How to Sell a Service at 2x the Price | The ₹50 Crore Sales System Every Founder Should Understand

Indian Business Podcast

This episode features sales expert Saad Khaj breaking down the architecture of a service business that scaled to ₹50 crores in revenue. He de

Key takeaways

• Saad's agency achieved ₹50 crores in revenue by focusing on just two core service offers and a highly structured sales engine.
• A winning offer stack requires seven components: specific dream outcomes, identified client obstacles, value stacking, proof of success, reduced time/effort, conditional risk reduction, and urgency paired with a uniquely named methodology.

Main topics

• Service business scaling & revenue systems
• Offer architecture & pricing strategy

Notable quotes

"Deep discovery, I call it the gates of hell, has three gates of hell."

Conclusion

The episode provides a highly tactical blueprint for founders to syste

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) You have six months to make as much money as possible. What are you doing? I'm going to find a sales job. Everything always goes back to sales, no matter what. Speaker 3 (0:09) To get to a million dollars is very easy. You need 20 people to pay you $4,000 for 12 months, and it's a million dollars. People lost their minds. What will you sell for $4,000? Are you selling yourself? Speaker 3 (0:22) We should do this again and do part two. You know, the next Speaker 4 (0:25) time I'm going to actually walk you through the entire sales call where I will show you what my three gates of hell are. Speaker 3 (0:34) This was the masterpiece from Saad. This is a Bangar podcast. You have to watch this. Speaker 2 (0:42) One, two, three, and start. This is episode two with Saad. What are you here to teach me? Sales is the easiest job in the world. And the most, I have to cuss for this, the most rewarding. Speaker 3 (0:52) How to build a sales engine to generate sales worth 50 crores. There are three main components that come into making a sale, okay? One is your offer. Offer is pretty much what you sell. Your distribution, who you sell to. And sales, how you sell to them. So a lot of people are like, you're doing organic, you need leads. No. Speaker 2 (1:13) Bro, what are you saying? Speaker 3 (1:14) Organic, Speaker 2 (1:14) no paid. 6.8 million. No. Help me land a client who'd pay me $1 million. Speaker 4 (1:22) Yeah, R.Transfer. My card. I'm sending you a link right now. Right now. Let me think about those two Speaker 3 (1:27) models. Speaker 4 (1:27) I'm getting back to you. Can Speaker 3 (1:28) I tell you something? I will give Speaker 4 (1:30) you a thousand dirhams zinc, which is a refundable deposit. This will actually put you in a state of putting some thought into it. Okay, let's do that. Awesome. I've received your payment. Speaker 3 (1:38) Deep discovery, I call it the gates of hell, has three gates of hell. The first thing is need. Second is decision making and timeline gate. You pass this gate, you then go to the third gate. This is where most salespeople doubt. They're going to hate that I said this. Speaker 2 (1:52) How do you think I can keep track of all the leads from all my streams? This Speaker 4 (1:57) is a game changer that most people overlook very, very, very. Like if they just do this, revenue will skyrocket. Speaker 2 (2:09) Okay guys, this is episode 2 with Saad. And this time Saad is here to teach us something very very exciting. Saad, what are you here to teach me? Speaker 3 (2:15) Basically the idea is... Within two years, the last year we did 50 crores in revenue in a service business that sells only two things and everything that it takes to actually sell or get to this point where you can get to that mark, I'm going to show it to you without you actually having to think about all the mistakes. So the next two hours trying to figure out how do you go from I have no idea what I'm supposed to be selling to I am able to build a service business with one or two offers that can get to 50 crores a year. Because that's what Speaker 2 (2:45) we Speaker 3 (2:45) use. Okay. Speaker 2 (2:46) Saad, first, let's do macro. And let's figure out the first principles of sales. Understand the system very well. And then I want to go micro to understand the architecture of a call. Speaker 3 (2:57) Okay. Speaker 2 (2:57) That can help me land a client who'd pay me $1 million. Okay, Speaker 3 (3:02) awesome. So basically, one of the most common mistakes that people have is they're trying to fix sales where it's not a sales problem. It's a full funnel problem. So first, we need to understand. What do you need in order for you to actually make a sale? There are three main components that come into making a sale. One is your offer. Offer is pretty much what you sell. Your distribution, who you sell to and sales, how you sell to them. So one of the most