Few things can frustrate you in sales so much as finding you can’t close sales you should. Getting close to a sale doesn’t count for anything but wasted time, after all-if anything, being able to reach the final stretch but not close presents a worse problem than poor lead generation or opening pitches, thanks to the time sunk into each failure. There are myriad explanations for why you can’t close sales, but many will find that their problems fall into a few broad categories. In this article, we’ll discuss three reasons you can’t close sales and ways that you might overcome those problems moving forward.

1: Your Prospects Don’t Commit

When you can’t close sales, you’ll often find the problem is not pushing the prospect to commit enough to the process. That doesn’t mean you need to close the deal fast or push for financial commitment, though.

Something as simple as requiring the prospect to fill out some paperwork and get it back to you or scheduling your follow up call before ending the current one puts your prospect in a different mindset, one where they have skin in the game. A prospect that has sunk effort into the sales process becomes far more likely to make the final plunge than one whose position in the sales relationship is purely passive.

A prospect who won’t commit the slightest bit isn’t one likely to close in the first place-don’t waste time chasing them. You can’t close sales that don’t really want to be closed.

2: You Don’t Lay Enough Groundwork

Sometimes when you can’t close sales, the problem lay earlier in the relationship. Perhaps conversations with the prospect proceeded well enough that you failed to lay sufficient groundwork. If you haven’t provided the prospect with enough reason to buy from you, their will to buy will begin eroding the moment they hang up the phone.

Buyer’s remorse is considered the final stage in many models of the sales process-you’ll find it happens to some degree any time you leave the prospect alone with their thoughts. This is a reason to build a firm foundation of potential value in the buyer’s mind, and another reason to push for early commitment.

3: You Have Problems In Your Process

If you can’t close sales when you’ve closed identical sales in the past, you might find that you haven’t followed your process well enough-or, even worse, you haven’t identified and committed to a basic sales framework. Even those salespeople who rely heavily on personal charisma and spontaneity should have some idea of a basic ideal sales process.

There are, regardless of sales style or industry, key factors involved in almost any successful sale. Analyzing your successes and identifying those factors should be a high priority if you have not already. You might be surprised to discover some minor consistent difference between the times you can’t close sales and the times you can if you pay attention.

For a smaller portion of those who can’t close sales consistently, being too rigidly attached to a sales process might be the problem. This is actually more a problem with understanding what is and is not key to the process. Some factors should be malleable in your basic plan. By knowing what you can change on the fly and where a prospect can make decisions without damaging your strategy, you actually gain a more consistent level of control over the sales process.