When Sonya first reached out, she was burnt out from selling her $500 offer. She had clients here and there, but nothing consistent. Her energy was scattered, her tech was patched together, and every month felt like starting from zero.

On our first call, she said something I hear far too often: “I know my work is worth more, but no one is booking my premium package.”

And the reason had nothing to do with her skills. It had everything to do with the way potential clients were being led through her buying journey. Her entire system was unintentionally designed to attract low commitment buyers.

And if your system is setup for low ticket, it will reject high ticket buyers.

If we haven’t met yet, I’m Rianna Hijlkema. I’m the backend architect women call when they’re stuck at 10 to 20k months and ready to build the infrastructure for their first seven figure year. I don’t just map out strategy. I build the systems that make the strategy work. Funnels, automation, tech, and conversion psychology all woven together into a business that feels simple, predictable, and scalable.

High ticket clients think differently. They don’t make decisions like low ticket buyers, and they absolutely do not want to be nurtured for six weeks before being shown how you can solve their problem. Here are two psychological truths I explained Sonya:

1. High ticket buyers don’t want more information. They want clarity.

When someone is considering a $2,500 decision, they are already overwhelmed. Adding more content, more explanation, more steps only increases the cognitive load and decreases the likelihood of booking. Clarity reduces anxiety. Anxiety kills conversions. It’s that simple.

2. High ticket decisions happen when someone experiences a belief shift, not when they understand your features.

Most people try to “sell the offer.”High ticket sales are about selling the shift that makes the offer make sense.

Once Sonya understood this, we stopped trying to convince and started creating strategic moments of insight that changed how potential clients understood their problem.

That is what a 5 minute VSL is designed to do. For those who’ve never heard of VSL it stand for Video Sales Letter, which is a short video designed to sell a product, service, or idea. It uses a persuasive script with visuals and audio to engage viewers, address their pain points, and guide them to take a specific action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a waiting list or schedule a call.

Short VSLs convert high ticket buyers because of three psychological mechanisms:

1. Forced Cognitive Efficiency

The brain favors fast decisions when the information is structured in a clean, predictable pattern. A five minute video eliminates decision fatigue and sets the conditions for decisive action.

2. High Trust Acceleration

Most people assume trust takes time, it doesn’t. Trust takes structure. When your VSL follows a psychological sequence that mirrors how humans evaluate risk, trust is built in minutes.

3. The “Single Sitting Commitment Effect”

People are most likely to take action within the same moment they experience clarity. A short VSL captures that moment and directs it toward the next step before it fades. This is exactly what changed everything for Sonya.

We engineered the VSL video script to create a belief shift in under five minutes using a simple 7-step structure:

1. Pattern Interrupt

2. The Real Problem Reframe

3. Identify the Hidden Enemy

4. Agitate the Cost of Staying Stuck

5. Introduce the New Way

6. Proof in Seconds

7. Offer Pivot and CTA

>> you can download a detailed explanation including examples here <<

The ideas of these videos is not to add any pressure to the process, they just show the next logical step. But.. a great VSL is useless if your backend is a mess. And this is where most coaches stop, and where my work actually begins.

People love talking about messaging. Very few talk about the infrastructure that makes messaging profitable. Together we went through her systems and this is what we rebuilt:

• We created a frictionless booking system

• We added an application form that collected specific psychological markers of readiness

• We wrote out a micro email loop that repeated the core insight from the VSL

• We trimmed down her landing page, honestly.. People overestimate the importance of long sales pages. High ticket buyers prefer simplicity because it mirrors their mental model, decisive, efficient, intentional.

• We’ve set up a dashboard for tracking, facts over feelings, always!

This depth of systems is why she saw real results.

Within six weeks of working together:

• She raised her offer price from $500 to $2,500 and people said yes

• Her call bookings came from people who had already watched the VSL and were 80 percent sold before they spoke

• She doubled her conversion rate

The biggest win in her own words: “I no longer feel like I need to ‘convince’ anyone.” Because her system is now doing the heavy lifting of sales.

Most people think high ticket sales are won by being more persuasive, more charismatic, or more convincing. That’s completely backwards.

High ticket selling is not about persuasion. It’s about simplification.

A premium buyer doesn’t need to be “talked into” anything. They need the path to be so clean, so obvious, and so frictionless that the decision makes itself. The moment your funnel introduces confusion, extra steps, long explanations, or emotional overwhelm, a premium buyer opts out. Not because they don’t want the result, but because the experience signals that working with you will feel the same: heavy, complex, disorganised.

High ticket buyers don’t avoid high prices. They avoid high friction.

Sonya’s breakthrough didn’t come from longer content, or aggressive sales tactics. It came from stripping everything down to the essential sequence that matched how decisive buyers think.

Once we simplified her message, aligned her VSL with the psychology of fast decision making, and removed every point of friction from booking… everything clicked.

When the system is simple, the sale becomes inevitable.

I put together an outline that shows the exact 7 step structure we built for Sonya (including 70+ example sentences). You can download it HERE and adapt it to your own offer.

If you’re unsure whether a short VSL will actually move the needle for your specific offer, it’s smarter to talk it through before you create one. Book a 30-minute complimentary strategy call and let's talk!