You can’t escape it:
No matter how cheap, fast, perfect, safe, or tailored (go ahead and add more adjectives) your product is, one thing will always be there:
Doubt.
You can throw fancy words around like a hopeful teen on a first date, but it won’t help. Your potential customers will always have it—doubt—in some form or another.
You probably know the feeling yourself.
Even when you’re sure you’ll buy something, doubt still sneaks in.
Sure, when you toss your favorite liver pâté into your shopping basket, doubt isn’t exactly screaming in your head.
But it’s there.
Doubt is a natural part of every decision-making process.
And a sale? Very much a decision-making process.
So skip the urge to tiptoe past all your customer’s what-if worries. Instead, go straight for the jugular.
Because when you confront the doubt head-on, you’re helping your customer make a decision—and hit “Buy.”
That’s why it’s so important to understand the five fundamental points where your customer is likely to hesitate. So you can address them smoothly and effectively.
The 5 Core Objections You Need to Handle
There are five classic objections that you should be ready for:
- I don’t have enough time.
- I don’t have enough money.
- I don’t believe this will work for me.
- I don’t trust you.
- I don’t need this.
Can you tackle all five in your copy? Wonderful. Just the most important one? That’s still a win.
The idea isn’t that you have to crush every single objection in one go—but you do need to be aware they exist. And that they’re probably swimming around in the mind of whoever’s reading your words.
Pick the one(s) that matter most. The ones that—if you can neutralize them—will make the biggest difference in your reader’s decision-making.
And if you’re not sure what your audience’s objections are, the Big Five are a great place to start. Chances are, your readers have at least one of them. For good reason.
Why It’s Completely Natural for Your Customer to Hesitate
Before you can understand why your customer hesitates, you need to understand what that hesitation really means.
You know the feeling. That little voice in the back of your head whispering, “This might be too good to be true.” Or that instinctive skepticism toward flashy “Best in class!” claims.
But let’s put some more specific words to it. Your customer’s doubt stems from:
- Concern
- Uncertainty
- Skepticism
In other words:
Doubt triggers the questions your customer asks themselves before buying your product.
During the buying journey, we often try to talk ourselves out of buying. From your point of view, it can feel like customers exist just to throw up roadblocks. Sometimes they even invent them:
- “I probably don’t have time for an online course right now, what with the global pandemic and all.”
- “Unlimited access to every movie ever made for the price of my latte? That’s waaay too expensive.”
(Yes, I’m exaggerating. That’s the point.)
And how do I know that your unique customer is definitely having doubts?
Because your customer is a human being making a decision. And doubt is baked right into the ‘on-the-one-hand… on-the-other-hand…’ thought process that leads to every decision.
Roughly sketched, it goes like this:
- You’re presented with a choice (Buy a pair of sleek black bamboo socks)
- Your brain runs a simulation (They look soft, pricier than regular socks, shipping takes three days)
- Your inner supercomputer spits out a judgment (Yes or no)
That judgment costs your brain a certain amount of energy. Some decisions require very little (like opening a newsletter), others a lot (hello, home ownership).
What matters is: your brain weighs all known variables. It stirs a big soup of:
- Personal experiences
- Available facts
- Other people’s experiences
...and thousands of other little inputs.
Anything your brain sees as a possible risk? It shows up as an objection.
So when your potential customer says:
“I don’t have time to take an online course right now—I'm stuck at home with nothing to do but stare at screens.”
What they really mean is that they:
- Are unsure about what the future looks like
- Know from experience they rarely finish online courses
- Are unsure if your course will help them
Doubt is a self-protective mechanism baked into the decision-making process.
Doubt is basically a super-fast risk assessment:
Will I get enough value from this product to justify the cost?
Your job as a copywriter is to anticipate and address your customer’s objections. That way, the brain has fewer unknowns to factor in when it’s doing the buy/don’t buy calculation.
That’s why it’s all about your answer to the doubt.
You have to charge straight into your customer’s skeptical, worried, hesitant objections.
Because that’s how you show them: you’ve got this.
"Don’t worry, I got this."
If you let doubt win, the customer has to go off and do their own research to feel safe enough to decide. And then all you can do is cross your fingers, pray to your gods, carve a talisman, and hope for the best.
As Claude Hopkins once said:
"When you get one person’s attention, then is the time to accomplish all you ever hope with him."
Once you’ve got the attention of someone in your ideal audience, that’s when you bring out the big guns. That’s when she’s ready to be convinced. That’s when the decision happens.
“No Thanks” Is the Easiest Answer
If you don’t tackle your customer’s objections, “no thanks” becomes the easy way out. New things = uncertain, uncomfortable, unfamiliar. And new requires more energy than staying the same. That’s why “no thanks” wins when you don’t take on the objections.
But your sales copy is your golden opportunity to dismantle those doubts. Which brings us to another Claude Hopkins gem:
"What you fail to tell him in that ad, is something he may never know."
Catch that last part? He may never know. That’s spot on. Sure, your customer might do some research. But let’s be real—Twitter, Netflix, and Slack are just waiting to pull their attention away. Once they leave your sales page, you’re out of the game.
So—how do you do it? First, find your customer’s objections.
How to Uncover Your Customer’s Objections
Start by digging them up. Dust off your research toolbox.
- Ask your support team
- Look at your keyword research
- Talk to your customers—and listen for what worries them
- Ask in an exit-intent popup (it’s kind of like being in-store with them—lots to learn)
And don’t forget the classic Henrik Leslye hack:
Describe the objection in a way that highlights something valuable about your product.
For example, show a deliberate choice instead of a limitation:
“We don’t offer an all-in-one payment solution—because we focus on building the best mobile payment system in the world.”
That’s how you flip the doubt into a sharp, persuasive angle.
So, What Are Your Customers Unsure About?
That’s where it starts. Know your potential customers. And take aim at their objections.