What Watch Retailers Can Learn From Home Shopping TV Channels
Now that people are becoming more comfortable with non-traditional ways of buying their favorite things, home shopping TV channels, such as ShopHQ, are experiencing unprecedented growth. As these new sales channels grow more popular, merchants and retailers are learning that the conventional sales strategies they’ve used for years aren’t always effective in an interactive TV environment.
Home shopping TV requires a different approach to be successful and retailers who have mastered selling their products in this interactive environment are discovering that the lessons they’ve learned from interactive selling can be applied to almost every aspect of their business.
The 60-Second Sale
Shopping channel retailers don’t have much time to make a sale. With less than 60 seconds to make your pitch, success is typically measured by how many sales you make per minute. This is a huge change from the weeks or even months it might take for customers to make a decision about something inside a glass case at their favorite jewelry store. To deal with the faster pace of the decision making process in a home shopping environment, retailers have become much better at recognizing the signals that people send indicating whether they are interested in buying a product or rejecting it.
The Importance of a Compelling Story
You need a compelling story to sell a watch in 60 seconds on TV. Simply listing product benefits is not enough. Successful TV sellers have learned to capture the attention of the viewer with an interesting story that gets them engaged with the product. A compelling story is so effective at generating a sale that many retailers are starting to employ the technique in their brick and mortar stores as well. Any great watch has a great story behind it and customers want to know about it.
Walking Away From a Loser
In a home shopping TV environment, you know immediately what sells and what doesn’t. If the phones aren’t ringing after your 60-second pitch, your product isn’t going to sell. To succeed, you need to quickly cut your losses and move on. This is very different than what happens in most retail stores. Brick and mortar stores can succeed selling luxury goods with a 25% conversion rate. To succeed on TV, you must convert a much higher percentage into sales. Retailers have learned that the best way to do this is keep selling your winners and quickly walk away from the losers. If you can’t get a viewer excited about a watch in 60 seconds, you probably aren’t going to get them excited period!
There’s More Than One Way to Sell a Watch
The most important lesson that shopping channel TV has taught luxury retailers is that there is more than one way to sell anything. In today’s digital age, you need to engage customers on-air, via the Internet, by phone, by magazine advertising, as well as by traditional face-to-face interaction in the store. Retailers who have made the effort to master all these new sales channels are seeing dramatic increases in sales along with a much faster turnover rate.
Home shopping TV is teaching retailers that selling is a two-way conversation. In today’s fast paced world, it’s not enough to simply tell people about your product. You must engage them emotionally. The success of interactive selling has proved that when the customer feels they have become part of the conversation, you have made a sale.
About Gevril Group
Gevril Group is the exclusive US representative for select European watch brands, distributing and servicing luxury, fashion and sports timepieces at a wide range of price points. Gevril Group also operates a full-service watch repair department staffed by master Swiss watchmakers. Contact Gevril Group by email or by calling 845-425-9882.
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