In an earlier post, you saw how to use case study emails to sell high-ticket upsells.
In it, I broke down an email Ryan Levesque used to successfully sell a $10,000+ coaching package to people who already bought his flagship course.
If you want to get people to immediately go from your main program to your higher-ticket one — so you can take advantage from your most hungry customers and earn 10X more revenue from them while giving them what they need to have more success faster — check that out.
The email I broke down sent people to an upsell page that showed people this case study video.
Today I want to break down of the key parts of this video. So you can create one of your own and close more high-ticket sales.
Part 1: The “Obstacle” Opening
This video starts with “The Obstacle Opening.” That’s a term I stole from Hollywood screenwriter Michael Hague in his book Storytelling Made Easy.
Right away, we are brought in to the moment where our hero, Jamal, realizes life can’t continue this way.
In this case, he talks about how he almost missed his daughters birth because he had to host a webinar for his business.
Sharing a specific, dramatic moment like this pulls the reader into the story.
A great way to find stories like this is to ask your customer: “What was the moment you realized something needed to change?”
Of course, asking that right off the bat may not work. It’s too vague.
So I like to start by getting people to talk about the struggle they faced before joining the program. Then ask about the specific moment they realized they needed to make a change. That way they know what I’m talking about because we are already on the subject of their early struggle.
Asking a question like this gets the reader to paint a picture of where they were and what they were doing and thinking. It creates a vivid story for the viewer to fall into. And it’s inherently dramatic and intriguing because it’s all about a struggle the viewer can relate to.
Part 2: Flashback to Earlier Struggle
After sharing Jamal’s “something’s gotta change” moment, they flashback and to what led up to that moment.
One of the first things they talk about is how Jamal struggled with being single for years. And that he wanted to find a life partner but was stuck being alone.
This gets us to empathize with him. It makes him relatable and gets the viewer rooting for him.
From there, they go on to share two things:
First, how this struggle led him to spend a year and a half learning how to become happily married. Through this journey, he discovered a key insight most people don’t realize: That most marriages don’t turn bad, they start bad.
Second, during that time he found a woman who became his wife.
These two pieces become the foundation for his new business. Because he has all this knowledge on how to stay happily married. And he’s living proof it works.
It also gets us rooting for Jamal even more. Because we see he has a noble mission. He’s not just trying to get rich. He wants to help struggling singles find love and stay happily married.
The reader can start seeing themselves in Jamal. Because they too may have something they want to share. And they are noble and want to help people too, darn it!
Part 3: From hopeful to hopeless
Next, they talk about how Jamal started a blog giving marriage advice even though he had no experience.
This is important for later in the story. Once people see Jamal’s success, they won’t be able to use the excuse “but I don’t have experience” because they know Jamal didn’t, either. It eliminates the objection before they can even use it.
Despite his lack of experience, Jamal goes on to build a large following on his blog. He then thinks he can make a ton of money by writing a book — a common belief people who want to start a business have.
But after releasing his book, he’s disappointed at how little it made.
In this sequence, the reader is being ripped back and forth between emotional lows and highs. They see Jamal go from scared and unsure to hopeful and excited to deflated and ashamed by his failure.
This emotional rollercoaster keeps the story engaging. Good stories have continual conflict and struggle for the hero to overcome.
Then, they talk about how Jamal was forced to take on a job earning $17/hour to support his family.
Mentioning how he was focused on helping his family keeps us on his side. And the “$17/hour” part does a lot to show us the financial struggle he was in. As far as we know, that’s all he has to take care of a family of 3. So we empathize with his tough position.
Part 4: The turning point
Next, we revisit the struggle that was brought up to start the story.
How he continued doing webinars for his business but didn’t enjoy it. And he felt like he was “selling his soul”.
From that, they go into that turning point — when his wife was in labor and but he couldn’t go to the hospital because he had to finish a webinar for work.
