1:22:48Cole Gordon · Interview
$150 Million of Sales Knowledge in 82 Minutes
An 82-minute practitioner masterclass on high-ticket sales — from belief-transfer mechanics to building and managing a team that closes without you.
June 15thThe argument in one line.
High-ticket outreach works better with a few prospects touched many times across channels than with hundreds of cold DMs, because the people you want are shielded by setters and teams.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- An agency owner, coach, or consultant selling a high-ticket service to online founders and getting low reply rates from cold DMs.
- A founder who has testimonials and case studies and a commission-only setter, but still can't get decision makers to see the messages.
- Someone with a couple of spare hours a day who wants a better use of that time than more volume outreach.
SKIP IF…
- You sell to local businesses, which the speaker explicitly says this advice is not about.
- You have no proof yet (no testimonials or case studies) and need to build credibility before outreach strategy matters.
The full version, fast.
Jake Setterlun tells a founder with low reply rates to stop chasing volume and go deep instead. Rule out that messages are hitting a setter, retarget prospects with pixels (including Facebook), comment on their posts, and touch each person across IG, LinkedIn, email, and Facebook. Send 5 to 10 a day, stack them into a 200 to 400 person pipeline in a month, and join their lists, groups, and low-ticket products. He also suspects the messaging is too long and should be direct, and suggests starting a podcast to interview ideal prospects, which doubles as a testimonial and a soft discovery call.
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00:00 – 00:57
01 · Setup and the problem
Intro to the candid community call and the founder's low response rate despite proof and a setter.
00:58 – 02:22
02 · Qualifying the situation and retargeting
Checks for a setter in the way, learns the setter is commission-only at 20%, then recommends pixeling assets and adding Facebook.
02:23 – 03:52
03 · Fewer prospects, more touches
Do 10 a day instead of 100, comment, DM repeatedly, add on Facebook, personalize with Loom.
03:53 – 05:17
04 · Pipeline math and penetration
A month of 5 to 10 a day builds a pipeline of 200 to 400; join lists, groups, and buy low-ticket products.
05:18 – 06:42
05 · Partnerships and messaging
The founder floats commissions to setters and closers in sales communities. Jake likes it but suspects the messaging is too big.
06:43 – 07:51
06 · Podcast as discovery call
Start a podcast, interview ideal prospects for 10 to 15 minutes, then ask for a short call at the end.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Instead of sending 100 cold messages a day, send 10 and keep going until you get a yes or a no.
- Founders with a team often never see their DMs, but they do check their own comments.
- Facebook is worth adding to outreach because gatekeepers rarely monitor it the way they monitor Instagram and email.
- At 5 to 10 new prospects a day, one month of work days gives you a 200 to 400 person pipeline worth personal attention.
- Joining a prospect's email list, free groups, and buying a low-ticket product gets you past the surface layer where everyone else is sending DMs.
- A higher ticket price justifies personalized touches like a Loom video after the first reply.
- If a prospect is on a call with you for a podcast interview, the interview itself becomes your discovery.
- A podcast interview posted on YouTube can read as a testimonial when the guest talks about results.
- Before adding new tactics, check whether your message is too big and should just say what you'll do for them.
- Retargeting your assets after someone follows or interacts with you keeps you in front of them without more messages.
Go deeper with fewer high-ticket prospects
WHAT TO LEARN
When your buyers are protected by teams, volume loses to persistence: touch a handful of the right people across several channels until they answer.
- Check whether your messages are landing on a setter or assistant before changing anything else, since that explains many low reply rates.
- Retarget prospects with pixeled assets after they follow or interact with you, so you stay visible between messages without sending more.
- Comment on their posts, DM more than once, and add them on Facebook, because owners check comments and gatekeepers rarely watch every channel.
- Send 5 to 10 prospects a day; over a month that builds a 200 to 400 person pipeline you can actually give personal attention.
- Join their email lists and groups and buy a low-ticket product to reach spaces where the owner speaks to you directly.
- Keep your first message short and direct about what you will do for them, since an overlong pitch is a likely cause of silence.
- Interview ideal prospects on a podcast, then ask for a short call at the end so the interview becomes the discovery step.
Terms worth knowing.
- Setter
- A team member who reaches out to prospects and books sales calls for a closer. In this call the setter works on 20% commission only.
- Pixeling
- Placing a tracking pixel on your pages and content so people who interact with you can be shown retargeting ads afterward.
- Penetration
- The speaker's word for getting past the shared surface layer of cold DMs into spaces where the prospect talks to you directly, like their groups and email list.
Lines you could clip.
02:25
“Instead of trying to do 100 a day, do 10 a day and don't stop until you get a yes or a no.”
03:42
“Wider outreach, deeper penetration, and like five people a day, 10 people a day, and let that stack up.”
06:42
“I would start a podcast and I would be booking people and inviting your ideal prospects on the podcast.”
Word for word.
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In this video today, we're going to be pulling back the curtain and showing you a one -to -one conversation that I had with one of our community members of over 4 ,000 online offer owners that are inside. Again, these are agency owners, coaches, consultants, online experts, SaaS business owners that are all building and scaling businesses to seven and eight figures.
