Hey Reader,

The (over-)simplified version of making money online is:

• Build an audience
• Gain their trust
• Get sales

You’ve seen me say that trust is the hardest thing to earn and keep. Yet, it’s not enough. Sometimes, the “machine” looks broken:

• You build an audience.
• They engage, reply, and stick around. Some of them have been reading you for months, sometimes years.
• When you launch something, they don’t buy.

womp womp

Do they not trust you enough? Did you screw up your copy, messaging, positioning, landing page, CTA — or something in between?

Perhaps. Perhaps one of these things is broken (no ecosystem is ever perfect), but there are some parts of the sales process that you can’t control.

We’ll look at buyer behavior in a second and talk about which parts you can and cannot influence. In the meantime, let me introduce you to today’s partner, my go-to resource for sales resources and tactics.

It's the newsletter that changed how I look at sales because, until recently, I'd break out in hives at the mere thought of jumping on a sales call or, worse yet, following up with prospects.

📣 Brought to you by 📣

​Sales Skills for Founders​

At some point, every founder has to sell. Most just never learned how. So, what do you do?

You get on the call nervous and uncomfortable and just wing it to get through. You avoid the difficult questions because you don't want to create tension, which means you never quite get to the real problem. You bring up pricing too late and discount the second they push back. You hang up thinking it went well, then they ghost you.

It's an endless cycle and none of that makes you bad at sales. It means nobody ever taught you how to do it correctly.

Until now.

My friend Brian Ondrako spent 15 years as a top-performing software salesperson and now coaches founders to sell with confidence in their own voice.

Every week, he shares one practical sales skill in his free newsletter, Sales Skills for Founders. One concept, one action item, ready to use on your next call.

It's the starting point. And for a lot of founders, it's exactly what changes the trajectory of their sales conversations and their pipeline.

Want your name up here? Reserve your slot! (Sold out until June)​
​

Trust explains attention. It does not explain timing.

Trust plays a role in whether someone listens to you and keeps coming back. It increases perceived credibility and reduces perceived risk.

The trouble is that credibility and familiarity increase engagement and intent, but they don’t reliably predict immediate purchase decisions on their own.

In decision science, purchase behaviour is strongly influenced by situational triggers and timing, not just attitudes or beliefs (especially for impulse purchases).

People can agree with you, trust you, and still postpone action indefinitely.

Buying is a timing problem, often disguised as a trust problem

If you strip this down, a purchase tends to happen when three conditions align.

1. The problem crosses a threshold

People are willing to buy when a problem moves from “important” to “costly to ignore.”

​Behavioral economics research shows that people act when losses or missed opportunities become salient. Until then, even meaningful problems stay in the background.

This is why someone can read your content for months without acting. The problem exists; it just hasn’t crossed the threshold where action feels necessary.

Personal example: I had been struggling with low-key back pain for years, but I didn’t see a physical therapist until I became bedridden for weeks on end. That was my “costly to ignore” threshold.

2. The path is legible

Clarity reduces friction because when people can’t picture what happens after they commit, they delay.

This shows up in offers that are valuable but vague in execution. People understand the promise but they don’t understand the process.

So they wait.

This is why I have an ax to grind with the “show the white-sand beach, not the cramped middle-row economy seat to get there” advice.

Sure, lead with outcomes BUT also tell people how they get there. Otherwise, your marketing gets too sleazy.

For instance, “program X will teach you how to make $500K/year with zero previous experience”. Sounds like a dream, right?

The only people who buy without additional explanation are those who are desperate, who are emotionally and mentally drained. You’d be preying on the weak.

On the other hand, showing the path (“here’s what you need to do to get there”) will get you qualified, more invested buyers who know what needs to be done are committed to putting in the work.

3. The tradeoff is justified in the present

Every purchase competes with other uses of time, money, and attention. More importantly, it competes with present comfort.

You know that saying, “people would rather stay in a familiar hell than trade it for an unfamiliar heaven”?

This is called “intertemporal choice”, a fancy term for what people usually discard with a simple “meh, too complicated”. People discount future benefits relative to present costs.

Even when the long-term value is clear, the immediate cost often wins unless something shifts the balance. That shift comes from how the present moment is perceived, not from more trust.

What this looks like in practice

Obviously, your prospects won’t tell you:

• “The intertemporal choice you’re suggesting sounds too complex right now.”
• “I’m not willing to do what your program says I need to do”.
• “This is not a costly enough problem for me right now. I’ll wait until the pain becomes throbbing”.

Instead, you’ll hear things like:

• “It’s not the right time for me; I’m swamped with something else.”
• “I have other priorities.”
• “I can’t commit for the entire length of your program.”
• “Sounds interesting, but it’s not a problem I have right now.”

All of it because you’re asking for a decision from people who are not in a decision window.

The 95:5 rule

According to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, only 5% of B2B buyers are in the market to buy at any given time. The other 95% are in different stages of their journey.

This is why so few people in your audience buy from you and why that’s normal. When trust lag is not a problem, this is.

Can you fix it? Yes, partially.

How to bridge the trust-sales gap

A consistent pipeline comes from covering different levels of readiness and knowing how to respond when someone moves.

