Transcription
So, a question I get again and again is that whilst all the advice about selling to somebody in person is really helpful, what about if you sell online and never meet anybody in person? Someone asked about selling paintings. Someone else asked about whether you can sell expensive jewelry online with no physical store and how you build trust when the customer can't come in and try the thing on. And the simple answer is yes, of course you can. Plenty of people already do it incredibly successfully.
So, take a step back and think about what the in-person salesperson is actually doing. And when we break it down, it's mostly two things. They're a human being vouching for the product. They're reading you and reassuring you. So, some of the trust you had in them moves across into the thing they're selling. And uh then they're tailoring their pitch by watching, you know, watching your face and changing what they say based on what you appear concerned about. So vouching for the item and adjusting to you. It's that's more or less it. It's just those two things.
So now we need to now we know what those two things are. We we need to do those two things in order to give a similar experience online. So if you take vouching first in a shop, you trust the product partly because the person is in front of you, right? And we've all been in situations where we spend the first 10 minutes deciding well nothing at all except whether we trust the person behind the counter. The thing about online selling is that there's nobody there. So you hand the buyer things they can check for themselves, right? Things like where it comes from or who made it, the fact that you're stocked maybe somewhere they already trust. And if they recognize that shop, that shop then lends their credibility to you. And that costs nothing. And the word of other buyers is also important. Real buyers though, don't fake testimonials. That's just everyone knows that these fake testimonials are not real and it just destroys your credibility. Also, don't use if you're going to put a picture in your testimonials, don't use those stock images because a reverse search is going to find that image on a hundred other websites and again you lose credibility straight away. So this social proof is really important and that's now standing in for the person the salesperson who used to do the vouching.
Right then there's you know what you do about returns. I know I talk about this a lot but it is important especially at the beginning. You don't have to do it when you're more established but at the beginning it's important and I'll grant you it's terrifying at the same time but the thing is free returns on a £5,000 piece is you saying, "Take it home, live with it, and if you don't love it, send it back at my expense." Now, someone who makes something they know is mediocre can't afford to say that because they'd be buried in returns inside a month. So, the buyer then reads that policy and thinks, "Well, they're clearly not worried, so I don't need to be either." The thing is many people don't necessarily send things back once they buy it with the intention of sending it back and then they don't. I've done this so many times with Amazon things. I buy it I don't want it and I think I'll send it back and then I never get around to it and then the returns window is closed. But any sometimes you do have who will buy something and use it with this old intention of returning it. Actually, did you know that influencers do this with luxury hauls that you see them do videos on? They buy loads of stuff in these luxury boutiques. They do a haul video and then they return it. That's that's completely obnoxious. But anyway, if you've seen my other videos, you'll recognize that that's called a costly signal. And it does the reassuring bit that the salesperson in a physical store does. Except a web page can do it at 3:00 in the morning. You know, that's that's an advantage. And you can do it to somebody on the other side of the world. They don't have to be standing in front of you.
With something like jewelry, for example, where part of the fear, I suppose, is whether the thing is even real. You've got things like independent grading or reports on a diamond or hallmarks on gold and silver, that sort of thing. I know these are legal requirements, especially here in the UK, but it's also a third party doing the vouching for you instead of you just saying, "Oh, yes, this is this is a great stone or this is, you know, the cut on this is fabulous or whatever." Um, because you would say that anyway, wouldn't you? Because obviously you want to sell it. The same applies to things like watches and art or maybe a signed and numbered edition. Anything where the worry is authenticity. And then I suppose you've also got the the the trying on worry, you know, what's it going to look like on me? Will it suit me? And and so on. And you know, that's really just a fear. It's the dread of spending a lot of money and turning out to have been taken for a fool. We all feel that fear. So you shrink that by letting them in inspect the thing as much as you humanly can. So I would suggest you be completely obsessive about photography and about video. You know, show the weight, show the measurements clearly, show them how the clasp of a bracelet or a watch actually works.
Now tailoring the experience is a bit harder. I will admit that. But it's not impossible. The thing is though, you know your own buyers and you know the three or four doubts that they're going to have most commonly. So you build your text and your copy and you answer those doubts. So, a photograph that preempts a question or a line of copy that meets the objection head on instead of trying to duck it, that's much more important and does an awful lot of work when um when that objection does surface in their mind because remember you're not there to reassure them. So, you need to read the buyer type rather than the individual themselves. And for most of what you sell anyway, that's enough.