common things that keep happening in India is the burdens on the salesperson to be able to generate revenue and not on the rest of the ecosystem that needs to support it. Speaker 2 (3:41) Like Speaker 3 (3:42) if a company is not making revenue, the first people that get fired are salespeople. But this is the last component of the three. If your first two are not operating at the level that it needs to operate on, the third cannot. A great salesman with a mediocre distribution, mediocre offer can do well. Oh, because, but that's all he can do. He can drive. So most founder led sales happen when these both are broken. But the moment they have a sales organization, it doesn't work anymore. Purely because your offer is not right and your distribution is not right. What do you mean by that? Can you give me an example? Have you seen a smaller agencies where the founder is able to make sales, but he's unable to go from the founder to making sales to actually sales people making sales? Yeah. That's because the offer and the distributions are fucked. Speaker 2 (4:27) Can you give me an example of what is an offer and Speaker 3 (4:29) what is Speaker 2 (4:29) distribution? Speaker 3 (4:30) Offer has seven components. Okay. I'm going to walk you through all of the seven components. This is called as an offer stack. Offer stack. Okay. Offer stack. So number one is getting specific. Like for example, their statements sound like this. We will help you grow your business. What does that mean? Right? So when you speak to people who are crossed a million dollars in revenue, you will start noticing they're going to tell you very specific outlines, we will help you get to 20 leads a month for the money you're going to pay me, unless you're being very specific about the dream outcome, your offer is broken. So most people who are not able to sell the sales team is not able to sell purely because they don't have the conviction of the founder. When you don't have the conviction of the founder and most agencies basically are selling to people, they meet randomly and not really through a funnel, right? Not really through a sales system or a system where you are able to predictably tell how many leads are coming in or how many are closing. It is happening because the founder is driving it through pure conviction. Correct. And the moment it goes to like, oh, now that I'm making X amount of money, which does happen with... With great founder-led sales, it does happen. But the moment they have to translate it, they are not able to deliver it because the founder is selling through conviction. The salesperson will never have it. So one of the things, first thing is that somebody, if you have an offer, is ask yourself, is the dream outcome that you're promising, is it vague or is it as specific? So I'll give you an example of vague sounds, looks like this. We help D2C brands scale. Scale. What does it mean, friend? Like you get what I'm saying? Versus we take, you can go as specific as possible. You can speak to a specific D2C brand, but for now I'll keep it as D2C brands go from 50 crores to 250 crores using X methodology. It's a hyper-specific thing that you need to offer that can directly relate to their dream outcome. Everyone who's coming for a service has a dream outcome. If we are unable to capture that dream outcome, our offer is weak. Speaker 2 (6:38) And the methodology is also very, very important. Speaker 3 (6:41) Yes. Everything stems to methodology because if you don't have a methodology, you're not unique enough. You're going to be compared at price points with everybody. This is one of the things, you know, yesterday I put out a video, I'm digressing. And I said to get to a million dollars is very easy. And it's honestly not that hard because you just need to get somebody to pay you $4,000. You need 20 people to pay you $4,000 for 12 months and it's a million dollars. So it's like you're not getting to 100. You don't have to struggle to get to 100 clients, 200 clients. You need to get to 20 people who are willing to pay you $4,000. People lost their minds. What will you sell for $4,000? Are you selling yourself? Speaker 3 (7:20) Standard Instagram comment. Yeah, and I'm like... How do I explain $4,000 is not even high ticket? Like, you get what I'm saying? So unless you get to this hyper-specific dream outcome, you'll never be able to charge. Speaker 3 (7:38) If you don't have a dream outcome and if you're giving a vague outcome, you will be compared to everybody else in the market. And then the problem then what happens is you're going to go into price comparison. Then whoever is the cheapest wins. Make sense? This is a clear differentiator with having a very specific dream outcome. This is one. Two is identify the obstacles. So a lot of people don't do the activity of if I'm going to be selling to D2C brands, what are the