Your funnel's getting traffic, you're doing all the ‘right' things, but your offer still isn't selling. Before you slash your prices or scrap your entire funnel, let me show you what's really going on.
I've audited hundreds of funnels, and there are usually 5 specific reasons why offers fail – and spoiler alert: it's usually not what you think. In fact, I recently helped a photographer double her rates by fixing just ONE of these issues.
Prefer to watch this video?
Want to listen to this on the go?
Let's talk about something that's been coming up a lot in my funnel audits lately – offers that aren't converting. Whether you've built your first funnel or you're trying to scale an existing one, there's nothing more frustrating than knowing you have a great offer that just isn't selling. If you've ever looked at your funnel stats and wondered ‘what am I missing?', this post is for you. Let's start with the first and most common issue I see
Reason #1: The Value Doesn’t Match the Price
The first reason your offer might not be selling is because the value of it doesn't match the price. Now this is kind of a trick reason because it doesn't necessarily mean that you should go ahead and lower them raises. It's more likely an indication that you need to revisit the messaging and value proposition so your potential customers see your offer for as valuable as it is.
Here are 3 signs your offer value isn't coming across:
- People are clicking through so you're getting views on your offer page or point of sale but they're not following through on purchasing
- If you're selling via sales calls, people are booking your calls, showing up, telling you they get a lot of value from them but they're not taking the next step
- When you get objections to your offer almost all of them have to do with price or money
As you can see from these signs, they all come down to people just not following through. Which means they're interested but not interested enough to take that next step.
Your primary goal for fixing this is to convey the value in a way that is undeniable. This is comes from selling the results, having a rock solid and validated offer proposition and tagline, having social proof that speaks to the results your clients want most from your offer.
Reason #2: You're Solving The Wrong Problem
The second reason your offer isn't selling in your funnel is that you might be selling the wrong problem. This one can feel like a total punch in the gut because you might feel like you've wasted all this time creating an offer to solve a problem that your people don't really care about. This is also probably the number one issue that I see when people hire me to review and audit their funnels. So you can hire to review yours or watch out for these 3 main signs you're focusing on their wrong problem:
- People aren't even clicking on your offer when you share it in emails or on social media
- When you take a hard look at your offer, you realize you're providing something that's maybe a nice to have
- When you do talk to your audience, they spend all their time with you asking about or ranting about something completely different from what you offer (still something you can solve but the connection to the specific problem is tenuous at best)
- A bonus sign I see here is that you don't even what the ONE main problem your offer solves. You might solve multiple things, you might get people multiple results. But there should be one succinct overarching problem you can point to.
If this is you, distill your offer down to the main problems and ask your audience if they need help with it. Their answers (or lack there of) assuming at least 100 perfect fit potential customers see it will be very very telling.
Reason #3: You Have The Wrong Person
Another reason I see offers not selling is more a serious issue and that's selling to the wrong person. Unfortunately, I've seen businesses who kind of bypass the market research phase of their business set-up and end up building an offer or even an entire business around someone they don't want to work with (so they don't go 100% in) or someone who doesn't actually need the thing they're offering. Get very very clear on who your person is and make sure that your offers are what they need.
I recently did a funnel overhaul with a wedding photographer who was trying to compete in the luxury wedding market but wasn't gaining much traction despite her beautiful portfolio. Through our work together, we realized her true sweet spot was actually helping entrepreneurs create personal branding photos and social media content. She switched her entire business model to offer quarterly personal branding photoshoot packages, complete with shot lists customized for social media content calendars. Her natural ability to make camera-shy business owners feel comfortable, combined with her understanding of social media marketing, made her uniquely qualified for this niche. She now books out three months in advance at twice her previous rates.
This pivot worked because she found alignment between her true expertise, passion, and market need. She stopped trying to force-fit her offers to an audience that wasn't quite right and instead built her businesses around serving people she genuinely understood and wanted to help.
Here are some signs you might be selling to the wrong person:
- You don't feel lit up about this person or their problems (there's something else that feels like a better fit – don't ignore your gut here)
- You're getting almost no traction on your free or paid offers even though you're putting it out in the places where this audience type hangs out
- There's an opportunity to niche down and find your “blue ocean” opportunities and serve a more narrow and defined niche as one of the only solutions specifically for that thing
If this is you, go back to the drawing board, question if you can more narrow or if you need to serve a different audience segment. Line up at least 3 market research conversations to get a true line into their words, thoughts and feelings which help you get clear on how to pivot your offer for this specific person. Even though you're going to serve many more than just one person, try to speak to that one person, one real person, with all of your marketing and content.
Reason #4: You Don't Have Enough Leads
Reason #4 is a biggie. And when I'm doing funnels for amazing clients who have successful businesses already but they're at the point of scaling or they want to diversify their offerings so it isn't just 1-1, this is usually when things go a little bit left.
And that is – many of them have built their businesses through word of mouth. And a lot of them have had offers that they don't need a hundreds of sales of in order to hit their revenue goals. And so the shift isn't just one to many on the offer side – that also means we're one to many on the leads too. And so sometimes what I find is that you're not making sales because noone is going through that funnel. It's a leads problem.
Here are some signs that you have a leads problem:
- The number of people hitting the salespage is less than 100 (or if you are making a couple of sales here and there, you notice it correlates when you get higher views of the page)
- When people do go through your funnel or you get a big influx, you make sales but most of the time you're not getting the sign ups of people in
- It could also be a lead quality issue – if the only lead gen you're doing for your funnel is coming from bundles or summits with 20 other experts a pop, the people are your list are both underwhelmed and not validated (that's one of the reasons I rarely do summits and bundles because it isn't really worth it at the end of the day)
So if you suspect you have a leads problem and not an offer problem, identify a consistent source of leads. This could be ads. This could be a big strategic push towards social content or podcasts or Pinterest. Or whatever else works but just measure to make sure it IS actually working to bring your offer the eyeballs it needs.
Reason #5: You Don't Have Enough Touchpoints
The final reason is that you don't have enough touchpoints in order to make the sale.
Latest research from Email Tool Tester suggests that the number of actual touchpoints needed depends on the type of lead.
- Inactive customers only need 1–3 touches on average
- A warm inbound lead will need 5–12 touches
- A cold prospect can require 20–50 touches
So if your offer isn't selling, could it be that you haven't included enough touch points in your sales journey?
Want a Content Post-It Headstart?
If you've been resonating with these funnel fixes and you're ready to build an offer that actually sells (and scales), I've got something special for you. I'm hosting a free webinar where I'll show you how to create an offer that stands out – no AI fluff, no cookie-cutter templates, no staying the internet's best-kept secret. We're going back to the fundamentals that everyone skips because they're chasing the next shiny strategy. I'll walk you through my proven framework for creating a fully stacked offer and building a machine that sells it for you ↓
