You’ve invested in marketing. You’ve hired a sales team. You’ve built a product you believe in.
So why aren’t more customers buying?
It’s a frustrating reality for many B2B tech companies. Growth stalls, pipelines dry up, and fingers start pointing, usually at sales or marketing. But more often than not, those functions are symptoms, not the root cause.
To uncover what’s really broken, you need to step back and look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes. From leadership to product, from pricing to onboarding, and through the lens of something most companies underestimate.
People inherently resist change – even when it’s good for them.
1. Why change is so hard, even when it make sense
This isn’t just theory. It’s human nature.
For more insights to human nature just look at some of the original philosophers: Philosophy in B2B Tech? Not just another blog about your ICP!
The philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli observed centuries ago that change was a challenge:
“There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.”
Fast forward to today, and behavioral science confirms what Machiavelli already knew. Studies in psychology and behavioral economics consistently show that:
- Status quo bias makes people prefer existing conditions, even if they are not ideal.
- Loss aversion makes people fear the pain of failure more than they desire the benefits of success.
- Cognitive overload makes decision-makers avoid change when the path forward seems too complex.
In one study by Samuelson & Zeckhauser (1988), participants overwhelmingly chose default or existing options over alternatives, even when the new choices offered better potential outcomes.
In short: your buyer may know their system is broken, may believe your solution is better, and still not move forward.
2. The problem isn’t price. It’s uncertainty
When a buyer says, “It’s too expensive,” they rarely mean the number on the proposal. What they’re often signaling is:
- “I don’t see the value clearly enough.”
- “I’m not confident we’ll get results fast.”
- “I’m afraid this will take too much time and cause disruption.”
Price is rarely the actual objection, however perceived risk is.
3. So, how do you make selling easier?
If your product is strong, and the problem you solve resonates, the key to growth is removing friction. The skill is to make change feel not just necessary, but safe, simple, and worth it.
Step 1: De-risk the decision
- Most businesses are likely doing this one already, but if you are one of the few who are not: Use social proof, case studies, testimonials, and success stories from similar companies you have helped succeed.
- Offer easy to access trials, pilot programs or phased rollouts to build confidence. Like starting a new relationship – you need to build trust.
- Provide clear, realistic expectations of time-to-value. When can they see the impact of what they are paying for?
“People don’t fear change. They fear loss.” – Harvard Business Review
Reframe the conversation to emphasize what they stand to lose by standing still, as well as what they’ll gain by buying.
Step 2: Simplify the Onboarding Experience
You could have the most powerful product on the market, but if it feels hard to adopt, it becomes a liability.
No one wants to invest into a new platform, or process and disrupt all internal protocol, team activities and retrain the whole team on a new system if there is not a considerable increase in either cost saving, security, productivity, efficiency, scalability or positive impact on the bottom line. It just isn’t worth the pain of the change. But what if the change wasn’t painful at all?
- Build enthusiasm and engagement from the start for the end users and those involved in implementation.
- Streamline the onboarding process with guided steps and dedicated support.
- Eliminate jargon and technical overwhelm in early touchpoints.
- Create a gamification or modular learning in order for users to see progress, gains and wins as they embrace this new solution.
Great onboarding isn’t a post-sale function, it secures clients and paves a way to future revenue growth.
Step 3: Make the value impossible to miss
- Translate features into business outcomes. Don’t say, “automated data pipelines” say, “save 10+ hours per analyst per week.”
- Quantify the ROI with numbers relevant to the buyer’s role (CFO, COO, etc.)
- Avoid fluffy language or too much jargon. Make your value proposition crystal clear in every slide, email, and demo.
4. What to do next
Understanding what’s broken requires humility and focus. It means asking difficult questions rather than “how do we get more sales” ask yourself:
- Are we solving a problem that’s urgent and costly enough?
- Are we easy to buy, onboard, and benefit from?
- Are we giving buyers confidence that change will work?
Quick Checklist:
We have talked about this time and time again, and although it sounds simple, breaking down these actions and asking probing questions to get to the answers can be a challenge.
However, here are some starters to take away:
- Interview lost deals and churned customers to uncover friction points
- Align leadership around a focused ICP and value story
- Map the buyer journey and identify where uncertainty creeps into the sales process
- Rewrite sales and marketing assets to reflect clarity and outcome-focus
- Build a fast, supported, low-risk onboarding path
How B2B SaaS companies succeed
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
The job of modern B2B SaaS companies is not just to build great products, it’s to build paths that make adopting those products easy, low-risk, and immediately rewarding.
When change feels like progress (not pain), customers don’t just buy – they stay, advocate, and grow with you.