Video is a big one. I probably should have mentioned video sooner because it is hugely important. You know, someone picking the the piece up on camera, for example, and turning it over or showing you the weight of it and how the clasp works is doing what the person behind the counter actually does in a physical store. And your buyer will watch that video, but they're also going to be watching things like your hands and your face to decide whether they trust you. It's in exactly the same way as they would in a physical shop. The thing about video that's absolutely amazing and still surprises me in that in many ways it actually beats a physical shop or a physical store is if you're on camera regularly, your buyer starts to feel that they know you. And it's this this is called a parasocial relationship. It's a one-sided sense of familiarity that we develop with people. We only ever see on a screen. And it's why someone will buy from a maker that they've watched for three months on YouTube or on Instagram or TikTok or whatever sometimes much more readily than they will from a physical shop. And that's why things like, you know, workshop videos work or and when I say workshop videos, I don't mean training videos of workshops per se. I mean you in your workshop making the thing or talking in your workshop, you know, and videos like filming your process or even just you talking to the camera and explaining something like I'm doing right now. It's the it's the trust building that the salesperson does in a shop. The only difference is you're actually doing it for thousands of people at the same time and you're able to do it 24/7 which is a huge bonus.
And look at what's actually selling this way, right? Perfume houses are making a killing on TikTok and Instagram lives and stuff like that. The thing is, you can't smell perfume through a phone. What you get is somebody you've decided you trust telling you what it smells like and that turns out to be enough. Clothing is the same with these try-on videos. You you can't feel the cloth and you can't tell the weight of it, but you watch it move on somebody else and you try it on vicariously through them. That's your mind filling in what your senses can't reach. And we do it constantly. It's called mental simulation. It's imagining an experience vividly enough that it stands in for having had it. It's hugely well-established in consumer research. The person on screen is is doing that imagining for you. And whether you trust them um essentially decides whether you accept their version of the smell or the drape of the cloth or whatever.
So, if it works for something like a perfume that you can't smell, I'd pretty much stop worrying about whether your buyer needs to touch or hold your product. Live selling actually takes it further. Again, have you seen this? This is absolutely massive in China because it's getting bigger and bigger here in in Europe and and in North America because the buyer can ask a question and get an answer straight away while they're watching which is also tailoring the experience, isn't it? You're, you're adapting to their behavior and their questions and whatever. So, the watch, jewelry, and fashion trades that have been doing this for a while are absolutely smashing it and they're running what amounts to digital showrooms and it works because it puts a two-way conversation back into [clears throat] the mix.
Thing is, people muddle up social media and their shop constantly. Social media is where the trust gets built. The shop is where it gets spent. So, think of it like social media as you browsing in the boutique and shop as the the checkout where you know the um the cash desk, right? Nobody is watching your Instagram waiting to be sold to. They're deciding whether you're any good or your YouTube or whatever. You know the thing is with YouTube it is the large second largest search engine in the world and it's owned by the largest search and engine in the world. So you know um and and don't I hear this all the time as well. Oh no, I can't go on camera. I'm too shy. I'm too this. I'm too that. Do the other. You know what? If you're going to be an entrepreneur, get over it. Just get over yourself. You have to put yourself out there. The thing is, if you get that right, the sale then itself becomes a formality by the time they actually reach your page. They've already decided, I want to buy stuff.
None of this is new, obviously. It's been happening for decades since the start of the internet almost. Natalie Massanet, for example, started Net-a-Porter in 2000. She started out of her flat selling designer clothes straight off the runway to people who'd who'd never touch them. Obviously, what's amusing about that story is that the industry told her that nobody spends thousands of pounds on dresses that they can't touch or feel. And of course, they were obviously wrong. And then she added Mr. Porter for men in 2011. People buy staggeringly expensive things online every single day. And I people buy luxury cars online for God's sake. So, you know, selling it online without a physical presence isn't a isn't a barrier.
You do lose something online, of course, though. You lose the ceremony, the you know, the room, the glass of champagne, the feeling of being personally attended to, and you lose the relationship that builds while all that's going on. The thing is though, that's right at the top. You know that's the genuinely bespoke experience. This is the six-figure commission and that ceremony that buying journey is part of that. But that's a very thin sliver of the market. For almost everything else below that. A really great web page and a really good social media presence with videos that are relatable can can carry the sale perfectly well. So yes, you can sell online without a physical presence and you you can build trust in the same way as you could in a shop. Anyway, there you go. I hope that answers your question and helps. See you in the next one.