five to six obstacles that they're having? So you need to have a very clear understanding of what those obstacles are. Because once you have an understanding of what the obstacles are, then you can track that back and make sure that that is a part of what is the value statement of the offer. But if you don't identify, so now we are being specific and our specific value statement is directly correlated to that specific outcome sorry specific obstacle of that particular category so we are next into obstacles that they are facing okay three is your stack of value stack of value is basically every single thing you can add on top of one on top of two on top of three on top of four on top of five the reason why you're stacking this The price that they're paying has to look so small compared to what you're giving to them that it should be a no-brainer. So what is the value stack that you can do? And the value stack is directly correlated to the obstacles they have. So each of those value stacks that you're offering has to directly solve the obstacle. So you need to figure out what is everything that can stop them from achieving this particular outcome. And whatever those obstacles are should be a value stack predefined by you. Understood. Okay. Third, value stack. Fourth is increase in perceived likelihood of success. So increased in perceived likelihood of success basically means they need to see proof. So your job is to take whatever their problems are. You have created a specific offer. Now you have to show them that you can actually do this. So you need undeniable stack of proof. You can't just make statements and not back it up. You have to have a statement and whatever that statement is has to be backed up by something that's a proof or a testimonial. And the higher the stack is, the higher the likelihood of success they can believe they'll have. So you need proof. Okay? So this is fourth one that is the perceived likelihood of success. Okay? Fifth is reduce time and effort. I'll give you an example. Reduce time and effort for? For them. So for example My thing is, in order for us to be, how long does social media take? For most people, it's like, it's going to take three months, six months, four months. Our contract is two months long. If we can help you, you'll know within two months. If we can't help you, you'll know within two months. For us, the test period is six videos on a brand new page. If it works, it works in six videos. If it doesn't work, it never works. Okay. So the time for them to see the result is extremely short. Okay. Second is, We don't want you to think about anything. We'll handle everything. So our offering contains every possible expense that can possibly happen. A lot of times agencies do what? They have a price and they have side stack prices. For example. Speaker 3 (11:09) For example, social media, they'll be like, okay, it's going to cost this much. And then when you actually start working with them, like, okay, model cost is this much, location cost is this much. They will not disclose it in fear. We have an all-inclusive price. If it comes into this, if it ever exceeds this, we'll pay from it from our side. So there is no effort from their side beyond this in terms of we will make sure day one, this is going to happen, day two, this is going to happen. All you have to do, you don't have to think. I'll give you a quick example, right? Every time a new client comes in, Before, we used to get them to make simple things like Insta IDs. Now, we buy a new phone, put a new SIM card, new email. We create it on their email ID and we handle everything. So, the idea is once you come to us, you shouldn't be thinking about anything other than yes, no, I like, I don't like, approved, good job, result, no result. Your ability to think is Speaker 2 (12:05) reduced to zero. And I think that's a great proposition. The moment you tell the other person that you don't have to do anything. We don't want you to do anything. I think that's a great proposition. So your effort, Speaker 3 (12:15) the prospects, effort and time. So we'll get you results. When I say results, it is a quantifiable success in a very short period of time. Instead of having, waiting for six months to be able to see the fruit of your labor, which creates lethargy. So time to success, whatever that you define, has to be short enough. And the effort they put has to be low enough. This is five. Okay. Your six comes, reduce the risk. Now, this is a bit of a double-edged sword. Okay. I don't like this one. But it's a part of it, which is a very Alex Hermosi situation, which is make them a no-brainer offer. So, reduce risk as in how low to zero can you take their risk. If you pay the money and it doesn't work, I'll give you a 100 % refund. This is... Reduce risk. The problem we have learned with this is the moment you have a guarantee