Inside my recently resurrected Daily Email House community, I ran a poll asking folks if they have ever made an offer for $1k+.
I got a response to that from Jordan Parker, who owns Parker Labs, which from what I understand is a kind of boutique agency that provides operations support for online creators. Jordan wrote:
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I have the dumbest story on this from 2 years ago:
Decided I want to practice downsells… but in sales calls.
And I SUCK at sales calls.
(I’m too eager to solve problems and forget to, you know, sell)
So, I intentionally threw a few extra things in & offered my typical $10k offer for $30k – planning to have this cool moment where I scratch the extra features off on one side as I scratch off the price & write a lower price on the other.
Perfect plan. Perfect visual anchor for the downsell.
Except…
The person just said “yes” instantly, and I didn’t even get to try my plan.
(he actually said it’s too cheap)
Sure, $30k isn’t that much for most businesses (and my IT agency’s usual deals had at least 1 more zero), but for some reason when I was the person closing it felt like a LOT. I was pretty surprised after.
(and just mildly annoyed that I didn’t get to test my system 😅)
But if you want to up your prices, give it a shot – list a bunch of stuff and get ready to cross out some of it. Many people will want everything. Getting everything feels nice.
And you always have an out and your old price as a “backup”
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Upsells — addons you make to your core offer — are often seen as allowing your customers to spoil themselves, or maybe a play to their inertia.
The typical example is buying a new car, when a customer ends up agreeing to the the “nitrogen-filled tires” or “key replacement insurance,” simply because they are not thinking right at the moment.
But that exploitative way is not the only way to do upsells.
There’s a good chance people need your upsells to actually get value out of your core offer.
Your prospects can sense this on their own. Or maybe, they are simply eager to solve their problem completely, and so they put themselves into your hands, since they have decided to trust you.
My point being:
Rather than asking “What’s the amount I’m most likely to get my customer to pay,” ask yourself, “What’s the amount that’s most likely to fix their problem fully?”
If you ask yourself that, and if you bundle all of the resulting upsells and downsells and crosssells into a single sale, you can 3x your price, like Jordan did above, and still have your prospect say it seems too cheap.
In other news:
When people ask to join Daily Email House, I ask them what their #1 goal is right now.
A buncha people have replied something along the lines of writing emails consistently, even daily:
#1. “Learn to write engaging and persuasive daily emails”
#2. “Get back to writing consistently”
#3.”Mail daily”
#4. “Consistency”
If writing emails better and consistently is your goal, then I have my simple Daily Email Habit to offer you.
Every day, you get a prompt to write a daily email, which is based on my own experience writing thousands of sales emails, both for clients and for myself.
Every day, you also get 2-3 “hints,” which are really a steady drip of how-to info on influential and persuasive writing.
When you combine this with any email software (Beehiiv works fine) and the ongoing support inside Daily Email House (free), you have most of what you need to succeed.
One thing that’s still needed is your own commitment. Only you can provide that.
If you have it, and you want my help in getting consistent with writing daily emails: