Door to Door Salesman

Selling products on Instagram reduces your streetwear brand to a door-to-door sales pitch.

The are a few fatal flaws with the door-to-door sales model.

The first being that, according to the stereotype, they are selling something that their customers neither want nor need. The objective of sales in this way is not to provide value. It's to make a buck. That means cheap product and the ends justify the means.

The second fatal flaw is that their audience is general. They sell to the masses. Which means instead of helping one kind of person a lot, they help many people a little bit (or not much at all).

Third and finally, their conversion rate. A linkedin post I read mentioned a 5-30% customer conversion rate. Considering the products sold are not generally high-ticket items, it's awfully little for the effort involved. Hot days. Working on weekends. Laborious hours only to convert one in (maybe) every 7 houses (15% conversion).

I present to you a better way:

Bob gets a knock on the door. On the other side is a wide smiling face and a cake in hand - she's the new neighbour. Her name is Jenny.

Bob lets Jenny in to sit down for a cup of tea and they get to chatting. Jenny has a lovely family that she'd love him to meet, so she invites Bob for dinner.

The night comes around and Bob finds himself at Jenny's dinner table with her family. Her husband works in solar panels and, funnily enough, Bob is interested in investing in some with summer coming up and power prices increasing. Bob has a need. Jenny's husband can fix it.

Bob buys from Jenny's husband the next day. He doesn't compare the market. He knows her husband. He likes her husband. He trusts her husband. And that's more than enough for Bob.

It's friends buying from friends.

And it works because we buy from those we know, like and trust.

My point is this:

Putting your products directly out to instagram is like knocking on a stranger's door, and selling them something they don't need.

It doesn't give your customer any space to get to know your brand

and it can leave you with low customer retention.

And the customers that DO come through the door aren't worth the effort - a one-time purchase tends to cost you more than it'll make you.

Try this:

Think of sales on instagram less like door-to-door and more like a community.

How would you approach a neighbour?

Even if you did have something they could buy from you, where would you start the conversation?

So take 30 seconds to:

reply to this email and share what your streetwear community is about?

Write a sentence, or even just a phrase is fine.

I'll send back an immediately implementable way you can turn your reply into a piece of content for a new neighbour.

I read every email :)

Truly,

Elijah