get in front of people. I think that one of the things that, that people need to understand when they're starting out is, you're gonna fuck up your first bunch of calls, so you need to try and get those calls outta the way as soon as possible, right?

Like, that's what a lot people overlook, they have one bad call, which is their first call, and that's scared and don't wanna do it again. Right? So how are you gonna get better?

Like, we listen, we do our call reviews all the time, right? All the time we're reviewing our stuff, all the time we're changing our stuff, all the time we're upgrading, creating new trainings for our sales reps, all of that stuff, right?

It's not because we don't do a good job at it already. It's because, well, how do we make it better? Right? But you have to start somewhere.

Tia: That.

Baldeep: The.

Tia: That's really good.

Ross: Yeah, I think, it mostly boils down to that. It's like, well, how confident am I in my ability to sell?

Baldeep: I think another thing.

Tia: Know some people.

Baldeep: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead Tia.

Tia: I was gonna say I do know some, other tax professionals who grinds do get what is it? Gear my grinds, get grinded when, grinding gears, whatever you say. When non-tax professionals get into our industry and do what we want to do. Because they know sales, just

Baldeep: What do you mean?

Tia: Speaking, heard that like, oh, well, yeah, I used to sell real estate leads, but the service bureau sounds like something great.

Baldeep: Tell me how you really feel Tia.

Tia: Are boring. So, how do we beef up our confidence and beef up our extrovertedness to even to begin to do sales naturally?

Ross: Have conversations, start doing sales. There's only so much practice you could do, and this is coming from myself personally. I never liked sales, you know, I was always really intimidated, I was nervous like it was there, I really struggled at sales early on.

But I went through a bunch of courses, I read books, and I was always looking for like the thing that's gonna, like finally click, oh, now I'm gonna know how to sell people. It doesn't work like that, you just have to start getting on the phone. All those trainings and like everything, those are just little tools that you need to be able to learn so that when it comes, you can possibly remember to say that thing.

Learn about them, and then you're gonna be able to find little things. They're called, little hooks that you can, like little levers that you can pull on in the conversation, because they're gonna tell you what they wanna buy, they're gonna tell you what they're looking for, they're gonna tell you your problems. It's your job to listen when you're doing sales, listen to it.

You'll get better over time. Listen to your calls. 'cause then you're gonna be like, you're gonna stumble somewhere and then you listen to your call. You're like, oh shit, I should have said this, cool. Now, you know for

Baldeep: And just because they tell you something doesn't mean you need to add it immediately. Okay. Hey, that's interesting. Oh, I think I may have heard people mention that's something we're looking at possibly integrating into our program in the future.

Like you don't need to fucking go and say, okay, I'll go do this, like.

Ross: I'll go do this too.

Baldeep: So, I remember somebody I don't remember who it was, but I remember this coming up. It's like, oh, this person wants to learn how to do business taxes and this, I'm like. So, do you know how to do it now?

Like, hey, this is why it's not a good benefit. This is why it's something we won't consider or why we won't add. But guess what? We will be looking for resources to help you increase your knowledge, right?

Doesn't mean you need to go do it or figure it out, go find somebody that makes money doing that and work out a deal with them, right?

Tia: I would recommend, I don't think we touched on it, even if you're selling low ticket, to still add something that makes yourself sell apart. I mean, stand apart 'cause I do feel like the low ticket pool is a little bit, yeah, saturated.

Baldeep: Everyone feels everything's

Ross: That's a good point. So, yeah. Couple things.

Baldeep: Everybody wrong this year on something else. Don't worry.

Baldeep: Yeah, like even when we trained on the low ticket, we're like, Hey, you can include the software. Here's all the features and benefits that the software will have that anybody that has that software will have.

Well, here's our value asset package that you can go leverage, right? So now, not everybody that's off the street has all these extra things and, oh, here's this other, was the, what do we have at the come of the prepare unbranded prepared development strategy that people were able to buy, right?

Oh, well, here's a whole big ass fucking long training that shows ERO's how to go add hundreds of preparers to their offices and build a virtual team. You think the average person's gonna go have that in their package? No. So, like there's other things you can put into that you don't even have to make. Right? That's already done.

Ross: Yeah. And that's a really good point to you that you brought up. And I just wanna like double down on that again. Like everything that Baldeep said as well, but Yeah.

Some people are in all the tax groups and everyone sees everyone spamming the same shit, the same flyer on the same bullshit software, with the same bullshit lines, and the same fricking offer that every single other person has.

So, if you do want to sell low ticket, how do you separate yourself from everyone else out there? Right? What can you do to separate yourself to be unique in the marketplace so that people go, oh, well I haven't seen that before.

It's all the same bullshit that everyone else has, but there's a bunch of other stuff that no one else has.

Tia: Yeah, you can be a goldfish, but be a different goldfish.

Ross: Exactly. Have a little sparkle.

Baldeep: Speaking of, wasn't there

Tia: Everyone doesn't need to be a shark.

Baldeep: It purple goldfish? Or is that Purple cow?

Ross: I'm not sure The marketing?

Tia: We gotta drop

Ross: Cow maybe

Ross: Seth Godin's marketing. I mean, marketing and sales. They're kind of, they're fairly hand to hand. Cool. Well, anything else you guys want to add to this? This episode

Baldeep: Now I'm, it's purple cow. Yeah.

Ross: The purple cow. That's it, marketing strategies.

Tia: Yes. How to be a purple cow or a sparkly goldfish

Ross: There you go.

Baldeep: That's a wrap for episode, for this episode.

Ross: Yeah. If you guys enjoyed some of the, topics that we discussed or you wanna learn more about low ticket or high ticket, take a look in the link description wherever you're watching this on Spotify YouTube, wherever else you may be watching these or any of our clips on Instagram, whatever, click the link in the description.

It'll take you over to our page where you can register for one of our webinars. Take a look, learn a little bit more about our program. If you have questions, you'll be able to book a call with one of our team members.

While we do talk a lot about sales, we're not hardcore sales people. The way that we like to sell is make sure you understand what you're looking at. Is this a good fit for you?

Baldeep: All right. Awesome. Till next time.

Ross: All right, guys. Take care.