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“The way to make more money is by selling more things to more people”. WRONG. If you’re a coach or consultant that believes increasing the volume of your sales or clients is the only way to earn more money and create a 7-figure business, you’ve fallen prey to The Myth of the Ascension Model.
You’ll be surprised to learn that structuring your coaching business to sell more in order to earn more will actually cost you MORE time and money. Not to mention unnecessary overwhelm and frustration.
So, if you want to flip the switch from a volume-based business to a multiple-7-figure business that doesn’t require a ton of sales this article is for you
What is the Ascension Model
For those who don’t know, the ascension model is a marketing strategy that teaches business owners, coaches, and consultants to create multiple different products at multiple different price points.
The theory is by offering different products from a low to high price point you can reach more people. And once you have them, so to speak, you can then ‘ascend’, or upsell, them to higher and higher-priced products.
I’m sure you’ve seen it. Scrolling through your newsfeed, you’ll likely see dozens of offers from countless coaches and consultants. From an e-book to a one-day workshop to a thousand-dollar course. All with the promise to solve your problems.
Many coaches and consultants make the costly mistake of building out an ascension model. They’ve been led to think they can make more money by selling more things to more people.
They build more offers, and more funnels, and try to market to more people all with the hopes that they can continue to upsell people to more expensive ways of working with them.
They build a “tripwire” like the internet marketers tell them. This is an ultra low-priced offer of around $7 designed to capture people’s information and introduce them to the value you provide. They then try to use these to push people into a course priced around $997. Before upselling them yet again to a high-end program priced into the five and six figures.
Problems with the Ascension Model
The Ascension Model Spreads Your Income Thin
As you can imagine, there are so many problems with this model. Perhaps the biggest one is that…only 10% of people who purchase the lowest level of your products will ever ascend to your ultra-high-ticket offer.
Let’s break these down into numbers.
Say you have…25 people buy your $97 course. That’s $2,425 in gross revenue. 5 people then buy your $10,000 coaching program, which brings in $50,000. And then 1 person buys your $25,000 mastermind program, earning you a whopping $25,000.
People who invest their money in low-ticket offers versus high-ticket offers have different needs and desired outcomes.
That’s only a little over $75,00 in total revenue. To provide you with some greater context, there are coaches and consultants that are able to charge a single customer $75,000 for an ultra-high-ticket offer, in fact, I’ve helped many of my clients package an sell $75K to $100K+ offers!.
Ascension Models are a Pain to Build & Manage
Another key problem with the ascension model is they are a pain to build and manage. While it may sound like a solid strategy, you have to imagine how much time and effort it would take to get all those different clients.
Marketing a $97 course requires an entirely different set of copy, ads, and sales techniques than marketing a $10,000 high-ticket offer. Every offer you make means more landing pages, more email sequences, and more points to potentially lose a customer.
Therefore, while it may seem easy to build these things, unless you’re a digital marketing expert, the reality is very different.
Ultimately, the more moving parts there are in a business model, the more complex and harder it is to manage and the more likely it is to break. Not to mention the less profitable it is as well.
Monetizing Low-Ticket Offers Requires Tons of Traffic
A third key problem with the ascension model is what is required to turn it into a 7-figure business. Unless you already have an established and loyal following, or have a big budget to pay for ads, the likelihood of succeeding is low.
Many coaches and consultants make the common mistake of starting their journey to build a 7-figure business by building a course. They invest thousands of dollars and tons of hours building it out, but struggle to ever monetize.
Why? Because it’s hard to sell something from just a landing page.
Selling requires “the perfect alignment” of understanding your ideal client, creating compelling copy, pricing, and more. However, no matter how perfect your product is, enough people have to hear about it.
Without traffic and without the understanding of how to use paid traffic to get sales, building your business around the ascension model can be incredibly cumbersome.
People who Buy a $97 course in Your Model Won’t Buy a $50K package
People who invest their money in low-ticket offers versus high-ticket offers have different needs and desired outcomes. This is another fact that the ascension model fails to recognize.
Would you rather spend your time, energy, and dollars acquiring customers who are looking for a quick fix?
As a result, many coaches and consultants drawn to the idea of ascending their client up to an ultra-high-ticket offering, are more often than not pitching a product to someone without the motivation or means to buy it.