or a refund. Now, we don't do guarantees, refunds at all. We have doubled our price without doing guarantees and refunds. At guarantees and refund, our price were lower. The client stops taking the onus of actually showing up. Now, as much as we can control everything, they still need to show up to a shoot. Speaker 1 (13:25) They Speaker 3 (13:26) stop showing up because they have nothing to lose. With a guarantee in a service business is a death trap because they stop taking it seriously because they have no skin in the game. So when you have no skin in the game, what ends up happening is what should probably take you 30 days because you've spent a fuck ton of money to get my service. Now it will take 90 days because you don't care because if it doesn't work. You're going to get your money back. So even if you do de-risk, it has to be super conditional. For example? One of the conditions, if I were to ever put in a guarantee, it would be if you cancel more than two shoots, you've voided your refund policy. If you do not show up to the meetings that, if you have, for the 60-day contract, if you're unable to show up for more than a week, you're... contract is voided. So it has to be super strict because what ends up happening is if you're not, they don't have skin in the game and they have nothing to lose. And if they have nothing to lose, anything given for free in this world is taken for granted. Right? So there's no free meal. The moment you make it a free meal, they'll just go with the toss. So this is a bit of a double-edged sword. I would try to reduce this risk. Yes to zero. Depending on which stage of your business you are in. If you're just starting out, you have no proof, you have nothing and you're just like, I just want to get my first meal. Speaker 3 (14:50) reduce the risk, take a hit, right? Because you have no liabilities. But at a scale where you are trying to do 10 million, 20 million, 30 million, that can become a liability versus it becoming... a value proposition for the organization. So here you can kind of take your own bet depending on what your offer is. We're going into seven. Okay. That is add urgency and scarcity. How Speaker 2 (15:16) do you differentiate between false urgency and true urgency? Speaker 3 (15:19) That's a... That's a bit tricky. Speaker 2 (15:22) Because everybody tries to create urgency. Correct. Right? How do you create true urgency? I'd Speaker 3 (15:29) have to think about it for a second. So it really comes to supply demand, right? At this point, for example, I have few things that have super high supply, super low supply and super high demand. There it's not very hard because I am, one of the things in sales you need to understand is if you're on a sales call, I'm talking about specifically on a sales call, then I'll go wider. A lot of it is body language and verbal cues. If you don't believe the urgency, you can't sell the urgency. It'll come off as fake. But for example, me, I can only take on X amount of clients per month. So when I'm saying it, it is not an offer. It's a matter of fact. Like if you leave, I'm not afraid for you to leave. Like you should be ready to let that person not buy. So in a sales call, you should be able to say, probably this is not for you. Because when you come to that position mentally in a sales call, when you say, I can only take four people, I've already taken three people, I've only one slot left, I have eight more sales call and I have a close rate of 40%. What's your decision? Speaker 3 (16:32) I'm talking about numbers that are very real for me. So it translates. Problem what ends up happening is when you start overusing urgency. So there are brands that are perpetually on offers. Then that offer only is... Speaker 3 (16:47) What? Got it. Name and price. This is one of the more important ones. Name and price. Okay. Method has to be unique to you because they shouldn't be able to mistake it with everybody else. Is that Speaker 2 (16:58) always possible, sir? Speaker 3 (17:00) When you actually have a method that is unique. For Speaker 2 (17:03) example, let's take interior design. How would you Speaker 3 (17:07) name a method for interior design? You don't name the method. You name the process Speaker 2 (17:12) with which you achieve an outcome. Again, it's the same, right? As an interior designer, how would you name a method that is so different from your competitor? I mean, you can show proof, which is great. When it comes to being specific, it's pretty clear. I will help you get this project done in 40 days at less than 30 lakh rupees. Perfect. Okay. How do you do that? How do you do what? So how we achieve Speaker 3 (17:37) the outcome is the method. And no two people ever have the same plus two, plus one, two, three, four method. Our method is called hyper niche. This is what we built our entire school of thought of