Do customers seem not interested in buying what you’re selling? Depending on how bad the issue has become and what your would-be customers have been saying, you might be at wit’s end trying to figure out the problem. Maybe you’re wondering whether the product you’re trying to move has what it takes. After all, if the customer is not interested, isn’t it because the product isn’t interesting? Take a deep breath, step back, and let’s look at the situation. Today’s failed prospects can be tomorrow’s customers, if you figure out why they don’t want what you’re selling. In this article, we’ll discuss five common reasons customers have for rejecting a product–common reasons you can do something about.

The Benefits Aren’t Clear.

If you can’t establish the benefits of your product to customers quickly and coherently, you’ll never see the sales you should expect to see. Perhaps, on some level, this is a failure on another level of marketing–but the fact remains that you can and should be able to establish what your product does for a prospect before they get bored and break off contact. That means more than just understanding the basics of your product–it means understanding the basics of how customers use it, including the workarounds and off-label uses. The more you know about how it might be used, the more benefits you can enumerate, the better your chance of selling.

The Value Isn’t Clear.

This extends strongly from your ability to establish the benefits to customers, but stands as an independent issue. You see, customers can see what a product does for them without clearly understanding why they should pay you for it. Why not develop his or her own solution, why buy from you instead of a competitor? Why is it worth buying at all–do the benefits equal the expenditure, especially taking the other factors of value into account? Knowing the answers to these questions and being able to offer them clearly and effectively will make a big difference in how much you’re selling.

The Customers Don’t Trust You.

Maybe your company has caught some bad worth of mouth, or some other external issue is contributing here, but whether the fault lies in you or others it’s within your power to resolve. Your highest priority in any sales process should be establishing yourself as a positive figure in the customers’ minds. Provoking investment from your customers is a simple ‘hack’ for creating a buyer/seller bond–an investment of funds, time, or some other resource will incite a prospect to treat you more favorably and be more likely to continue dealing with you. It works for the same reason the sunk-cost fallacy exists–just don’t abuse it, or eventually you’ll see it come back to bite you. 

You’re Not Making It Easy For Customers to Buy.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve already seen the advice to provoke investment early. That helps here, too. Whatever circumstances beyond your control exist in the sales process, you should work to make things as painless as possible for would-be customers. Few things gall a prospect as much as finding themselves wishing to make a purchase and unable to do so–such a situation very frequently leads to a competitor selling to what could have been your customers.

Your Prospects Aren’t Real Prospects.

If you’re still meeting with failure selling to the customers you speak with, you need to consider the possibility that your leads are no good. Rushed lead generation is all too common in the modern sales environment, but the time saved in rushing leads does nothing for your sales numbers and often extends the overall sales cycle. Depending on who generates your leads, this might be difficult to deal with, but learning to recognize who buys, who doesn’t, and who sits on the fence when all three types look like good prospects will be a valuable skill in all aspects of selling.