10 Reasons Your Best Customers Are Not Buying Your Product or Service

Why aren’t your best customers choosing your brand over your competition?

This is as true for a personal brand as it is for a product or service.

What if you had a checklist that isolated the 10 mistakes (and their corresponding triggers) that, when resolved, tipped the odds in your favor, making you the one who won the majority of business out there?

Here they are:

1. Lack of difference.

Remember: Different will always be better than better. And in the experience of customers, different equates to the perceived value your brand has. 

2. You sound like everyone else.

Blending in overworks your customers, burdens your marketing and sales folks, enters you into the price war and endless “the race to the bottom,” and dilutes your media budget.

Same words = same value = no difference.

3. You failed to make the life of your customer easier in some way.

Convenience is the big trigger today. Simplify or perish.

4. Ignoring the power of words.

In business, in life, in branding, in Hollywood, the best story wins.

5. You're ignoring the power of design.

People tend to see long before they’ve read the first word. What stage have you set for your words to be spoken on?

6. You confused me and my values with someone “somewhat similar” to me.

If I like food, does that mean anyone who eats at Domino’s pizza is the same “demographic profile” as someone who loves expensive steak houses with $12 baked potato side dishes? Or “someone eats breakfast” at Denny’s is the same person who eats breakfast at a $35 Sunday brunch?

7. You're selling the product or service and failing to sell the transformation you make possible.

8. You're ignoring change.

Changes happen: Cultural. Technological. Environmental. the solution.

Think of this as "organizational pilates." Remain nimble enough to pivot.

9. You started chasing followers, fans, and other vanity metrics.

And, in the process, lost sight of what’s most important: your core values that your customers initially embraced.

Instead, you got a drug habit: Those other “vanity metrics” you can certainly impact but don’t directly control. Yes, those metrics reflect your impact. But no, they don’t dictate your inherent value.

10. You lost a deal or two and confused price with value and starting selling to price rather than focusing on value.

Great brands offer value. Why? because when you win on price, people are loyal to the lo w price, NOT your brand and will thereafter always jump ship to other “brands” that sell at a lower price.

Entrepreneurs, startups, CEOs and other rebels: did I miss anything like upsells, brand culture, exceeding expectations, etc?

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