If you really think about it too, people who have the ability to spend $50,000 on a coaching package don’t have the time to jump through the hoops of endless upsells of low ticket offers. They simply want to go somewhere, take out their credit card, and get their problem fixed for them, fast.
As a business owner trying to build a 7-figure business, you’ll have to ask yourself the tough question, Would you rather spend your time, energy, and dollars acquiring customers who are looking for a quick fix?
Or, would you rather spend that on attracting a higher caliber clientele who will happily pay you a premium to solve their problem right now?
Ascension Model Customers Rarely Get Results
Lastly, a key problem with the ascension model is the people who buy your low-ticket item may not get results. For example, studies have shown that online courses have an average attrition rate of 85%! That means that 85% of all courses purchased end up collecting dust on someone’s computer.
If you want to make an impact, courses and low-ticket offers are not the way to go.
Most coaches and consultants are in the business of making a real impact in their clients’ lives. Doing so requires more than sitting someone down in front of pre-recorded videos and having them do exerecises. It requires coaching them in real-time, answering their questions, and offering support and accountability.
If you want to make an impact, courses and low-ticket offers are not the way to go.
I’ve helped many clients who’ve struggled to monetize their low-end courses step into selling ultra-high-ticket coaching packages, and quickly turn things around. My client James, a business coach, is a great example of this.
Before working together, he wrote a “best-selling book” and launched a course that didn’t monetize. So, we got to work on completely transforming his strategy into a profitable high-ticket business model and aligning his talents with a higher caliber market.
The results? He turned around and sold a $30K program in just 2 weeks of working with me. He then went on to sell a $62K program another 4 weeks later. By transitioning away from the ascension model and towards ultra high-end ticket coaching offers he was able to scale from $0 to $500k in less than a year.
My client Laura, a nurse and consultant, is another great example. Before she hired me, she was going to launch a course to educate the masses. I showed her an easier and faster way to reach more people and make an even bigger impact…by selling to organizations.
So she built a brand new program and sold it for $75K just 6 weeks after joining my own program. She went on to sell it over and over again up to a $97K price point.
Instead of the Ascension Model Take a Top-Down Approach
This can take shape in any form. A $50K or even $100K+ 1:1 coaching or consulting offer.
Take my client Josh for example. When he joined my Expert Accelerator, he already had a successful accounting practice but wanted to shift more towards consulting. He learned how to adopt a top-down approach, and get right into selling ultra-high-ticket consulting for $30K, $54K, and even $90K.
Rather than starting at the bottom and working your way up, start at the top and sell ultra-high-ticket offers.
When we transitioned my client Michele, a business coach for interior designers, to a profitable high-ticket business model, she went from selling her group program for a few thousand dollars a year to selling it for $42K a year!
She now has a thriving 7-figure business generated through this approach. As a side note, if you’re curious on how we scaled her from $250K to 7 figures in a year, be sure to download my 20-page case study which breaks down this process step-by-step here.
Ultimately if you are just launching and getting your business off the ground, start by marketing to people at the top. Serve them at the highest level. Secure a large injection of cash into your business. Attract clients who you can create amazing results for, by literally flipping the model on its head.
This is not to say that you can’t still build out a course. That can always come at a later point when you have the audience and the cashflow to build out systems, marketing and ads to support it.
At the end of the day don’t fall for the ascension model. Rather than starting at the bottom and working your way up, start at the top and sell ultra-high-ticket offers
Simple Math & the Simplicity of Ultra High Ticket Services
Just to really drive the point home, let’s imagine together what your business would look like if you sold ultra-high-ticket coaching packages.
Let’s say you create a 1:1 coaching program for $50,000 and a group coaching program for $25,000. So long as you’re able to secure 5 private clients you’ll generate $250,000 in gross revenue. If you are able to get 20 group coaching clients that’s an additional $500,000.
With just 25 clients, you’re already at $750,000 in revenue.
Try to hit those numbers with a course or a low-ticket offer. It would require both VOLUME and without an audience, a ton amount of ad spend.
At the end of the day, creating a better way to create a 7-figure coaching and consulting business is to ditch the ascension model, and sell high-ticket offers. It’s easier, faster, more profitable, and allows you to provide more of an impact.
I want to hear from you, what you resonates the most when it comes to top down approach.