Over the years, I’ve gotten “when I’m ready, I will work with you and no one else” more times than I can count. It came from people who were either not in a financial position to work with me or hadn’t started their business yet.

In time, some of them became my clients. Not all, of course. Some never started that business and some surely found someone else who spoke to their problem more clearly.

So, the first thing on your to-do list is:

Keep building your audience/pipeline

Whether you call it “audience”, “lead pipeline”, or something else, you need to grow it before you need it.

This means either constant traditional audience growth or prospecting for new leads, even when you’re at capacity.

Stay in the game long enough for time to do its job

Remember how I said that some of the people who said they'd become my clients actually did? It's because I was still around when they were in the decision window.

Time accelerates both trust and your prospects’ pain (if you play your cards right). Keep showing up to remind them that you, the person who’s most suited to fix the problem, exist.

Recency matters. Someone who hit a wall last week is more likely to act than someone who has been vaguely dissatisfied for months. If you show up in their inbox/on their feed frequently, recency bias will work in your favor.

When they’re ready, they’ll buy. If you’re nowhere to be found, they’ll buy from someone else.

Look for signals of motion

You won’t get explicit declarations of intent, so you need to look for patterns. People closer to a decision tend to:

• Describe specific problems instead of general frustrations
• Reference recent attempts or failures
• Talk about constraints and tradeoffs

Depth of engagement matters. Replies, detailed questions, and repeated clicks signal more intent than passive interactions. In email marketing, click and reply behaviour correlates more strongly with conversion than opens, so pay attention to who’s clicking and constantly replying to your emails.

Those are the people most likely to buy from you soon, not in a year or so.

Design for different moments, not just one

Most content targets people who are aware but not acting, and while it performs well, it rarely converts.

You need a mix:

• Content that makes the cost of inaction visible
• Content that helps people evaluate options and tradeoffs
• Content that shows what happens after buying

Side note: The Profitable Content Engine will show you how to create this mix and even assist you on creating profitable, not just engaging content. Get instant access!

Make the next step easy to take

When someone enters a decision window, they look for a clear next step. If that step is vague or buried, momentum drops.

You want:

• Direct paths from problem to offer
• Clear entry points (calls, products, sessions)
• Language that reflects their current situation
• Visible pricing or at least pricing ranges

This is less about persuasion and more about removing friction at the moment it matters.

Bet on internal, not external urgency

Internal urgency is what they know to be true i.e. they need help NOW. External urgency is usually manufactured i.e. “cart closes tonight” or “only 3 seats remaining”.

Some external urgency is real, but it will never move the needle if there’s zero internal urgency. So, your job is to explain the cost of inaction over and over again.

With decency and honesty, of course — very few products are actual life-savers, so don’t pretend yours is one of them if it’s not.

I’ve written more about internal vs external urgency here; take a peek, you’ll find some examples you can borrow.

Accept uneven timing

Candidly, this is hard to accept for me as well, but a consistent pipeline does not produce smooth, predictable sales. It produces clusters.

You’ll see periods of low activity followed by multiple decisions close together. Accept it.

If you expect linear results, you’ll start overcorrecting: changing offers too quickly, rewriting messaging unnecessarily, or chasing new audiences before the existing one has moved.

Most of the time, the system is working. Timing just hasn’t aligned yet.

Also, for the love of email gods, do NOT delete people who haven’t bought from you yet. I’ve seen this advice floated around way too many times: “Those aren’t your people”. “You need action-takers”. “They’re just tire-kickers”.

No, they aren’t – at least not all of them. Sure, some people will subscribe to download a freebie, but that doesn’t mean they won’t convert in time. Or talk about your content/products to their peers.

Assess your prospects’ position correctly

This is a huge time and effort saver. Say you want 20 sales for your next cohort. Assuming trust is there for the majority of your audience, how many people will convert if only 5% are ready to buy?

Caveat: not all who are ready to buy will buy from you, though, so don’t assume a 5% conversion rate. You will also need to account for visibility: will everyone see your announcement(s) in time to join?

This is a very good reality check, albeit hard to swallow. If the numbers don’t look the way you want them too, consider pivoting to a different format before you abandon the idea altogether.

And, lastly, give everything time. I know it’s hard, but it’s the one compounding factor that matters the most and that you can’t accelerate too much on your own.

The Council Bulletin

One of my biggest fears regarding The Council was that it would become cricket-land, that no one would show up constantly once the initial enthusiasm wears off.

We’re four months in, and the opposite happened. Most members are active every day and our discussions get more engagement than average social media posts.

*swoon*

Unlike on social media, there’s no AI slop. Everyone takes the time to offer thoughtful feedback, not just “great job” comments, so it has quickly become my favorite place to hang out.

That's it from me today! See you next week in your inbox. Here to make you think, Adriana

​

P.S.: Have you seen my latest YouTube video? I tried one of those popular formats, where you distill all your experience in as few minutes as possible and...I'm not sure it's for me. What do you think?​
​

Share this essay

🔗https://www.adrianatica.com/they-trust-you-they-still-dont-buy-saf-176/​

Quick share links

​​​

​
​