Ep 89: Why You Shouldn't Sell Your Highest-Ticket Offer First with Sandra van der Lee
Sandra van der Lee asked me a question embarrassingly early in this conversation: What happens after someone finishes Sold Out Services?
My answer was basically, "Nothing."
Which is a little ridiculous when I say it out loud, because I have clients who finish a year of work with me, know how I think, know how I consult, have already paid me thousands of dollars, and still want access to my brain afterward. A few of them literally came to me and asked if they could keep paying me to talk.
For a long time, I had some weirdness around that. I wanted to know what I was making for them. Where was the asset? What was the scope? What was I delivering?
Apparently, the answer was consulting. Who knew.
Sandra came into this conversation with a much bigger point, though. Selling your highest-ticket offer to a cold audience can be a very hard way to build a business. You are asking someone who barely knows you to make one of the biggest buying decisions available inside your business before either of you has much information about what working together is actually like.
Your best next offer may belong after the signature offer
This is where service providers have an advantage that I don't think we talk about enough.
You already have clients.
You already know what they needed when they hired you, what changed while you worked together, where they got results, and what problem became visible once the original problem was handled. If you pay attention, your clients are giving you clues about what belongs next.
Some Sold Out Services clients have already done this for me. They finished the work and came back asking for monthly or quarterly consulting because they still wanted my opinion. I hadn't built some elaborate new offer. They were asking for continued access because the relationship and trust already existed.
That changes how I think about a high-ticket backend offer.
I don't need to invent something impressive enough to justify a bigger number. I need to look at the client who has already gotten the first result and ask what they're ready to do now.
For my clients, that conversation quickly moved toward launching and selling the service we've already spent time refining. Maybe the next problem is no longer productizing the service, increasing capacity, or figuring out how to talk about the work. Maybe they've done that. Now they need support taking the thing into the market and selling the hell out of it.
High-ticket requires a different level of client
There was another piece of this conversation that matters just as much: Everybody who finishes your first offer does not automatically belong in the next one.
I talk a lot about Level 10 clients. Your clients exist across a spectrum, and the people at the highest end have different problems from the people who are newer to the work.
Those higher-level buyers can be intimidating to talk to because sometimes they feel more like peers. I've had people enroll in SOS and genuinely wondered, "You want my opinion on this?"
Then they implement a few refinements and get phenomenal results.
Sandra pointed out the messaging problem that happens when someone wants high-ticket buyers while continuing to talk about beginner problems. The experienced buyer hears that and assumes the offer was built for someone five years behind them.
Your next offer has to account for who is ready for the next result.
Some people may need another six months finishing the work they already started. Someone else may be ready for a higher-touch consulting relationship. Another person might be ready to spend a weekend planning and building an entire launch campaign with you.
Those are different buyers, even when all three started in the same signature offer.
The high-ticket idea got expensive very quickly
This is where Sandra and I started designing my imaginary offer in real time, which is probably my favorite part of the whole episode.
I knew I wanted an in-person component. Sandra started talking about a one-on-one launch planning weekend where the strategy and assets get built together, the client stays somewhere great, there's dinner, and the whole thing feels like a premium experience.
Then I immediately added a photographer because apparently I cannot leave well enough alone.
Suddenly we're talking about a $15K, $20K, maybe even $30K offer, depending on what is included and what happens after the in-person portion.
That made me start doing the LTV math.
If someone initially spends $6K with me, then continues into another $9K engagement, they've spent $15K. A very small number of those clients moving into a much higher-priced offer changes what one client relationship can be worth over several years.
And no, I do not need 25 people buying it.
If the offer requires a ton of access and proximity, I shouldn't want 25 people in it. A few extremely well-qualified clients can make the offer financially meaningful while keeping the delivery something I actually want to do.
There is probably money sitting inside your current client list
This conversation also landed directly in one of my favorite topics: hidden revenue.
I track what clients spend with me, but I also care deeply about who they refer. A client who never buys the highest-priced thing in your business could send you five people who do. That matters when you're looking at the value of a client relationship.
And before you decide you need another content platform, another pile of leads, or 47 strangers discovering you this week, look at the people who are already there.
Can a past client hire you again?
