Why Lying Your Customer is a Losing Proposition
This post below I wrote yesterday is based on offline business experience, but I believe it applies to online business just as well (hardly any business is just offline nowadays):
Today I witnessed one funny (for me) case with one vendor in the same niche as me: a customer was really pissed off. So would I if newly bought fog lights for my car suddenly smoked and died. His did.
The vendor (woman in her 50's, very sneaky person to say the least) returned him the money. He said her to never again tell anyone the crap she sells works and left.
Now guess what? He soon came to our store and bought similar, but higher quality lights. But now guess again... do I sell exactly those crappy cheap lights that woman does? YES! Did we ever have return? NO! Sounds amazing, but it's true.
The simply answer is: we never lie about qualities of products we sell. If people want something dirt cheap and it means buying poor quality stuff, we never say "it's cheap, but good". Quite the opposite,
I usually shock customers by saying "just smell it, it stinks with almost certainly toxic substances and will never give you good light, but if you don't care, price is great".
You would be truly amazed to see how many people who would buy such a low quality product at all actually buy it! The trick is: if you are honest with your customer, especially if you are really honest (don't underestimate intuition of people) it changes everything. You get loyal customer and likely a recurring customer as well, because... yes, some come back to buy crappy products again, but never enraged or even irritated, because they knew in advance what they bought. I provided them with actual information and conditions of buying (no return policy for such a low quality stuff in exchange for bargain price), I gave them choice, they made it and we agreed about everything. We're partners, not predator and prey. Satisfied partners. It keeps surprising me how many people don't believe it works, but it does!
I know there are different laws in different countries and in some you are obligated to take the purchase back, but the truth is: they never even try to if they know what they bought for real! They would feel like cheating if they try. This is not 100% rule of course, but about 95-97% without any doubts. And extremely high chance of getting loyal recurring customer.
Think about upside of it and tell me about downside in comments if you see any... I don't.
Original post - Don't Lie
Today I witnessed one funny (for me) case with one vendor in the same niche as me: a customer was really pissed off. So would I if newly bought fog lights for my car suddenly smoked and died. His did.
The vendor (woman in her 50's, very sneaky person to say the least) returned him the money. He said her to never again tell anyone the crap she sells works and left.
Now guess what? He soon came to our store and bought similar, but higher quality lights. But now guess again... do I sell exactly those crappy cheap lights that woman does? YES! Did we ever have return? NO! Sounds amazing, but it's true.
The simply answer is: we never lie about qualities of products we sell. If people want something dirt cheap and it means buying poor quality stuff, we never say "it's cheap, but good". Quite the opposite,
I usually shock customers by saying "just smell it, it stinks with almost certainly toxic substances and will never give you good light, but if you don't care, price is great".
You would be truly amazed to see how many people who would buy such a low quality product at all actually buy it! The trick is: if you are honest with your customer, especially if you are really honest (don't underestimate intuition of people) it changes everything. You get loyal customer and likely a recurring customer as well, because... yes, some come back to buy crappy products again, but never enraged or even irritated, because they knew in advance what they bought. I provided them with actual information and conditions of buying (no return policy for such a low quality stuff in exchange for bargain price), I gave them choice, they made it and we agreed about everything. We're partners, not predator and prey. Satisfied partners. It keeps surprising me how many people don't believe it works, but it does!
I know there are different laws in different countries and in some you are obligated to take the purchase back, but the truth is: they never even try to if they know what they bought for real! They would feel like cheating if they try. This is not 100% rule of course, but about 95-97% without any doubts. And extremely high chance of getting loyal recurring customer.
Think about upside of it and tell me about downside in comments if you see any... I don't.
Original post - Don't Lie
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boringman -
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nurz -
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jmferret -
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