Then they do something smart, they go into WHY almost missing his daughter’s birth was such an impactful moment. And Jamal explains how missing that would have been him putting money over his family. Which is something he never wants to do.
This is big because it shows Jamal’s VALUES.
He’s a guy that values family highly.
The reader likely does to. So touching on this shows that they are in the right place. This is a community that cares about family over money. And a program that can help them with what matters most — spending time with family.
Shared values is a super powerful way to connect with people.
Just look at politics. That’s all they do!
Republicans stand for things like safety and freedom.
Democrats, are more focused on things like fairness and equality.
People get super charged up and passionate over it — even hating the other side — because they see them as standing in opposition of their values.
So sharing your values through your case study gets the reader to see “Ah, yes, these are my people…”
It helps you stand out — because not everyone does this.
And it gets people to buy into YOU. Which is a crucial step they need to take before they buy from you.
Part 5: Results
Jamal then talks about how that moment motivated him to join the ASK Method.
From there, they highlight the success he had. How he got 10,000 new leads in a week. And went from $17/hour to creating a product that led to $600,000 in revenue within 3 months.
This shows both the tangible results and how quickly you can achieve them. So the reader has a clearer vision of what to expect and how their life can look after joining your program.
But that’s not all. They then dive into what those results mean for Jamal.
They talk about how he now serves 4,000 people a month. This is big because a lot of people watching want more IMPACT. And this proves that ASK can help them get that.
He also talks about how they’re using ASK to create new products and serve different markets. Which is important because a major objection people face when starting a business is they’re afraid to be locked into one thing for the rest of their life. By sharing this they overcome that objection and show how you can use Ask to create multiple successful businesses in different markets.
Finally, the bring it home by having Jamal share what this means for his life. How, unlike most young parents, he has the freedom to be with his kids while they grow up.
Once again, they bring it back to family. That shared value that’s connects with the reader deeper than money. And is the key driver behind both Jamal’s actions and likely, the viewer’s.
Key Takeaways
Here’s a quick recap of what we talked about. And how you can create a case study upsell for your high ticket program:
- Start the case study at the most interesting part of the story
- Share struggles early to so the viewer feels empathy for/roots for the person
- Have your case study participant share “the moment they realized things need to change”. This can be your intro you may find it works better further down
- Connect to the reader’s values by having your case study participant share theirs. Have them go into WHY success was important.
- Share specific, tangible results they achieved.
- Go back and forth from hopeless to hopeful, from struggle to success to keep the story engaging.
Ways to make your case study even better…
This video has over 11,000 views. So it appears to have done quite well. And it covers a lot of the beats I do in my case studies.
That being said, there are a couple tweaks that could make this video even better.
- Share more about WHY Jamal chose ASK. Go into the doubts he had… what made him pull the trigger… and why he chose this over other programs. The viewer has tons of options. So going into detail here can show what makes this different/better than the others they’re thinking about. It’s a chance for you to flex your Unique Selling Proposition through the words of your successful customer.
- Go into more detail what it was like to use ASK and how it worked. What did Jamal discover that was a game-changer? What did he learn that he couldn’t have gotten anywhere else?
- Share how he struggled with the program. People are skeptical if something seems too good to be true. If you show how he made mistakes or struggled a little bit with ASK it’ll make it more believable.
- It’s like if someone sells you a used care and says “It’s in amazing condition!” you’ll be like “Sureeee….” But if they say “You should know, the passengers seat doesn’t recline and the check engine sensor is broken. But aside from that the car is in amazing condition.” You’re going to believe that person more. Because they were up front and honest about the flaws. It’s the same for case studies. Too much of a “then they joined the course and lived happily ever after!” gets people’s BS detectors firing. Showing it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows but you can get through it if you have the desire/follow the steps/lean on the community will make it easier for people to see this isn’t snake oil and can help them.
If this was helpful, do me a favor and let me know in the comments what stuck out as interesting.
Good for me to know so I know what to dive deeper into the next time.