content on. Okay. So for example, I would start with something like this. I wouldn't even start with the offer. I would ask you, how long do you think it takes for content to work? How long does it take? For your content to work. Organic content, zero followers, new page altogether to get to 100,000 views, a million views. How long do you think it takes? To Speaker 2 (18:06) 100,000 views on Instagram? Speaker 3 (18:08) Yeah. 100,000 views, a million views. Are you talking about consistent viewership? Consistent viewership. Three to four months? Speaker 2 (18:16) It Speaker 3 (18:16) takes six videos. Speaker 2 (18:17) Six videos. Okay. Speaker 3 (18:19) If it works, it works in six videos. And if it doesn't work, it's highly unlikely it'll work in that format. Speaker 2 (18:24) Can I show you? I actually disagree with that Speaker 3 (18:26) though. I know. Brilliant. That's why I want to show you. So again, statement. So this is called breaking belief statement. Something that the generic world believes that this is the truth. My whole thing is I'm going to show you undeniable proof of us doing it. So it goes, I know you're not going to believe it. That's why I say, what's my next statement? Can I show you? Right? For example, we built this page. It has 41 posts. Speaker 4 (18:53) Okay. Speaker 3 (18:53) This was made how many weeks ago? Speaker 3 (18:57) I'll show you more. Wait, hold on. See from the first reel. See from the first reel. Bro, what Speaker 2 (19:02) are you saying? Let me show you another one. The first reel is 5.6 million. Speaker 2 (19:08) That's the whole... Speaker 3 (19:10) So if it works, it works like this. Speaker 3 (19:13) It's not a metric of time. This sounds unbelievable. Now I'll show you this one. This will blow you away. This is six videos. Six posts. Speaker 3 (19:21) Organic, no paid. Speaker 3 (19:24) Now you see how I have differentiated myself from every other agency in the market. Because if you don't have a differentiation, it just then becomes a pricing battle. Oh, he's cheaper. I'll go with him. Because most, if you tell most social media people, they're selling what? Six videos, four rules, eight statics, 20,000 rupees. That's not an outcome or a method. That is deliverables by a videographer and an editor. Speaker 2 (19:49) Yeah. Speaker 3 (19:50) Understood. Now we come Speaker 2 (19:52) to price. Speaker 3 (19:53) If you're not pricing yourself high enough, people don't take you seriously enough. So the problem with what ends up happening is you have to proportionately increase your price. Every single time you get harder with your offer, you have to increase your price. One of the biggest problems that most people have is actually increasing the price because they're scared. They're scared for one of two reasons. Number one, their constant thing is who will buy. Why they ask this question, who will buy is because they would never buy. Most people never actually spend. Most agency owners are broke. Most service business owners are broke. How I went from this one to 12.5 is when I was selling it at 4000, I would get on say, for example, 10 calls. I would see how easy it is for me to take the money. If the money is coming to me without any resistance, I'm too fucking low. So one of the easiest way to do it is out of 10 calls, if more than 50 % are buying, your price is low. You increase by 25%. Speaker 2 (20:59) Okay. The Speaker 3 (20:59) reason why I'm saying you increase by 25 % is the salesperson will be scared to sell it at a higher price point. You'll probably need to increase it by 200%. Which is more the truth. But the problem is the salesperson who's selling it shouldn't shit his bed saying the price. So if like, for example, the last few jumps that we have done, we have doubled the price. We went from 20,000 to 40,000. Speaker 3 (21:26) So one of the things is salespeople need to have conviction of the product and the service that they're selling. If they don't have that, it's very hard to sell. Like a lot of companies will be like, oh, my salespeople are for call. Your service is for call, buddy. Like what you're asking him to sell. you're showing him it doesn't work because he can see the organization. You know, one of the saddest things that people don't talk about is salespeople sell. Initially, when salespeople come, they sell higher. Then over a period of time, they actually start reducing how much they sell. It happens very commonly for one single reason. They start seeing that the promises they are making on a sales call is not being delivered by the company that is actually being there. So when that happens, they lose conviction. When they lose conviction, no script in the world can help them close better. So there are tangibles and there are things that... are these that it's not training. It's your, if your service is shit, I can't actually help