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Here’s a common sales problem I hear from jewelers:
Lab diamonds are falling in price. For stores selling labs, 80% or more of the bridal volume can include a lab. Average retail tickets, and revenue, are falling as a result.
There are lots of logical ways to address this dilemma and they only sometimes work. What’s more, lab-grown diamonds seem to be a problem to everyone in the store except – the customer!
Customers don’t mind them. They are buying labs in droves. Most solutions to this involve a lot of rational appeals to price, marketing campaigns, and the classic “upsell and add on the natural diamond” sales training approach.
Meanwhile, here’s what the guy buying an engagement ring is thinking:
“This jeweler is really pushing that natural diamond. But this lab one is so pretty, and less expensive, I just want her to love it. Plus, there’s the trip to Fiji we are taking and…”
Did you catch it, the real problem? It’s not the trip to Fiji and it isn’t the price. You can spot the real problem when you spot the emotion.
Love. He wants her to love it, and “it” doesn’t necessarily mean a lab-grown diamond. He wants her to feel overjoyed when he gives her something beautiful from your store.
If you’re trying to solve the lab-grown dilemma, or any sales dilemma, by resorting to reason and what “makes sense” you will likely come up short of a fruitful solution. That’s because people don’t buy things because it makes sense. People buy things because of how it makes them feel.
Make your chief concern about how your customer feels. So fixing the problem through emotion might look like this:
- Each lab-grown sold (at a higher markup) plants a tree in your community in honor of the person who bought it. Makes it a premium product. Higher gross margins. Emotional, personal appeal to the environment.
- Offer to set a lab-grown diamond in a simple mounting for free when they purchase a natural diamond so she can have a travel ring. Added value to natural sales. An emotional peace of mind that she has a beautiful ring to travel with that isn’t as costly.
- Buy One, Give One event. Buy a diamond, give a lab diamond to someone you care about for free, compliments of the jeweler. Increases referral sales. Emotional appeal targeting generosity – how awesome to give a friend or mother-in-law a diamond and it’s free to do so!