And this is a behind the scenes look of a candid one -to -one conversation. These are conversations that I have every single week with these community members. Enjoy.
This entrepreneur was trying to land high ticket clients. He had testimonials, case studies, and a setter reaching out to potential customers. But the response rate was low, and many of the founders he wanted to work with weren't even seeing his messages.
So he brought the problem to me. The solution wasn't simply sending more messages. It was changing the entire approach to getting in front of the right people.
Before I tell you a suggestion, I want to rule out that you're not just potentially sending messages to a setter, like if they have a setter. Um, or if they're, again, they're too big. So it's going to go to a team member, something like that.
Right. Do you know your email? Uh, because of that, we can reach directly.
Yeah.
I, my, my personal opinion, I think you, cause you have testimonials, right? You have like case studies, testimonials or no. Oh, you do.
Okay. Beautiful. So I would do two things.
I would do, sorry, is your setter on a paid plus commission or just commission only? Just commission, 20%. The first thing I would definitely do is I would set up some retargeting and start pixeling all of your assets to stay in front of them after they follow you or they interact with you on IG.
I would add Facebook into the mix potentially. I know Facebook sounds crazy. But sometimes Facebook's the easiest way to get in front of some of these people because like IG, they have a setter in there.
They have a team member checking their email, things like that.
What they will check, what these individuals will check is they will check their comments. So I do think commenting is a good way to get in front of them or at least say, hey, did you get the email that I sent you? Very important that you check this.
LinkedIn is hit or miss for some of these individuals. I would focus on less volume and more high quality engagement and penetration. And what I mean by that is instead of trying to do 100 a day, do 10 a day and don't stop until you get a yes or a no.
So like comment on their IG, hit them in the DMs multiple times, add them as a friend on Facebook. Obviously your setter is doing all this. you know linkedin is another great thing to do try to make it and you could maybe do like a loom video after you get a reply like try to make it more personalized instead of automated because your ticket price is much higher and for one of these type of people this isn't like an agency where like a 4k retainer they stick on for three months and then they leave for most of these type of individuals when they're partnering with you i'm gonna assume that they should stick for a decent amount of time Unless you're signing up somebody that just doesn't have that kind of money, which I'm assuming you're disqualifying.
So I would focus on wider outreach, deeper penetration, and like five people a day, 10 people a day, and let that stack up over day after day after day. Because after 30 days or 20 days, let's just say it's a full month, right? You only work four weeks, five days a week.
you're going to have 200, 300, 400 people that are potentially in a pipeline that you're going to constantly want to touch base with. And the quality of those people are going to be really good. So you're going to actually want to spend time on those individuals.
And I would be doing things like join their email list, join their free school groups, join their Facebook groups, potentially buy their low -ticket products. And that's where I was talking about penetration. The people that I've bought stuff from, again, speaking from my personal experience and then what I've seen other individuals do properly, is they're able to penetrate past the surface layer.
Because the surface layer for all these people is everybody just like you that's just sending messages, sending messages. Again, I'm talking online people, right? Not local businesses.
So if you can penetrate and you can get into their groups in the DMs where it's actually them talking to you, things like that. that's where it's much easier to actually you know get an appointment scheduled and your close rate should be much higher um but it's it's again focusing on more touch points and less volume of actual prospects that you're sending messages to because um we've been doing this uh the reply rate has been relatively less but then again like i said like i don't have enough data to actually Do that.
Would you recommend strategic partnerships? Because I was curating maybe, like I was thinking along these lines, maybe connecting with setters and closers, like in these sales communities, maybe school communities, Discord communities that they have, and then maybe just giving them commissions because they are technically working with these founders.
So would you recommend that? I kind of like that. I like that.
But then I was like, how do I even frame it? Like, would it be?
I would before you do anything like that. I don't I don't hate that by any means. But what I what I would potentially do is two things.
I do think your messaging is probably off. If you want to send some over and telegram. I'm curious what you're sending.
Yeah, just be I you're probably I could be completely wrong. I'm my guess is you're sending too big of a message and you just need to send something that's like very like direct of like, Hey, we're going to do this for you. Let's work.
Yeah. Yeah. So I do think that potentially could help your messaging.
I would also, if we're like, what should you spend? I have an extra two hours a day. Like what's the best use of my time.
I would start a podcast and I would be booking people and inviting your ideal prospects on the podcast. Do like 10, 15 minutes. Number one, you can position that podcast as an interview on your YouTube and it looks like a testimonial because you could say like, he signed 50K in 30 days or something like that.
And it's like obviously an interview. I'm going to note that down. But you're positioning it as a podcast.
But then the other thing that I would do is, like you've penetrated now, right? They're on a call with you. You're asking them questions.
You're doing an interview. That ends up being kind of your discovery. At the end, it's a very simple answer that it's like, hey, man, I don't normally do this, but I think we work great together based off what I help founders do.
You know, could we book a five to 10 minute conversation? I'd love to at least just show you exactly what we do. And then use that to, you know, not only get them on the call, but then get them on a sales call.
Great. Yeah.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Jake Setterlun opens a real one-to-one call with a community member who has testimonials, case studies, and a setter, yet founders still aren't replying. The answer he gives is not more messages. It is fewer prospects, touched more ways.
Visual structure at a glance.