Does a current client's scope need to change because the work has changed?
Is there something you can continue maintaining after the initial project ends?
Have your prices stayed frozen while your expertise and responsibilities grew?
These questions are far less sexy than chasing visibility. They can also reveal money you were sitting five feet away from while complaining that you needed more leads.
I had my own version of this recently when I pulled together a lead tracker and realized I had 444 leads from the previous 12 months. Eighty-nine were from the previous 30 days. I had been thinking about lead generation while hundreds of people were already sitting there waiting for an actual invitation.
That will mess with your head in the best possible way.
Service providers are allowed to steal selling ideas
The other conversation Sandra and I kept coming back to was how much service providers can borrow from other business models and industries.
Sandra told me about selling copywriting years ago through a free training. Someone attended and then asked to hire her for eight sales pages. She realized you can run an actual campaign around a service rather than tossing up a sales page and waiting for somebody to magically inquire.
I do this constantly.
I'm working with a restaurant marketing agency and we're testing a webinar for restaurant decision-makers. I use live events to sell my own services. I recently took hundreds of existing leads and built an event around the exact questions I knew they were already asking.
The trick is borrowing the useful part of a tactic while changing the delivery to fit your business.
For State of the Damn Service, I didn't want to build a giant slide deck. So I decided to do the whole thing more like a live podcast episode on Zoom, using the data I already had from working with service providers and talking through what I was seeing in real time.
You can sell a service with a webinar. You can run a launch. You can invite people into a private call. You can create a premium next step for the small percentage of clients who are ready for it.
And you are allowed to change your mind after you test the damn thing.
Sandra and I spent almost an hour pulling apart high-ticket backend offers, LTV, hidden revenue, client fit, launches, and the selling ideas service providers can steal from other industries. Listen to the full episode if you're looking at your current offer and wondering what the hell should come after it.
Chapters
00:01 - A guest interview where Sandra gets to interview me
01:26 - Why selling high-ticket to a cold audience is a hard sell
05:43 - What should happen after Sold Out Services?
12:39 - Level 10 clients and who belongs in the next offer
18:31 - Using lower-risk offers to pre-qualify high-ticket clients
22:44 - What a premium backend offer could look like
26:24 - Doing the LTV math on a $15K to $30K offer
32:31 - Referrals, client LTV, and hidden revenue
35:15 - Stealing selling strategies from other industries
39:33 - The 444 leads I wasn't paying attention to
43:14 - Turning a service launch into a live event
46:06 - What changes when you don't need every client
49:34 - You are allowed to change your business decisions
50:27 - Where to find Sandra and her high-ticket offer examples
Resources and Links
Systems Over Stress: I mentioned Ashley's Airtable program while we were talking about what ongoing support can look like after a client completes the original program.
CliftonStrengths: Sandra mentioned using StrengthsFinder assessments when she's working with clients on offer design and figuring out what kind of business model fits how they actually want to work.
Kit: I mentioned Kit as the email platform I use with implementation clients while talking about borrowing online marketing strategies for more traditional service businesses.
About the Guest
Sandra van der Lee is a high-ticket offer strategist who works with service providers, coaches, consultants, and other online business owners on creating higher-priced offers for existing buyers. In our conversation, she digs into backend offer design, client qualification, pricing, premium experiences, and why she prefers high-ticket offers to come after a buyer already has experience with your work. Her official site also identifies her as an Orange County-based high-ticket offer strategist.
Website: Sandra van der Lee
Guest Offers, Events, and Resources
5 High-Ticket Backend Offer Examples: Sandra mentions this free resource at the end of the episode. It includes five examples showing a main offer, a possible backend offer, the deliverables, pricing, and why the offer makes sense.
Get Sandra's 5 High-Ticket Backend Offer Examples
Ready to Restructure and Productize Your Service?
Inside Sold Out Services, I help service providers examine who each offer serves, what happens after someone buys, and where qualified clients are being left without a clear next step.
You do not need to create an entirely new business every time you reach capacity.
There may be more revenue, impact, and long-term client value hiding inside the client relationships you have already built.
If you’d like to see a library of all published episodes in a gallery with easy-to-find links to all listening platforms be sure to check out the Sell The Damn Service Episode Library.
