14 ways to come home empty handed

Regard­less of how or where you sell you stuff you may be uncon­sciously caus­ing folks to move on down the road. Because, even though they really want to buy your stuff there is some­thing get­ting in the way, so they leave your booth, your gallery or your web site. Well what’s the big whoop about that?  Turns out a lot, because you are not only los­ing that one sale you are likely also los­ing any other poten­tial sales from that cus­tomer just because of that one bad expe­ri­ence. But it doesn’t stop here that per­son who really, really wanted to buy that thing-ama-jig from you is more than likely going to tell her friends about her expe­ri­ence so you’ll also lose them as poten­tial customers.

So what fol­lows is a brief list of some of the things you might be doing  that could be los­ing sales for you.

1. Hide from cus­tomers, look bored, read a book.

If you are not will­ing to get out and meet your buy­ers they will likely think:

• You are not friendly and who wants to buy from an unfriendly person;
• You are bored in which case they will won­der why you are there in the first place;
• You are inde­pen­dently wealthy and don’t need their money so they’ll just go else­where with it;

2. Have a secret auto­matic reject button

You may not know it but you might have a cou­ple of auto­matic rejec­tion but­tons hang­ing out some­where. These are things about you,about your booth, your gallery, etc. that  are invis­i­ble to you but serve as auto­matic bar­ri­ers to peo­ple doing busi­ness with you.

It could be:

• The smell of that funny meat you are secretly cook­ing behind your booth;
• The gallery you are in may be in the sec­ond under base­ment right next to the boil­ers and steam pipes, and you thought it looked “artsy”;
• Your stuff is scat­tered hel­ter skel­ter all over your booth cre­at­ing a con­fus­ing mess
• Your kid may be play­ing Lil’ Wayne’s lat­est and get­tin’ down with some kool dudes clearly dis­invit­ing poten­tial buyers

3. Only offer buy­ers one way to buy your stuff

No way are you going to give those credit card com­pa­nies any of your money because you want to keep every cent. Or maybe you just take cash because you don’t want to take the risk of a bad check.

4. No seal of approval

There is no evi­dence that you are any­thing more than an itin­er­ant street seller and hence no indi­ca­tion that you are trust­wor­thy or that you care. This  really mostly applies to web sales since there are still a lot of folks afraid of giv­ing their per­sonal info out over the inter-tubes.

5. No way for them to know if your stuff works for them

There is no way for them try that sweater on of if there is there is no mir­ror. While that superly exquis­itly glazed Raku vase looks all artsy on its museum white pedestal it does noth­ing for those folks who want help image­ing it in their front hall.

6. Your prices are not obvious

Some­where you heard that the secret to sell­ing was not to have your prices show­ing well that only half way worked for the guys of Glenn Gary Glenn Ross.

7. The ben­e­fits of  your stuff  is clear as mud.

That poten­tial buyer has no way of know­ing if that funky paint­ing or green pot will work in her house, so she move on. A sim­ple descrip­tion if you’re sell­ing on-line, will do. If you’re in per­son let her see that the dress will great with her funky shoes.

8. Your booth, gallery or web site is not invit­ing or comfortable

You booth or gallery could be to hot, to windy, to noisy or to smelly and who wants to be in that kind sit­u­a­tion?
Your web site is con­fus­ing with blink­ing lights and cutsy stuff that does noth­ing more than dis­tract your buy­ers from purchasing…that stuff went out soon after the inter­nets were discovered.

9. Not easy for peo­ple to com­mu­ni­cate with you

There is noth­ing obvi­ous that says “here’s how you can con­tact me”, so your buy­ers take that to mean you hang out in a card board box somewhere.

10. The ben­e­fits of what you’re sell­ing are not clear

The thing, the what your stuff does for poten­tial buy­ers, is no where to be seen… so they move on to some­thing that they can see ben­e­fits them because it is eas­ier that way. If you know your per­fect cus­tomer, you’ll be able to describe all the muti-faceted things your stuff does, because she just wants to know it is right for her.

11. There are no clear log­i­cal rea­sons to buy your stuff

What ever the rea­son is that peo­ple should buy your your stuff  is miss­ing, and so they move on to the next guy who can tell them that his what’s it will give them eter­nal hap­pi­ness mak­ing their lives infi­nitely eas­ier and more enjoyable.

12. No evi­dence that other folks liked your stuff

There are no pic­tures of rav­ing fans describ­ing the won­ders of work­ing with you and using your stuff. They need to know that oth­ers loved and adored your stuff and thought it was the great­est thing since sliced bread…so let them see already!

13. Have more than one call to action (espe­cially inter­net sellers)

Your sales page on your web site has a bazil­lion dif­fer­ent choices for your buy­ers to make so many that they just get all glassy eyed and leave with out buying

14. See your cus­tomers as the enemy

Every­thing is locked up, with triple case hard­ened pad locks and chains con­nected to you ankles…ain’t nobody going to steal your stuff!! Oh and you don’t answer no stinkin’ ques­tions either!!

Before you go into auto­matic freak-out mode, you need to real­ize that some of these things may be work­able for you. The deal is you need to find them and decide if the con­se­quence is accept­able. So you may hate talk­ing to cus­tomers the result maybe fewer sales and that can be OK as long as you know it and accept it. You may feel shy about toot­ing your own horn even just a lit­tle bit, the result may be fewer folks know­ing about your stuff…again that’s OK as long as you are will­ing to live with the results.

So how do you find out if you have a secret mine field caus­ing you to lose sales? The eas­i­est and best ways are to ask peo­ple, espe­cially if you are sell­ing on line. Put a sur­vey on your site with just a few ques­tions, if pos­si­ble have as part of your shop­ping cart check out sys­tem. Another really good way is  to bribe some of your friends to be secret shop­pers mak­ing very clear you want to know about their entire expe­ri­ence espe­cially the hang ups and glitches.